Becky says things about … the extreme perils of home beauty remedies

I love a quick fix. I love websites that tell me I don’t need to go and spend 80 quid on a miracle cream that’ll make my skin glow and my eyes sparkle and my boobs inflate or whatever, and that I actually only need to go to my kitchen cupboard for things that’ll make me beautiful.

So yesterday when I read that a paste made with lemon juice and turmeric will help fade acne scars, revitalise my pores and generally make me look fabulous, I thought

“Well hey, I have those things! What a super smashing idea! Let’s definitely do that!”

Turmeric. You know, turmeric – that yellow spice that makes curries yellow and that stains your fingers yellow when you cook with it and you can’t get the yellow out of your skin for ages because it’s really, really yellow – that turmeric.

So, after checking through many, many websites that this was a genuine remedy and that it actually worked and that nothing bad would happen, I happily mixed together one tablespoon of yellow turmeric and a squeeze of highly acidic lemon juice to form a smooth, yellow paste.

And I happily patted it all over my face.

“Goodness me, that really is very yellow”

I thought.

“I certainly hope it comes out!”

So I left it on for the suggested 10 – 15 minutes, looking forward to my impending glowing and vibrant skin and complete disappearance of any acne scars lurking below the surface.

And after 15 minutes I washed off the slightly crusty yellow paste, filling the bathroom sink with nuclear yellow water. And looked in the mirror.

“No matter, I just need to scrub it with a hot flannel for a bit”

I thought.

So I scrubbed at my face with a flannel that was hotter than the sun and waited for the yellow to come out. I scrubbed and scrubbed my delicate face with this coarse scalding flannel and waited to not be yellow anymore.

After ten minutes of hard scrubbing, and definitely having gone from being happy to not happy at all, I looked in the mirror.

This was getting serious. My face was nearly bleeding, I was nearly crying, and I was still yellow.

There was only one thing for it.

I had to rub lemon juice on my face.

Stick with me on this one – it is a natural bleaching agent, which is why it was in the paste in the first place – there are lots of websites confirming this and as I’d had such brilliant luck with following websites so far, why would it be any different now?

So I got a bowl of lemon juice and some cotton wool, and proceeded to scrub my face.

Seriously, Kevin from Home Alone had nothing on me.

It hurt. Really hurt. Rubbing lemon juice into your face isn’t something that should ever be done. ‘Do not rub lemon juice into your face’ is one of the rules in the Great Book of Life, somewhere between ‘Do not eat needles’ and ‘Do not sit on fire’.

But, it was working.

Very, very gradually I was becoming less jaundiced and more red raw and bleeding.

Eventually, after several extremely painful minutes of rubbing acid into my face, I looked almost normal.

Well, kind of.

So, f*** home beauty remedies. Go out and spend 80 quid on a chemical-crammed lotion and rub the hell out of your face with it. Whatever you do

DO NOT PUT TURMERIC AND / OR LEMON JUICE ON YOUR FACE.

Trust me.