I don't consider myself to be vain, but I do feel that I should never be instantly thought of as a slob by a passerby on the sidewalk. I like to dress decently, casual or casual business, though I make sure I do not look pretentious in any way.
ON SKINCARE...
I've had bad skin since I was showing signs of it at around the age of ten or eleven. It was a part of puberty that never stopped, with the exception of when I was 19, when my skin cleared up considerably, though the awful mess of greasy, and discolored skin has remained as a constant reminder that nice skin isn't genetic in everyone.
I am thankful that I still do not look my age. On the average, I am told that I am 7 years less, or even more, than I look. I'll give props to having to take care of my skin seriously as a necessity since my preteens. I've spent, and many a times wasted, thousands of dollars to make sure I feel happier with what I see in the mirror staring back at me.
I'm noticing my face looking tired a lot more these days, and no longer possesses the look of enjoying life and youth. The word "cosmetic" is not only about caring for my skin anymore--it's also now about creating the illusion of youth.
Women for many a millenia have, for the most part, painted a prettier face on themselves. Men have done it for social purposes a la "guy"-liner in biblical times, and at least for a while done it for vanity as I understood it, as a 17th century fop. Today in the 21st century, cosmetics for guys still on the whole remains sequestered only to skin care and treatment, but never to cover up nor to even enhance.
Okay, enough about the little history of cosmetics. Here's my experience. I came across several mentions of a product called BB cream, aka blebesh (Korean Kong-lish word for "blemish") balm, blemish balm, as well as other names of incarnations of the product. I didn't care really much about it until I noticed that the US markets started offering it at a fever-pitch.
For the past few weeks, I've picked up a few tubes, four different brands to be exact, and I can definitely say not all BB creams are alike. And, being a guy, I do not want to try each an every one of them until I hit the gold mine, so I tried to do my due diligence by researching first on the net and picked up those I thought would do me good.
Chronologically, I picked tubes of the following: 1) Hanskin Super Light Touch BB SPF30, Missha Expedition Sun Cover BB Cream for Men SPF50+ in Dark Beige, Aramis Lab Series BB Tinted Moisturizer SPF 35, and Innisfree BB Eco Safety BB Cream for Men SPF 34.
To describe the Super Light Touch BB cream, it was one step close to pure shock when first applying it to my skin. Even when the product says "natural skin tone" I ended up looking like a Kabuki artist, or a Goth wannabe. I am dark skinned, and the product was practically white. It did actually "disappear" or blend better with my skin when applied with an oil free moisturizer and just a minimal amount, a dollop the size of a centimeter (or less) wide. It made my skin look brighter and barely detectable.
I didn't think much about it, other than some sort of coverup product, but I noticed a couple days later, that it did a super job controlling the oil on my face all day, from some to barely any oil at all. No product I've tried broke the 2-3 hour mark, but this lasted somewhere around 6 hours and I had to blot. And my skin was definitely being exfoliated, like a glycolic acid product. I felt like we were on to something!
I wanted a BB cream to be an all in one product, from moisturizing, to oil control, to sun protection, to skin enhancing. I hate piling stuff on my face, so my mission was to hunt for a true BB cream to take care of all that extra steps. The Hanskin was not enough for me, it performed quite well, but I didn't want to put on a moisturizer and the Hanskin--and most obviously, the color is all wrong for me. So I went on to the Missha Expedition...
Missha Expedition for Men came in a darker color. It took forever to come here, despite the added $5 to the shipping when I ordered it off eBay. Squeezing a bit out, I was happy to see a darker color, but still the wrong color. It sat on my face and was way too opaque for my tastes, and it made my face look dull and in a way sickly and fake. I tried the moisturizer trick and still the color did not suit me at all. The only plus was that it made my face feel softer and more calm.
I decided to try what we had here on this side of the pond, and it was the Aramis Lab Series for Men BB Moisturizer. The description on their website described the color as being "universal" and so I decided to pick up a tube at my local Macy's. The color was alarmingly light when I saw it on the tester but after smearing some on the back of my hand, I noticed it disappeared, but I was a bit concerned because it had a slightly oily feeling. Happy to say after trying it on my face it blended well on the get go, I needed to use a bit more than the Korean products, which means it wasn't a terribly opaque product and it did match my skin tone. My face looked clean, fresh, and those hard etched lines between my brows and the tired look under my eyes seemed smoothed over. And, it did a pretty good job of controlling the oil, so it wasn't all quackery like much of the skin care products made in the US, or rather that it wasn't potent enough compared to its Korean counterparts. It also did work to lighten the acne scar(s) I had on my face.
Though the Aramis is darn good, I tried one last product to be sure. Innisfree seemed to have promising products, their trademark being the use of natural extracts to reform skin into shape. I was pretty impressed with their Zero Trouble lotion for men, and through research found there was a BB cream in their mens line.
Out of the tube, the Eco Safety BB cream came out as a darkish grey-beige color. Yes folks, grey. It had a more lotion like consistency and happy to see it spread well, and matched my skin pretty ok. It seems to work at calming acne while exfoliating. Oil control was ok.
Bottom line, the Lab Series BB Tinted Moisturizer won. Happy that this is the case since I can easily pick one up locally, though the price tag is double that of the Korean brands at $38 a tube. I hope the BB mania becomes a staple in all US branded skin care products and stays that way. This is exactly what was needed for the market, an all in one product. Reviews on the Lab Series website weren't really glowing because many still can't get past the cosmetic facet and immediately calling it makeup. Lab Series was right in calling it a tinted moisturizer, but damn, it is not what I would call a foundation that women wear.
The only way to get a guy to try or do something, is through their own ignorance. If Lab Series named the product as an all in one healthy skin enhancer and treatment and done away with the word tinted, they wouldn't immediately think of the women's makeup association. Words definitely have the power to sway.
