However, this was not an easy road to beauty. Beauty can be painful — and very, very smelly (I’m looking at you, mayo). Some of the beauty hacks I found online are straight-up weird, while others are just wrong. Nevertheless, I tried them all for you. You’re welcome.
Here’s what I started with:
My Hair: Thin and wispy shoulder-length, light-blond hair with (fake) highlights. Dry shampoo is in every purse I own, thanks to the oil gods thrusting the oily life on me.
My Skin: Normal to oily, few breakouts
Mayo for the Face
OK, we all have to understand one thing: I deeply and passionately hate mayonnaise. The consistency — the jigglyness — makes me want to puke on the spot and reminds me of fat removed from liposuction. However, mayo is supposed to moisturize the skin (because of the eggs) and stimulate your skin cells (because of the vinegar), making your skin feel exfoliated and new. And those two benefits are enough for me to get over my disgust of the white paste.
My generous roommate Camille offers to paint my face with a kitchen brush full of mayo. She definitely gets a lot of amusement out of it and probably vengeance for that one time I didn’t wash the dishes.
First off, it smells like it should not be on my face. The entire time I’m focused on not gagging. I can’t lie — the vinegar in the mayo is making me tear up and stinging my face. Is that a good thing? Unsure. I can feel the dead skin cells being ripped off. Ew.
Twenty minutes are up, and my face looks like it has Vaseline all over it. Washing it off is a relief, and my face is surprisingly smooth. I wash with warm water one more time, though, to make sure I’m not going to make myself break out with fatty mayo.
The Verdict: The mayo actually worked! My face felt fresh, new and ever so slightly tightened and oh so soft. Well done, mayo.
Champagne for the Hair
Champagne is supposed to shine and brighten blond hair and accent golden hues. As a recent college grad, however, I think wasting bubbly seems rude and uneconomical. I nearly want to cry wasting a beautiful bottle, but for the sake of food journalism, I prevail.
The rules go as follows: Lightly soak your hair with cool water just to make it damp. Next, pour the bubbly into your hair and comb it through. Let it sit for 20 minutes and, again, lightly rinse out, but do not wash with shampoo afterward or else the shine will disappear. This sounds very fragile and also very sticky — I’m very skeptical.
I pour a cup of water into my hair over the tub and then pop my fizzy and do the same as I did with the water. I knew champagne was fizzy but OH MY. It feels like Pop Rocks in my hair and is addicting to pour. After I fully douse my hair, there is still a good 200 milliliters left in the bottle, so I have to polish it off. (Can’t waste perfectly good Champs!)
Then I sit and wait for 20 minutes with my hair wrapped up.
Using about 3 cups of water, I lightly wash out the Champagne. The key for this one is to leave enough in for there to be a shine but not enough for stickiness. After brushing and blow-drying my hair, it seems to be shiny but also oily on my scalp. The ashy blond parts in my hair do appear shinier, but the oiliness is really flattening my thin hair. I add some dry shampoo and it’s good as new. However, after blow-drying my hair, I realize the Champagne has dried out my ends. My hair also has a faint scent of Champagne, but it’s nothing off-putting.
The Verdict: If you have a cup of cheap Champagne that you refuse to drink, go for it. Otherwise, chug that baby; this isn’t worth it. Important note: About two days after this, I realized I accidentally used a $40 bottle of Champagne. I wept at my desk.
Coffee for the Face
The only time I’ve seen coffee in a beauty food hack is when my friend used it for self-tanner — and she smelled like a straight-up cappuccino for a few days. However, coffee as an exfoliant makes sense. The natural acids are meant to reduce acne and any inflammation, leaving a radiant complexion, which is more than enough for me to try this one out.
The blogs I read didn’t specify what type of coffee besides organic ground coffee, but I assume you wouldn’t want to use one with a strong artificial flavor, as there may be irritants. I choose a standard house blend from my favorite coffeehouse and start rubbing the grounds on my face with just a little bit of water. I realize I look like that bearded-man Snapchat filter and have to send a quick picture to a few friends.
The smell is heavenly (if you are a coffee lover), but I realize how messy this is. Also, coffee grounds in a sink or tub is asking for a clogged mess, so I put the stopper in my sink and put a bowl over it for good measure. The result is a coffee crime scene.
The grinds, however, are definitely exfoliating my face but not too harshly. My main concern is if the coffee will tint my skin. So after leaving the grounds on for a minute or two, I start wiping away. My skin definitely smells like coffee (which I don’t mind) and has no discoloration from the coffee. I’m looking a little pinkish red, but I expected that from an exfoliator. My skin also feels soft and fresh.
The Verdict: If you don’t mind the ground-coffee mess, this is a go. The amount of coffee you need for this is so little that it’s certainly cheaper than what you’re using now.
Ketchup for the Hair
Ketchup is supposed to take out any off tints in blond hair, especially ashy blond hair that has gone through chlorine. After reading a few positive reviews, I was naturally intrigued and slightly disgusted at the idea of putting ketchup in my hair.
I’ve used purple-tinted shampoos to keep ashy blond hair from getting brassy, but the shampoos were always so expensive I never could keep up with it. Was ketchup my new secret weapon? I had to try.
As soon as I squirt the bottle into my hair I think, “This is SO wrong.” Ketchup is not supposed to be in my hair. Someone totally wrote this online just to mess with innocent people like myself. The smell of the high-fructose corn syrup and the look of the fire-hydrant-red sauce are extremely off-putting. There’s no way this works.
I sit around feeling like a french fry and jump straight into the shower after 30 minutes. The entire bathroom is steaming with ketchup — and I’m praying I didn’t just dye my hair. I hop out of the shower and look into the mirror just to see my same mop of a head of hair. Refusing to let this beauty hack be a dud, I blow-dry my hair.
The Verdict: Sorry, folks. This one is a dud for me. But it may just take a few more uses to really kick in.
Egg for the Face
Now, I have heard of people using yolk in home mixes, so I’m not taken aback by this one. Eggs are also incredibly cheap, so if this works, I’m in.
For oily skin they recommend the egg white, but since I have normal skin I’m going to go ahead with a whole egg. Crack and beat that egg until well-mixed and frothy, then apply! Besides the fact that I’m wasting a perfectly good egg, I have no clue how to apply it. It’s like applying water to your face, and I feel like I’m getting more on the floor than on my face.
Once I get a thin layer on, the raw egg starts dripping down my face and chest, so I run to my fan and let the raw egg dry. It is kind of gross having raw egg juice drip on my lips, mainly because I can’t lick it. Also, it smells like this Play-Doh jelly concoction I used to make when I was in pre-K. Odd.
Now that I’m in front of the fan, I can feel the mix hardening like a clay mask. Once it’s firmly dry, I realize my face is stuck in a permanent unamused face. Great. After the first layer dries, I add a second just for good measure; again, I go back to the fan to speed up the drying.
After 20 minutes, I head to the sink to wash this off. I’m pretty excited for the outcome on this one. The layer of egg comes right off, and with that, all of the firming and smoothing that is supposed to happen. I’m sad and feel betrayed by my egg.
The Verdict: Nope. Keep on scrambling those eggs.
Banana for the Hair and Face
I personally love the smell and taste of banana, so this one made sense to me. Banana is meant to soften your skin, leaving it smooth (again, apparently like a newborn’s buttocks) and with a sweet scent. This already sounds better than the ketchup incident of 2k16.
I use two extremely brown bananas and blend them for about one minute until I have almost a liquid smoothie texture. I start by putting the banana goop on my face and the only thing I can think is: “This is totally going to make me break out. There’s no way this is good for my pores.”
The gritty juicelike texture does smell like sweet banana, but it just feels wrong on my face. Next, I slap it into my hair — with my roommate having the biggest WTH face while recording — and I instantly know I am going to smell like a life-size banana.
Next, I wait 10 minutes for my face to dry. Five minutes in and it is still wet. After looking in the mirror I realize I am jaundice. This banana blend is making me an Oompa Loompa! It starts to smell pretty strong, and maybe it’s because I am starving, but I want to lick the banana off my face.
After waiting 10 minutes, I can feel my face is a little tight in the spots where the banana dried, but certain patches are a little wet. I decide it is time. Washing it off feels gritty — as if there were still a layer of banana on my face. I have to really scrub.
Afterward, my face felt softer and definitely cleaner. But any softer than my face cleanser? Maybe by a little bit, but it did nothing that a facial lotion couldn’t.
I made my roommate smell my face and she said, “Your face felt very soft against my nose.” Maybe I wasn’t giving the yellow fruit enough credit.
Twenty minutes later (30 minutes total), it’s time to wash out this banana gunk from my hair. It is starting to feel dried and crusted in spots and wet in others. Washing it out feels the same as washing out shampoo — nothing wild. I don’t shampoo my hair, as I don’t want to strip all of the rich banananess, but I do put a little bit of conditioner on the end of my hair (because my hair is rather brittle). Now comes the ultimate test: the brush.
Usually brushing my hair is quite a dilemma, but this time the brush goes straight through! If anything, banana is a good detangler.
The Verdict: Yes for your face, no for your hair. There are some really cheap conditioners and oils you can use for your hair that don’t require you to blend a brown banana and wear it for 30 minutes. However, using an overripe banana on your face is a great mask.
Photo: iStock
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Food Network Staffer Diary: I Tried (Basically) Every Food Beauty Myth Out There