Victim of Advertising

Last week, my mother said my skin looked dry. She then mentioned that, as I wasn't as young as I used to be, I might consider doing a little more for my skin. My mom is a total bitch - I think I get my bitchiness from her. My drug store moisturizer (with SPF thank you very much) was sputtering every time I tried to use it, implying that the tube was empty. I have found myself returning time and again to the drug store moisturizer when I can't find any difference in the results given me by the fancy stuff (and I tried La Mer for 4 weeks - nada - I gave the rest of the jar to my mom cause she's REALLY old). So I went back to CVS to replenish the old moisturizer only to discover something upsetting: drug store moisturizer has gotten expensive. Oil of Olay, the pink stuff your grandmother uses, now has a luxe line where stuff costs 30 bucks. The only cheap stuff was Pond's.

So I did what any sane, rational person would do: I ordered the stuff from the infomercial.

Boys, I know you have no idea what I'm talking about; girls, I know you know exactly what I'm talking about: the magic melon shit Cindy Crawford keeps trying to sell you. Now, I know the melon is not magic. The reason I know this is that last year, while in France, I ate quite a number of those melons. They're called Cavaillon melons and they are everywhere. They are about as magical as a Red Delicious apple. But magic or no magic, I cannot deny that Cindy Crawford's skin looks redonkulous, so if she says the magic melon is magic, I'll come along for the ride.

But before you condemn me for doing something really really stupid, like give the Guthy Renker folks access to my credit card information, please remember that I might be susceptible to fake magic melon claims, but I'm not without use of my faculties. No, instead of falling into the BMG 10 CDs for a penny chasm (we all did it at one point), I went to my preferred trusted vendor: ebay.

Yes, ebay, where my handbags and shoes and evening dresses come from; where I troll for the last discontinued tubes of Bain de Soleil orange gelee in SPF 8; where I found a dizzying array of magic melon crap for sale - and these sellers weren't going to charge my credit card every month. So for less than I would have paid the TV people, I have now received all the things a girl could want made out of magic melon: cleanser, toner, day moisturizer, night moisturizer, and a mask. Devoted partner is perplexed by what he sees as redundancy. I could try to point out that Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty, Uncharted, and Assassin's Creed are all essentially the same game, but some debates are just not worth having.

Now the challenge is actually using this crap. I'm just not a multi-step skin care kind of girl. I'm more the, "if it's not visibly dirty don't clean it" kind of girl. This works easily well for skin and toilets, by the way. But I would like to keep my skin as is - unlined and elastic - so I'm really trying to remember my regimen (ok, but last night I fell asleep on the couch and didn't do my nighttime routine, sue me).

The problem is, this kind of rampant consumerism fueled by people with better stuff than you on television is the slipperiest of slopes...

I also bought an InStyler.