Orange, blotchy, diseased all over!

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Oh brother.

I was at Target the other day (man, I LURV Target! I could shop in there for hours and hours and hours - but that's beside the point) and wandered down the moisturizer aisle where I found this little gem just begging to be purchased.

I picked it up and took a look. It states that there is "just a touch" of self-tanner to give a subtle hint of a glow after one week. Coolness. My skin is looking a little pale and washed out and since I don't have time to go out into the sun to improve that, may as well use something from a bottle to mimic a "been sitting in the sun for a bit" healthy glow. Plus, then I'm not asking for skin cancer.

So, I grabbed the one for fair skin (because even though it states it just gives a subtle change, I don't want to look like Tanning Booth Barbie) and headed home.

The next morning, I took a shower and then proceeded to grease myself up with the lotion. I covered my arms, upper back, legs, chest, stomach and then thought about my face. It could use some glow but at the very last moment, just before the lotion touched my cheeks, something stayed my hand and I decided against putting it on my face. (whew!). I finished up the rest of my body and it stayed tacky for a bit which was odd but I thought I got it on evenly and smoothly so I got dressed, put on my shoes and headed to work.

Then yesterday morning, I got into the shower and when I got out, I was like - WHAT is that?! There was an orange streak on my right inner arm. THAT's not good....

Then I noticed that my calves seemed a bit, well, mottled looking. Brownish patch here, orangish patch there, pale skin in between. (panic starts to set it)

And then I see my ankles. Oh mama jama, what a mess. Huge pale blotchy areas with VERY dark orange patches all around. It looks like I have a disease. In full panic mode I examine every inch of where this stuff went on. It's like this everywhere!! The only saving grace is that it's more of a nice tan color than anything really scary. Apparently getting fully clothed while it was still tacky caused some of the stuff to be rubbed off in certain areas, leaving me untanned there and tanned elsewhere.

I decide that another coat should help smooth out the patchy areas and hopefully make everything look more even and not streaky, blotchy, and diseasey (is that even a word?).

Applying a second coat didn't help matters at all. By afternoon, it had morphed into some kind of really scary orange. The streaky areas with darker spots grew darker and my ankle disease became more pronounced.

I got back into the shower and did a *very* thorough exfoliation with the coarsest sugar and salt scrubs I've got. That left me with smarting, red skin and didn't change the orange or blotchy areas at all. At this point, I'm SO happy I didn't use it on my face. Can you imagine?!

So, now I'm stuck in the house. It's still hot (or at least pretty warm) here so wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt would get me into the ER for heat stroke and there is NO way I'm walking outside my house when I look like a poorly painted pumpkin. And so here I sit.

Obviously this lotion went straight into the garbage. It was my first experience with a self-tanner of any kind and it shall be my last. I guess that my body reacts strongly to this stuff. It was supposed to take a week to build up any type of color change. I cannot imagine what color I would be if I actually used this stuff for that long. Scary!

This was a lesson in what *not* to buy!