I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but when I was young I totally bought into the idea that I should look like a supermodel. The magazines at the checkout stand in the grocery store told me how I was supposed to look, and even told me how to achieve that look. All I had to do to be beautiful was to shell out the money to buy the magazines, and then fork over more money for beauty products that they recommended. Then, I could look like my idol: Cheryl Tiegs.

Oh, yes, I wanted to look like Cheryl Tiegs, because I knew all the men thought she was hot. They loved her honey blond hair, her teeth as white as freshly fallen snow, her sun-kissed skin and unblemished face. Of course, they were also fond of her long legs, her wasp thin waist and her “capacious bosoms.” I wanted to look like that, too, so I bought those magazines and the beauty products.

Now, I did the best I could with what I had, but we have to consider the raw material I had to work with here. My Momma would not let me bleach my hair, my Daddy wouldn’t buy me a set of boobs. My teeth were covered with metal braces, so “white” didn’t matter. The best I could do was not get spinach caught in my teeth. When the sun kisses me, I get so many freckles that I look like a connect-the-dots puzzle. The only thing I could work on was the unblemished face.

Though fortunately I did not have acne, we all know that in our teenage years a simple pimple on our face looks to us like Mount Everest. Mine looked more like Mount Rushmore, and I swear you could see Abe Lincoln’s face on them. There’s no telling how much money I Momma spent on products that were supposed to clear my complexion.

Momma always told me to use Noxzema, that strange smelling white cream in the blue jar. For Heaven’s sake, my grandmother used Noxzema, and I didn’t want to look like her! When she bought it for me, I dumped it out and told her I had used it up. Finally one day, I talked Momma into buying me some Bactine Skin Cream. It smelled as bad as Noxzema, but after you put it on and washed it off, your skin felt all tingly. You just knew it had to be working. I was satisfied that I was doing everything possible to make myself into Cheryl Tiegs.

I had a date one weekend, and I really wanted to impress him. I spent hours on my beauty regime. After washing my hair and rolling it on orange juice cans (so I could achieve that smooth, straight look the models had), I decided to use my Bactine Skin Cream for a facial mask, and I slapped it on my face as thick as butter on bread. I carefully avoided my eyes, because I knew I was supposed to do that.

Then, I sat down under the hair dryer and manicured my fingernails. As I sat there, I noticed that my face was really tingling, in fact it was starting to sting. “That just means the Bactine is working its magic,” I thought to myself. After about thirty minutes under the hairdryer, my face was smarting something fierce, so I rushed to the sink to rinse my face.

When I looked in the mirror, I got quite a shock. Where the white Bactine Skin Cream had been, my face was now bright red! I was burned to a crisp! Frantically, I washed my face again, hoping that the red would wash away. Nope. It didn’t work; my face was still burned.

Belatedly, I grabbed the jar of Bactine Skin Cream and read the instructions: “Do not leave on for more than 15 minutes…Do not use near heat.” Well, duh.

I ran to my Momma, hoping she would have an easy fix. Her “fix” was to take me straight to the emergency room where we discovered I had a second degree burn on my face. Momma and the doctors both asked me what I had been using on my face. I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I said, “Noxzema.”

“Are you sure?” they asked. I stuck to my story, and they just shook their heads in wonder. Noxzema, you see, was originally developed as a remedy for sunburn!

Needless to say, I didn’t go out on the date that night. I couldn’t wear makeup for weeks, and Momma wouldn’t let me stay home from school. I was a laughing stock at school, and called “Raccoon Eyes,” because of the white rim around my eyes, for months afterward. The only good news out of the whole deal was that Momma wouldn’t buy Noxzema after that.

You know, Cheryl just recently turned 60, and is now touting a new beauty product. The advertising says:
“Ageless Woman” by Cheryl Tiegs Helps One Age Like an Ex-Supermodel…If Ever there was a Case for Hope in a Bottle, This Would be it.

Maybe I should go buy…nah.

It’s Manic Monday over at Mo’s It’s A Blog Eat Blog World. Each week, Mo gives us a “theme word,” and we write a post from that. The word this week is “crisp,” and although I barely used it, that was the word prompt for this post.

Technorati Tags: beauty products, Cheryl Tiegs, Bactine Skin Cream, Noxzema, Manic Monday, Dear Abby