What is this, Hot Tip Week here at Into The Gloss? On Tuesday, we were the last ones on the internet to learn about how a drop of Visine kills pimple redness lickity split. Then on Wednesday, Glossier Facilities Manager introduced the team to her $8 body exfoliator that changed her life. Now, it's our humble duty as your beauty servants to present you with the following email we received yesterday about a curious topic: the blackhead vacuum. Review coming in hot, directly from FOITG (friend of ITG) Genevieve. Take it away...
When it comes to getting gunk out of your pores, I’ve tried it all. Extraction tools, pore strips, my fingers… I love it. It’s equally satisfying as it is gross. And I’m not ashamed of that! I just have a morbid curiosity about how much goop is actually calling my face home. This curiosity reached a fever pitch just as I ordered a pore vacuum (yes) on Amazon. It arrived at my doorstep in two days alongside a broken jade roller that I did not order and all the moral superiority of a person who doesn’t pick at their face with their fingers.
What it didn’t come with was a whole lot of instructions. It suggested that I wash and steam my face first to soften my skin and pick the probe attachment to fit my needs (ranging from “microderm” to different diameters of suction). After that, all you have to do is decide which suction level you desire. Easy enough!
That's when I went crazy. I sucked that goop from the obvious spots like the sides of my nose to places I didn’t even know could have had anything to hide. (Under my chin? Above my eyebrows??) I ran the device over problem areas time and time again until there was nothing left to suck. Looking in the mirror I saw some redness, but no biggie. Exactly what you'd expect when trying to mechanically suck something out of your face.
Maybe I wasn’t getting at true blackheads (more likely sebaceous filaments), but it definitely removed a lot of stuff that was lurking under the skin that I have a hunch would have turned into more visible zits or clogged pores down the road. After I was done with vacuuming, I thought I’d show my skin some TLC. I slapped on a sheet mask and watched some Riverdale. I felt great. The queen of self-care!
Twenty minutes later I went in the bathroom to take off my mask and do a little inspection. Well, I removed the sheet mask to reveal...a chin full of mini hickies. I guess I got a little too excited with the device and it was very, very obvious. Luckily on a scale of Faint Bruise to Turtleneck-For-2-Weeks-So-Your-Mom-Doesn’t-See, these hickies were about a 4: brownish spots with no broken capillaries.
After a few deep breaths and Google searches I found the best course of action was to gently massage the spots and make a deal with myself to never go so overboard again. By the next day the spots had lightened a bit and were able to be covered with makeup. The emotional scars took a little longer to fade. Me and my super-duper clean pores will get over it eventually.
—Genevieve Roublick
Photo by Tom Newton.
