Hot Summer Skin

When the weather heats up, little shorts get pulled out of storage, and you double your daily dose of sit-ups so you can look that much hotter lounging on the sand, there’s a good chance your skin might start breaking out. While it totally sucks, there are a few easy fixes that can clear you up before you can say, “Of course I’ll be having another Mojito.”

By Candy

I can most definitely vouch for these methods too. When I noticed a few clogged pores around my T-zone a couple of days ago, instead of going into crisis mode and lamenting how life could be so cruel, I made a few simple changes and things are already looking up.

You need to be careful of two things: sun and sweat.

Sun: Don’t think baking under the sun is good for your skin. Even if you don’t care about dying from skin cancer, the sun doesn’t clear up acne. It only burns the top-most layer of skin and doesn’t get to the heart of the cause of acne—the clogged pore.

Instead, it acts a very temporary, very dangerous solution to covering up acne for a little while. The worst part is that it increases oil production (yup, you can look like a greasy teenage who works at McDonalds) which only makes you break out more a couple of days later. So if you want to stay looking like the hottie that you are, don’t even think of roasting yourself.

One more thing: while you should most definitely put on sunscreen, you need to be careful about which on you choose to slather. Some contain oils and other pore cloggers, so you need to check the label carefully to make sure it’s noncomedogenic (doesn’t block pores).

Sweat: Especially when the weather starts getting all humid and sticky, you need to watch out for sweat. Obviously we all sweat, there’s nothing you can do about that except for lurking in air-conditioning all summer, but what’s the fun in that?

What you can control is wiping sweat with your dirty hands, which will get you in skin trouble. Hands are absolutely filthy, teeming with gems. Do you want them on your face?

Plus, salty sweat (that sounds vaguely dirty in a way I can’t quite articulate) can be an acne irritant, so you notice bumps on your back, chest and neck, you might consider wearing loose, flowy clothing, ala the Olsen twins—anything to give your skin a little breathing room. Plus, it’s way cooler to sport a James Perse dress than some sort of corset top contraption.

So now that you know the two triggers, what can you do about them?

1.Exfoliate! You want to gently exfoliate every other day to clear your pores from dead skin, oily gunk, and various other unappetizing things. I swear by St. Ives Medicated Apricot Scrub for Oily or Acne Prone Skin. It’s a tingly deep cleansing formula with 100% natural exfoliants and salicylic acid that gently exfoliates, removing oil, dirt and dull skin cells. Love this stuff, plus it’s under four bucks. For the bod, I’m a big fan of Neutrogena Clean and Clear Body Scrub.

2.Ditch your moisturizer! I know you two have had good times, but unless your skin is like the Sahara, when the humidity spikes it’s just going to make you look all greasy—not terribly appealing.

3.No More Cream Cleanser! Switch to a gel based cleanser. It will give you a deeper, cleaner clean. Plus, you don’t really need your cleanser to infuse your skin with any added moisture.

4.Drink Lots of Water! I’m not sure exactly why this works, but everyone who is anyone swears by good old H2O. Plus, I saw it on America’s Next Top Model. Tyra would never lie to me.

Go, enjoy your summer vacation without having to worry about (yuck!) break outs.