I Went From 'Skin Goals' To Adult Acne, Here's How I Bounced Back
Not to toot my own horn, but 90% of the time, my skin is flawless. My most recent revelation of this? Being featured by a popular site in a video segment and the entire comment section asking, "Green sweater, what's your skincare regimen?" They completely ignored the takeaways of self-love and wellness that I shared with them. My point? Outside of that time of the month, my skin hardly ever fails me unless I'm suffering from intense anxiety.
The last time I recall having breakouts, was during finals in my first semester of grad school. I woke up, and the right side of my face was covered in acne. Nothing helped until after exams were finished, and weeks later, all of the acne disappeared.
COVID-19 has impacted my life, and my skin, and unlike the weeks of discomfort that I endured last winter, the highs and lows of my skin breaking out have lasted for months this time and I needed answers. Due to the dermatologist offices being closed in quarantine, I had to get creative and explore alternative methods of getting my skincare game, and life together.
If the Rona is messing with your skin, explore these options to bring it back to life.
Evaluate your skincare routine pre-pandemic.
Prior to the pandemic, my skincare routine included sunlight, additional water intake due to cycling workouts, and swimming three times a week followed by the sauna, a place where my skin was nurtured with heat and jojoba oil. If I'm lucky, these days I get outside 1-2 hours a day and that can't compare to the environment my skin was used to. Additionally, your skin feels the pandemic's stress, and when our bodies feel that pressure, it releases cortisol.
When this occurs, it lowers the estrogen production, which can lead to a spike in androgen levels. And as androgen plays a role in connecting with the sebaceous glands when they feel stressed, those glands overproduce oil. That oil clogs our pores and leads to inflammation that causes breakouts - it's a never-ending cycle of stress that shows up on your skin. Consider what products you used to use to show your skin a little extra love previously, and do more of that to see change.
When complying with PPE rules, find a face mask that doesn't irritate your skin.
For weeks, I'd seen adult acne form the corners of where I place my face mask on daily when I work out, and even though I didn't pop the pimples, they left dark marks (as most acne scars become due to melanated skin.) Weeks into quarantine, after realizing that washing my sheets weekly versus. bi-weekly hadn't helped, all roads pointed to my mask, so I opted to work out in an area where I'd hardly ever come in contact with anyone, without a mask - versus the park, where I'd work out in days prior to. Unfortunately, some instances of "maskne" aren't avoidable, for more info on how to avoid mask-related breakouts, check out "8 Tips to Prevent Acne Caused by Face Masks".
I increased my water intake.
While I only drink water and coffee daily, I still have to admit that social distancing hours will pass and I'll forget to take a sip. And due to sitting at my desk most of the time, working for hours on end forgetting to do basic things such as stretch, and take adequate water breaks, my skin was impacted. Intentionally stopping to drink water in intervals daily has helped me hold myself, and my urine color accountable. My skin has also flourished because of it.
Steam your skin (I repeat steam your skin).
About two months into being met with skincare woes, I decided that I'd call in for skin reinforcements in the form of re-upping on my favorite products and steaming. Steaming your skin by way of a steamer, a pot of boiling water and a towel, or a sauna helps to unclog your pores. I have access to a sauna and I've noticed that the weeks I steam and go visit the spa, my skin recuperates and glows more as a result.
Detox.
If you're like me, the first few weeks of quarantine were filled with snacks and Netflix. And while that escape from reality felt good initially, our bodies and skin are asking for a detox when acne shows up on our faces. Consider a cleanse with a natural detox tea, green juice, or supplement with adding probiotics, and leafy greens to your diet to improve the clarity of your complexion.
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Dubbed one of the "21 Black Women Wellness Influencers You Should Follow" by Black + Well, Yasmine Jameelah continues to leave her digital footprint across platforms ranging from Forever 21 Plus, Vaseline, and R29 Unbothered discussing all things healing and body positivity. As a journalist, her writing can be found on sites such as Blavity, Blacklove.com, and xoNecole. Jameelah is also known for her work shattering unconventional stigmas surrounding wellness through her various mediums, including her company Transparent Black Girl. Find Yasmine @YasmineJameelah across all platforms.
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
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“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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Ever since I started (regularly) writing for the platform, at the beginning of each new year, I try my best to come up with a few things that people can do in their bedroom to make their future sexual experiences even better than the ones they’ve had before. Because even though the overall concept of sex has never changed, there are always little “tweaks” that can be made along the way that can make things more exciting, more lust-filled, and more thoroughly satisfying.
Although sometimes I go the sex trends route, this year only contains one of those (and even it is something that isn’t “new”; it’s just become more popular). Instead, I decided to share 10 small things that can make a big impact, from start to finish, during sex, if you’re willing to give them a shot.
And please, give each one some serious consideration. They could be the game-changer that you’ve been looking for all this time.
1. Use Purple Light Bulbs
Give your bedroom a sexy upgrade with purple lightbulbs.
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Recently, while reading an article on how to give bedroom decor a sexy upgrade, it mentioned that if you don’t like red (which symbolizes things like love, passion, and romance), black and dark purple can work as well.
Purple, eh? While a lot of you probably know that it’s a hue that represents royalty, it also symbolizes femininity, creativity, and spirituality. Plus, the crown chakra, which is your head, is also known as the purple one — and since your brain is the biggest sex organ that you have…why not see purple as a super sexy color? It’s also pretty dope that purple is considered to be a “highly spiritual hue” that intensifies feelings of self-awareness and unity. Not to mention that it’s a color that can make you feel very sensual too (think the late and great artist Prince; he wore purple often).
So, if you want to intensify your sexual experiences, my first recommendation would be to switch over from candlelight every once in a while and rely on a purple light bulb instead. It looks hella good on Black skin tones; plus, it helps to evoke all kinds of erotic thoughts — in the easiest way possible.
2. Eat More L-Arginine Foods
L-arginine foods have been touted for their ability to give stronger erections.
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Whether your partner struggles a bit with erectile dysfunction or you simply want him to have stronger erections, make this the year when you’re intentional about him getting more L-arginine foods into his system.
Long story short, L-arginine is an amino acid that helps to build protein and increase proper blood circulation throughout the body, including the genital region; the benefit of that is that the more blood that’s flowing down below, the more amazing your orgasms will feel. While you can take it as a supplement, foods like red meat, poultry, whole grains, beans, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, and dairy can get you right in this department as well.
3. Play a Round of “Dirty Questions”
Asking your partner stimulating questions is a great way to add a little foreplay to your day.
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What position do you like to feel me in the most?
What word do you like to hear when you first penetrate me?
How can you tell when you’ve hit my spot?
Do you like it most when I whisper, moan, or yell?
What’s the thing that you wish I would do more often? Describe it in detail.
How can I please you more?
What fantasy do you want me to fulfill?
If you’re squirming around in your own seat by just reading the questions, think about how he’ll feel being asked them. So, whether you decide to send a few “dirty questions” in the form of a text, you randomly call him while he’s at work and tell him not to say anything while you ask these things in your sexiest voice, or you decide to start off foreplay this way — you know what they say: wisdom comes in the questions far more than the answers. Ask him a few stimulating questions and ask him to return the favor. It’s one of the best ways to get a night of passion ignited before one of you touches the other at all.
4. Do More Initiating
Everyone wants to feel desired. Initiating intimacy is a game-changer in bringing that fantasy to life.
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I’ve been working with couples for close to two decades at this point, and when it comes to what easily 80 percent of the men have told me that they wished happened more in the bedroom is that their partner would initiate sex more often. I get why, too, because even if sex is bomb once it gets going, everyone wants to feel desired — and initiating intimacy plays a significant role in making that wish a reality. Besides, the word “initiate” doesn’t just mean to begin something; you can also initiate by introducing a certain topic or level of knowledge to another individual too.
You know what? I can’t think of one man who wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy being a student of his sex partner when it comes to learning about new positions, creative places to have sex, and whatever else your imagination (and maybe a bit of Googling on the topic of sex) can conjure up. So yeah, definitely make it a priority to initiate sex more often than you currently do…the more energy you give, the more you will receive. Just you watch.
5. Incorporate Shallowing into Your Foreplay
Your most intense vaginal nerve endings are two inches in your vaginal opening. Shallowing gives new meaning to that sensation.
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If you put “sexual trends 2024” into the search field of your favorite search engine, I’d be shocked if “shallowing” didn’t come up in half of the articles that you read.
If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s when your partner uses his tongue, fingers, penis, or a sex toy of your choice to gently caress only the outer part of your vagina. Kinda like how back in the day, we used to joke about guys who asked if they could only “put the tip in”? This is that. The sensation is like edging on steroids because, contrary to popular belief, no woman needs a big package in order to be sexually satisfied or even (pun intended) ful-filled.
Your most intense vaginal nerve endings are 2” in from your vaginal opening, and so if your partner can master that area (along with your clitoris), you should be good to go…on a few different levels.
6. Get Your Shibari On
If you're curious about BDSM, Shibari might be a great initiation.
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If you’ve been finding yourself becoming more and more curious about BDSM, but you want to inch your way into it rather than dive all in at once, how about learning more about Shibari? It’s a form of Japanese rope bondage that simply consists of using (comfortable) ropes to tie your partner up. Now, for the record, this isn’t just about using a pair of handcuffs and calling it a day. Shibari experiments with tying different parts of the body up in different positions to see what kind of sexual pleasure comes from it.
And what if you’ve never considered bondage sex play before, and you don’t get why anyone would? There are plenty of studies to support that the feeling of empowerment that comes from the one who is doing the typing up mixed with the feeling of complete vulnerability from the one who is in the bondage cultivates an exchange of excitement that can elevate the entire sexual experience overall.
By the way, I don’t recommend you go to your local hardware store to get the rope. There is something that is designed specifically for Shibari. One example is located here.
7. Do Some “Sandpapering” with the Help of Minty Gum
Want to get better at giving head? Sandpapering could be that method.
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You know what’s a trip? Whenever I talk to men and women about a sexual gripe that they have with their partner, it’s a constant that they want to receive better head. Listen, I get it because it’s certainly not a given that just because somebody’s mouth is on someone else’s genitalia that earth-shattering orgasms are on their way. As far as men go, my recommendation would be to do some sandpapering.
Yeah, as “ouch” as that might sound, all it means (as far as oral sex goes) is that you focus on flattening your tongue on the tip (and right under the tip) of his penis as you move your tongue back and forth as if you were literally trying to sandpaper something. The texture of your tastebuds will provide an amazing sensation — especially if you chew some minty gum first.
What role does the gum play? Not only will gum help to build more saliva in your mouth (which men damn near lose their minds over!), the minty sensation will make it easier for him to climax too. Chile…CHILE.
8. Experiment with a Metal Spoon
Who knew a key to unlocking new levels of pleasure in the bedroom was a metal spoon?
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There are certain things that you have right in your house that you can use as an expensive sex toy alternative. Believe it or not, one of them is a metal spoon. If you apply some lube or a carrier oil like carrot seed, sweet almond, or vitamin E to it after warming it up with the palm of your hands a bit and then rub it across your clitoris and labia, the sensation of the spoon will provide a unique pressure as the wetness of the lubricant or oil will end up making you that much…wetter.
9. Treat Him Like a Rocking Chair
"Woman on top" isn't a crowd pleaser for nothing.
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If you were to get a group of women together and you asked them what their favorite sex position was, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if at least half of them said it was the cowgirl — you know, when the woman is on top. A big part of the reason why it’s such a fan favorite is it gives the woman the ability to control the amount of penetration she receives and how slow or fast she actually wants things to go. Take things up a notch this year by doing the position in a chair…better yet, a rocking chair.
The fact that the both of you will be sitting up makes it easier for him to grasp all of your erogenous zones, it can help your clitoris to grind better on his shaft, and the movement of the rocking chair will give you some unexpected feelings of thrusting and stimulation. Yeah, a rocking chair is a must-have in 2024, for sure.
10. Slow and Steady Wins the Race
Sex is about shutting the world out and enjoying each other.
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“Mindfulness” is a word that you’re going to see everywhere this year. It’s about slowing down. It’s about being fully present. It’s about focusing on the moment — not what happened 30 minutes ago or what will happen 30 minutes from now. When you bring this type of mindset into the bedroom, it can only work in your favor because, real talk, a big part of the reason why women don’t get to “see the mountaintop” as far as sexual pleasure goes is that they are overthinking. Sex with your partner is not supposed to make you feel like you’re getting graded on a test in school. It’s about the two of you shutting the world out for a few moments (or a couple of hours) and just…enjoying each other.
So, take the devices out of your room. Do not worry about the time. Slow down and just be…there with him. Shoot, if you apply the other things that I mentioned to this final point, you should be in for one hell of a night if you do. #wink
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