Chapped II: The Peeling

My lips have recovered from their abnormal bout of chappedness, but here, for you, is a rundown of all of the products I tried in my attempt to not only regain my former lips, but perhaps improve them, making them more like this:

And less like this:

1. Vaseline. Many of you recommended the vaseline method, which seems to be as follows:

A. Purchase a giant tub of Vaseline

B. Smear

C. Repeat

This had somewhat mixed results; I decided to look further.

2. Neutrogena Intense Overnight Lip Repair. This is a tiny pot of extremely dense lip moisturizers that caused all of my chapped skin to become very moist and easy to peel off. The new lips thus revealed are now pretty close to normal.

3. Lip Venom. This isn't for chapping, it's for making your lips puffy and "bee-stung". I have very small, pale lips, and am always looking for a non-surgical way to make them stand out a bit more from the rest of my face. Lip Venom is extremely thick, and sits on the lips for a long time. It tastes of cinnamon and tingles a whole lot, and grows very sticky after a while. Sadly, I didn't notice any swelling, but Sven's lips were much pinker after he kissed me.

4. Another "natural" lip plumper that is so repulsive I won't even mention it. Suffice to say, it was even stickier and smelled like feet.

5. Nivea Lip Moisturizer. I wanted to try this one because in the commercial, the woman who wears it gets to make out with a handsome stranger while cool hipster music plays in the background. That didn't happen for me, so I am now considering a lawsuit against Nivea and the advertising agency responsible.

6. The Walgreen's Pharmacy Grab Bag. This is what I get when I ask Sven to pick me up "something for" any condition I have. He invariably returns home with anywhere from three to eighteen products that all come reasonably close to treating the condition I requested. Taking his philosophy in mind, I picked out several random tubes at Walgreens and smeared them on my lips in random order. Several smelled good.

So, for the lip update: Condition pale and thin...in other words, back to normal.

PS: Kristina, I'm thinking of you and your family.