Pinterest is Full of Lies!

     I love Pinterest, but I mostly surf the humor section and pin offensive comics. Sometime's I'll browse through hair and beauty to look for inspiration pics for makeup jobs. But this genre is where I find the most blatant lies I've ever come across on the internet! I end up seeing recipes for all kinds of skincare and beauty problems and they make me see red. Because they are stupid. Here's a sampling from the past couple weeks:

You cannot mix iodine and baby oil to remove hair. You could use it as a tanning oil like they did back in the 70's, but it won't get rid of body hair.

You cannot get rid of blackheads with honey, salt, and baking soda. You will exfoliate with the scratchy salt, but it will only be on the surface. Also, your skin wants to be mildly acidic (a pH less than 7) but baking soda is alkaline and will raise the pH of your skin above 7. That's not what your skin wants! Also, some people are sensitive to honey and will breakout in a rash when it's applied to the skin. Be careful!

In the same vein, you cannot remove blackheads with lemon juice and baking soda. The pH isn't the issue because you're probably balancing the citric acid with the baking soda, but neither of those ingredients are going to exfoliate within the pore or remove clogs. It will mildly exfoliate the surface of your skin by acting like a scrub, but that's it. Also, citrus oil can irritate your skin, so if you juice your own lemons you should be very careful to keep the oils away from your face.

And again, you cannot scrub away blackheads with toothpaste and salt. This is nuts. The salt will physically exfoliate your skin, but that won't touch your blackheads. The mint in the toothpaste can irritate your skin. There's absolutely zero truth to this one. A follow-up: don't dab toothpaste onto pimples to dry them up! I will dry out your skin, cause irritation, and you'll get it all over your pillowcase.

You cannot "make" homemade lotion by simply combining 2-3 commercially available lotions in a new container. Seriously? Come on. That's cheating. Just like Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade. In the South we call that store bought. Also, this recipe is crap. Just use the Vitamin E oil and move on. Vaseline and cheap baby lotion are simply occlusives that trap in whatever moisture your skin has left. Won't hydrate one bit. And can clog pores.