Clairity

Image courtesy The Vintage Perfume Vault

Fellow women who were teenagers in the age of NKOTB, The Wonder Years, pegged jeans, penny loafers, scrunch socks, stirrup pants, and Boyz2Men...does the above advertisement look familiar to you?  Remember those Noxzema ads of the early 90's with Rebbecca Gayhart of the perfect skin?  I can almost smell the Noxzema just looking at this image, feel that slippery, cool, smooth lotion under my fingers when I see that jar.  Each time I cracked open a jar of Noxzema I felt the promise of perfect skin come over me.  I looked into the mirror with hope.  I would run my fingers over my cheeks hoping for no telltale bumps. 

Oh what I wouldn't give for the skin of adolescence.  And no, I am not bemoaning wrinkles.  Those don't bother me.  What everyone failed to inform me about was that I would be stricken with pimples after I turned 30.  Seriously.  What? I mean, I may not have been popular by any stretch of the imagination in school.  I didn't have perfect clothes and shoes.  I never had a designer purse.  And I never, ever carried a pager like all the cool kids did.  Yet I had glowing, smooth, lovely skin that was dappled by nutmeg freckles.  That skin carried me into college and my early adulthood.  I was kind to it.  I washed it faithfully.  Moisturized it.  Masked it.  Sunscreened it.  And for all the care I took, it repays me with zits.  Yes, the scourge of adolescents everywhere.  Zits. 

If only a perfect blue jar of Noxzema was the answer.  If only twisting off that lid and applying the cool white lotion to my face each night would banish those bumps for good, I would have a warehouse of it in the bathroom.  But it doesn't.  Nothing seems to work.  Can someone point this almost middle-aged lady to the product which will cure, well, um, middle-aged zits?

Harrumph.