How I Got My Oily Skin Under Control

Oil checks were routine for me. I’m not talking about the kind you get every 3,000 miles. I’m talking about the kind you do every three hours. If you have oily skin then you, like me, probably carry around a package of dab sheets in your purse everywhere you go.

You collect napkins from restaurants and eateries just in case you run out of dab sheets. The fear of a greasy face is constantly in the back of your mind. You probably do face checks by every mirror, car window, heck, even spoon you come across on your daily missions. You curse hot, humid weather for everything from your frizzy hair to your freshly applied makeup, now deep-frying on your face.

You’ve probably even come up with real smooth ways to check your forehead for oil slick, like the “Oh it’s so hot in here” back-of-the-hand face-swipe followed by the subsequent inconspicuous “watch check”.

This doesn’t work so well in cold weather, but then there’s always the “Is that RandomFriendName over there?” complete with the eye squint to cover you just in case. Having been plagued all my life by the oiliness of my T-zone, I had a ready arsenal filled with inconspicuous ways to perform “oil checks”. I had just accepted that oily skin was my lot in life and I just had to manage it.

Until, one day, while lamenting about my “oil issues”, a co-worker of mine asked me, “Why don’t you try to get rid of that?” I looked at her like she was from another planet. After all of these struggles I’m telling you about, do you really think if I could just magically “poof away” these issues I wouldn’t already be on it?

She must have read my facial expression because her response was simple, and sincere, “I’m serious, on Youtube there’s all types of cures for things. You should just try to look it up.” I rolled my eyes and pulled out a dab sheet thinking to myself, Ok Miss Know-It-All, if it was just on Youtube they wouldn’t even sell these little handy wax paper sheets. I was done with this conversation, but when I got home from work later that night her words kept playing over in my head.

Finally I just convinced myself to go on ahead and look it up, couldn’t hurt. The first video I found featured a pretty girl that looked like she’d never had a pimple in her life, much less oily skin, and she spoke cheerily about how to get rid of oiliness.

Her suggestion was to ditch whatever lotions I was using and to use natural oils* to moisturize my face instead. I became livid at the mere suggestion. Who was this bimbo?

How could she suggest that I add MORE oil to my face? Heck, why didn’t she just suggest that I collect the oil on my face into a nice tub and just swim in it every day?

Heck, why don’t I just fry eggs with it to get rid of my oily skin? Heck, why not bottle it up and “oil” paint my face in lieu of Dali’s famous melted clocks as “The Persistence of Oiliness”! I didn’t even bother to finish the video. I clicked the X at the top right corner of the window and went to bed, mad that I even wasted five minutes of my time looking for “cures” on Youtube. I dabbed my face and fell asleep.

The next morning, as I washed my greasy face in front of the mirror, I became fed up. Here I was, stubbornly accepting my fate because I wasn’t willing to try something new.

For all I knew, although this girl’s suggestion had to be the most ludicrous of all things I had ever heard, how could I know that she was wrong unless I tried it?

Doing nothing about it except for managing the problem clearly wasn’t doing anything for me. So I got back on my laptop and searched again, this time I found a video which explained the reason why using light, natural oils* on oily skin helped to curb or completely eliminate the problem.

Apparently, oily skin was the result of over-active sebaceous glands under the skin which produced an excess of sebum, our body’s own natural oil, resulting in the problem.

The use of natural oils*, as opposed to moisturizing lotions, creates a layer of oil on the skin which tricks these glands into thinking they have already produced this sebum, causing them to produce less and less, until eventually they are no longer over-producing the substance. My heart leaped!

Was it possible? Was it truly possible that there was a cure? I rushed out to Whole Foods that morning and bought a $15 bottle of Jojoba oil*—which I prayed to the skin gods would be worth every penny. Jojoba* was suggested because it was a light oil that would not promote more greasiness. Ladies and gentleman, that very day I threw out my dab sheets because after using the oil on my face, my skin remained normal all day. I never would have thought I’d ever say it, but oil cured my oiliness, and my skin has never been the same.

This experience opened my eyes to the power of natural beauty products. Combined with a little bit of self-awareness and knowledge about how our bodies function, the range of uses and abilities of natural products is truly endless.

Over the years and through my own experiences I have learned to trust nature over man-made products, because when compared, natural products have outshone where man-made products fell short or even caused more problems, time and time again. Do you have a problem with oily skin? What have you done in order to manage it?