The other day, I caved and went to a dermatologist. She told me to lay off all the fancy products and put me on a strict regimen of the following sexy sexy PX staples:

Benzoyl Peroxide 4% Creamy Wash (to prevent breakouts)
Clindamycin Phosphate Topical Lotion 1% (antibiotic for acne)
Tretinoin Cream 0.05% (retinol for acne and sigh, anti-aging)

That's right. No sumptuous eye creams. Silky serums? Not so much. Zero glow-inducing exfoliant. Why am I even bringing this up? Well, in one way, it seems oddly fitting to share this new, no-nonsense routine on the last day of Product Fiend, a blog essentially devoted to the endlessly fascinating minutiae re: skincare news. But it also seems appropriate to share as we hurtle--and I do mean headlong--towards 2009, a year that seems destined to be defined by simplicity.

Not to be all Debbie Downer, but when Obama said that in the coming months ahead, we're all going to have to make sacrifices, yada yada, he wasn't being coy. Look, if you haven't been touched by the cold, bony Skeletor fingers of the recession yet, you know someone who has. Hell, according to the Times (ah, so sad to be linking to my last "Skin Deep"), even the well-heeled Park Ave plastic surgery patrons are tightening their alligator belts and cutting back on Botox. Sheesh. But seriously, times they are a changing and the frivolity of the past is well, behind us. And ya know what? Let's be optimistic here. From an environmental standpoint at least, that's not such a bad thing. Erm...

I'd be lying if I weren't sad about the news that Product Fiend was going to be ending as of today. I was in on the ground floor, reviewing products and writing notes for months before we had a site or even a name. In fact, it's no coincidence that Product Fiend has a lot of things in common with my own personal product blog, Product Anarchy. I wanted to take a moment to thank you guys for indulging in our flesh-borne fantasies of perfect, glowing complexions. It has been an honor to be a guinea pig in our quest for the best bang for the beauty buck.

You can still find me, being anal and obsessive about ingredients and price points, over at Product Anarchy, where we talk about skin care and also, makeup, shopping and whatever else pops into our silly heads. Thank you for letting me go along with you on shopping trips and to the beauty counter. Keep in touch!

Sampar just sent me a sample of their new, peptide-filled Eye Rule--"Apply morning and evening to eye orb,"--ahem. And while I kind of love the idea of the roller ball at the end, the fact that you pump the product into the dispenser via a clicker mechanism--think Touche Eclat, but with a silver ball replacing the brush--reminded me how much these newfangled "high tech" packaging innovations annoy me.

Image via Carol's Daughter

Like 40-50 percent of the population, I have Keratosis Pilaris, which is annoying, rashy-looking, goose-pimple skin caused by a build-up of excess keratin (a naturally-occurring skin protein) around the hair follicles. Sure, it doesn't hurt or itch and is completely harmless, but it's also kind of fug. I find I get it most on the skin that is covered by clothing, so during the summer my lower arms look normal, but combine the drying elements of winter with long sleeves and it comes back with a vengeance. There's no known cure but the only way to combat the bumps is with constant vigilance via exfoliation and moisturizing with products containing alpha-hydroxies and urea (don't think about that last one too much). The easiest way to deal? Viva la body scrubs!

Don't ask me how I came across this random Wall Street Journal beauty article, but I did. (I suspect it had something to do with being bored one day at Aunt Merle's house over the holiday break or something like that.) But the main idea is this: Green tea is your friend. And it's ridiculously easy and inexpensive to incorporate ye old yet sophisticated anti-aging polyphenol action into your skin care routine. Here's a great tip, after the jump!

In my travels, one of the things I always check out before venturing into a new city is the situation on the skin care front. If you rely on Yelp or the various city websites, you'll walk into a place that has been raved about up and down the 'Net and then discover that, fuck, it's just another Aveda salon. Nothing against Aveda, but you can buy the entire line in any podunk town in this great nation and there are no surprises. I want to be tantalized. I want to see something new. I'm starting to think they don't exist. So far, I've found exactly three indie skin care boutiques that fit the bill...

Apparently, someone does. Chicago artist Bruce Elliott is the mad genius behind the "Nude Governor Series," which so far includes Sarah Palin and now, of course, Rod Blogojevich in a tasteful, delicately rendered little ditty titled, "The Cavity Search."

Yeowsas!

Mayhaps you've heard that I'm a fan of In Fiore, a small San Francisco-based company that makes gorgeous, all-natural skincare products and divine fragrances that are refreshingly, the opposite of what a scent by say, Paris Hilton or Britney Spears (or let's face it, their corporate "people") might make.

Anyway, they have a new face cream called Creme de Fleur Complexe Rejuvené! And of course I'm obsessed! And it's really rich which is great because it's frickin' freezing outside! And it smells like heaven! And I know these exclamation points are ridiculously annoying which is why I'll stop using them after the jump. Follow me...

Being the extremely superficial person that I am, naturally I've been thinking a lot about the first U.S. face transplant. (Who wasn't obsessed with Isabelle Dinoire, the French woman who received the first partial one in 2005 after her labrador mauled her when she OD'd on sleeping pills? (Um, yeah, Jesus.)) It's astounding. Of course, part of the fascination stems from the fact that we can all identify with these women, on a few levels at least. The human face is so intensely personal--it's a bit more important than a kidney. And this seminal moment has precipitated a national dialogue about the breakthrough's ramifications: Should organ donors consider the fact that their face might be used in this way?

I've been jonesing for Perfekt Beauty's Skin Perfection Gel ever since Erin wrote about it last year, but I finally broke down during Sephora's Friends and Family sale and ponied up the cash for this Not A Foundation, Not A Primer.

I nabbed the shade Luminous, because as you know, my complexion is as fair as the driven snow during the winter months, but I did worry a bit about it being too dark. Like many foundations today, Perfekt claims that their colors will blend to your natural tone, but I didn't really believe it until I applied for the first time. The goop comes out really spackley (is spackley a word?) but then it seems to spread and melt into your skin until it becomes this perfect canvas of awesome. Jen's got a nice set of process photos in her own review, so you can witness the blending magic. What's even more unbelievable is that I had applied on my freshly washed face during a major rosacea flare-up and it actually reduced the redness without looking super chalky or thick like some foundations do, and the phrase that I couldn't quite shake was "fresh-faced!" even though it sounds achingly like a Cover Girl commercial (blergh). Also, where did my crater-sized nose pores go? I'm not sure but apparently Perfekt convinced them to take the night off, or maybe they got filled in with all of Perfekt's vitamins and the all-important alpha lipoic acid, the anti-aging super ingredient.

Oh boy oh boy, have we got a deal you can't refuse. A beauty website across the big river is paying, wait for it, 100 Great British Pounds (dude, isn't that like, $200 in American money?) for folks to ink their eyelids with their corporate logo and well, wink a lot. Finally, a recession-proof job with great benefits and all that lucrative foreign currency to boot. (Just like Gisele, you too can insist on getting paid in pounds!) Incredible. The details on how you too can get involved in this extraordinary offer, after the jump!

Um, right from the get go, I knew that somehow Bailey's new "sexy lips" campaign would get wildly out of hand. And well, their latest commercial, "Listen to Your Lips," proves it. I'm not sure if whatever highly paid ad team realized it or not--I'm gonna go with some frisky young 'un was cracking up and everyone else in the conference room was all like, "Yup, this is great stuff. Print it!"--but these images of creamy brown liquid dropping into a woman's slightly parted pink mouth reminds me of certain "exotic" videos my perverted neighbor used to try and get me to watch with him. It's kind of hilarious, definitely (unintentionally) raunchy, and oddly, totally, completely mesmerizing.

Get a load of this (ha), here.

And thank you Jezebel, for bringing this important cultural milestone to my attention.

Product Fiend reader and Athena's Olive Tree creator emailed me because she noticed that I'm kind of into Etsy and stuff and would I check out her wares? So I did. And I loved what I found.

Since Rachel started making homemade products at the age of 16 to help fight her own acne--dang, i just doused my face in Clearasil because I didn't know any better...overachiever much?--I trust that her breakout prevention pieces really have something going for them. Vegan-friendly Tea Tree Oil Acne Soap Bar sounds rad: Personally, I've been into tea tree since I got down with the Body Shop's line, but at $5.00 (and some nutmeg thrown in for extra goodness), this seems like a steal. And wouldn't ya know it? There's even more stuff, after the jump...

Photo via Splash

In a society that gobbles up trashy celeb rags and watches Access Hollywood before dinner, we tend to well, take it kinda personally when our favorite stars start fucking with the faces we originally fell in love with. That seems to be the overriding sentiment behind The Frisky's look into the method behind the madness of ten famous examples of disastrous cosmetic surgery meltdowns. While Nicole Kidman, Heather Locklear, Meg Ryan and Jennifer Grey were somewhat surprisingly absent from the list, they did manage to remind me of the pain I felt when Jennifer chopped off her famous nose in order to look, quite frankly, more boring. Who made the, ahem, "cut" after the jump!