Let me preface this by saying I’m OKAY with my skin. It’s not perfect, but my skin keeps things together for the most part. Some neighborhoods are better than others on my face map. For example, my nose and its suburbs have way too many potholes. Yup, I’ve got large pores. I’m not okay with that. And if you’ve got large pores, you know how frustrating it is to deal with them.
Makeup settles in there, and things look gunky even though you’ve cleaned your face a thousand times. Even facials don’t do much to help. I would cry, but I’m afraid the salt would settle in my pores and make them bigger.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B07eX1DFTiH/
So when I heard of Peace Out Skincare‘s pore strips, I was hopeful but totally not holding my breath. I’ve tried everything under the sun, including homemade egg white masks, to try to shrink those suckers, and nothing worked. So why would these strips work? Right?
I was skeptical but excited by the prospect that I’d have to wear a nose strip all night. The package says to keep the strip on for six hours or overnight. Luckily, sleeping is one of my hobbies, so I knew the pore strip would stay on for a minimum of nine hours for me. The longer, the better, am I right ladies (and 20% gents)?
It felt a little bit weird to wear the strip at night, and I kept playing with my nose by patting down the edges constantly. Because the strip is a hydrocolloid adhesive, at the very least, I thought, I’d be suffocating the oil to death. After about 30 minutes, I started to miss the light breeze on my nose. After an hour, I was asleep anyway, so who cares.
Waking up the next day felt akin to a Christmas morning. I flung the covers off, kissed my dog good morning, pet my cat who was sleeping on the shelf next to me and ran off to the bathroom.
I pulled off the strip and there it all was. The nasty-looking gunk sat on the nose strip, staring back at me. I didn’t see any actual blackheads pulled off, and that’s a good thing. Here’s why.
These strips act by emulsifying the oil trapped in your pores and absorbing it into the strip. The hydrocolloid acts as a natural absorbent for the excess sebum, similar to how it would absorb liquids into a gel form when applied as a wound dressing. It’s not uncommon for them to be used in treating acne, so it makes sense the strips would absorb excess sebum on the nose.
Now, while most pore strips leave it there, the Peace Out strips infused your now unclogged pores with vitamin A to prevent blackheads from forming and to refine skin texture. After pulling off the strip, my nose area felt smooth and supple to the touch.
And how did my pores look? Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I thought they looked smaller. I observed from all angles, and it’s not like they disappeared overnight, but they looked visibly reduced. I could’ve easily put on some foundation on top and half of it wouldn’t drown in my pores. That’s a win in my book.
