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Kissing gone ugly

I'm not usually one to kiss and tell, but I had to tell everyone what was going on. I couldn’t hide it. My face said it all.

Kissing gone ugly Masterfile

I’m not usually one to kiss and tell, but I had to tell everyone what was going on. I couldn’t hide it. My face said it all. Yes, I had smooched a man and while it wasn’t exactly written all over my face, it was more like peeled off my face.

I don’t remember the last time I kissed a man with facial hair/stubble and I had the face to prove it. For four days last week, all my friends who saw me asked aghast, ‘What happened to your chin?”

“Kissing,” I’d sigh. “Is my chin that bad?”

“No, no,” they’d say. “You can barely tell.” (lying, of course, the way good friends do.)

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I’d look at myself in the mirror and want to cry. That’s because the skin on my chin looked like it had been scraped off. It looked like I fell of a bike and scraped my chin on the sidewalk. I looked…horrible.

Who knew the skin on my chin was so sensitive? I certainly didn’t until the day after the kissing when my chin started to burn.

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“Kissing!” I’d moan, to all my friends (when I dared leave the house.) “Kissing did this to me!”

I tried Polysporin, like I do for my daughter when she scrapes herself. But it didn’t seem to work. (Perhaps because I was using the children’s product.)

Over the next couple days, the scrape started to dry up, and then it looked like I had gotten a very bad sunburn. My chin started to peel. So I put Vaseline on my chin. It didn’t really help. In fact, I had a really nice pimple pop up on my chin too, from all the moisture from products that I don’t usually use on my face.

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Finally, I headed to my esthetician who yelled at me for not coming to see her sooner.

“Tell him he has to shave or NO kissing for him,” she demanded. I told her I had to look good for the next night, because I had a date with him. (Though he had ruined my face, I still liked the guy.)

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But I couldn’t let him see me like that. She applied something and – yay – by the following morning my chin looked almost back to normal. I spoke with beauty expert Janine Falcon, the founder and editor of Imabeautygeek.com, an amazing website for all-things beauty and skin, to ask her what a gal should do when a kissing session turns ugly (for the skin.)

1. First, Falcon says, men’s facial hair can be as strong as copper. Who knew? “Face it, it’s not the soft sweet hair on their arms. The first thing you need to get him is a really, really good razor.” She suggests that the Fusion Razor by Gillett is the best on the market. “You can’t have him ruining your face, so it’s a gift for the both of you,” she says.

2. She says most women have experienced this to some extent, or will, so we should be prepared.

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3. Falcon suggests two products. One, is La Roche-Posay’s Cicaplast, which is a balm like cream that you can get at any Shopper’s Drug Mart. The second is a product by Bioderma, called Cicabio.Both cost around $20. Both have ingredients that heal and soothe skin fast.

4. “Let’s face it,” says Falcon, “This is a very real issue for women. You’re lucky if you’re not with a man with harsh facial hair, but not every woman ends up with a guy like that.” So, as soon as you feel your face stinging after some smooching, apply those creams twice a day.

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Is it wrong to invoice my date for the creams I need because of him? Just asking.

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