Who wants to see someone get schooled? Or you can learn about schools.

Acne Cures Through The Ages

by Sarah Marshall and Michael Magnes

Part of a series about youth.

1. Urine has been used as an acne cure and everyday cleanser since at least the 17th century. The Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine reports that “rubbing [a] baby’s face with a recently wet nappy was practiced in the Highlands of Scotland to prevent the child developing acne later and give it a good complexion.” And in an article on natural remedies used by Kansan pioneers, Amy Lathrop quotes a seventy-year-old woman who claimed: “None of the girls in the family ever had acne. All retained fine skins until their deaths — complexions outstanding for their beauty and smoothness. My mother had the rosy skin of a baby until she died, and she only bathed her face in urine on occasion in later years.”

For the modern reader curious about bringing history to life, Folk Remedies That Work suggests that you take “your first urine of the day on a white washcloth and pat it around the acne area. Or, if there’s an infant around, use the baby’s wet diaper. Urine is said to have our body’s antibodies that are very healing. Be consistent. Do it daily. If you’re not too grossed out, do it more than once a day.”

2. A mixture of sulfur and blackstrap molasses (1:2) is a historical cure that has enjoyed slightly more modern success than urine. Enthusiasts also tout molasses’ ability to cure anxiety, constipation, anemia, arthritis, and cancer.

3.-10. The good people at MyHomeRemedies recommend Pepto-Bismol; a mixture of nutmeg, black pepper, and sandalwood; constant application of hand sanitizer (“it will burn for about twenty seconds”); honey, also used by ancient Egyptians (“when u have a blemish put honey and a band-aid on top of it and when u wake up it should most likly be gone”); abstinence (“If I go 2 weeks without sexual activity then I will not break… If I go 2 weeks WITH sexual activity, I break out pretty constantly. I am no scientist and my results are purely based on my own memories.); Crest toothpaste; and diaper rash cream (“the good stuff”).

11. Ancient Egyptians (and Greeks, who knew acne as “tovoot”) treated pimples with sulfur.

12. Ancient Egyptians also believed that acne was caused by telling lies.

13. Exposure to the sun is a modern, low-tech cure.

14. Röntgenotherapy, popular in the naughty aughties and named after the discoverer of X-rays, used the power of radiation to blast away acne. A contemporary practitioner wrote that “In order to determine the sensibility of the skin, we commence with a preliminary irradiation of feeble intensity. This is especially necessary in the treatment of acne, hypertrichosis, eczema, and folliculitis of the beard. After a few days’ interval we give a fairly strong exposure, in order to set up the desired degree of reaction as rapidly as possible.” However, excessive Röntgenotherapy could lead to radiodermatitis, whose effects included “atrophy of the skin, glands, hair and nails.” No accounts mention the treatment’s subjects gaining super powers.

15. “Cut a fresh leaf from a head of cabbage. Wash, beat the leaf to soften, and bind it to the affected area with gauze.” Svetlana Konnikova, Mama’s Home Remedies.

16. Ultraviolet radiation therapy was a popular cure during the 1930’s, when acne was also known as “chastity pimples.”

17. Arsenic tablets were popular in 1890s-era America, as well as sour milk and watermelon juice face washes.

18. A poster on a Wicca forum recommends placing a mixture of dirt, vinegar, and water on the affected area, and using the following incantation:

Cure my skin of zits and rash,
And make it smooth in a flash.
Blemish vanish, pot-marks too,
Magic make my skin anew.

19. Moroccan folk medicine calls for a mixture of powdered azurite, henna, tar, walnut root, and oil spread over the affected areas. (Mixed with iron, copper sulfate, and cow’s brains, it can also be used as a cure for anthrax.)

20. Chinese folk medicine calls for a (somewhat more pleasant) remedy, namely peach blossoms, which are “supposed to have some supernatural power in driving away the demon of ill health, giving a good color to the complexion, and rejoicing the countenance.” (Quoted in John Schiffeler’s “Chinese Folk Medicine.”)

21. A 1979 study of sex myths among students at the University of Connecticut found that 7% of them believed pimples were caused by masturbation. (However, 9% believed that boys “who masturbate excessively harm themselves by losing protein and blood through the semen which is ejaculated,” and another 7% believed that each “individual can have just so many sexual experiences in his life time, and when those have been used up, sexual activity is finished for that person.”

22. An 1878 article in The British Medical Journal recommends a “tincture of iodine” and a “sulphur-vapor douche or vapour-bath,” and that if “the sebaceous glands and follicles become overloaded, they should be relieved by pressure between the finger and thumbnail, and by frequent washings with warm water and oatmeal; after which a good rubbing with a flesh-brush will remove the contents of a number of the pimples,” followed by “a cooling zinc or calamine lotion, to be painted upon the face with a camel-hair brush two or three times a day.” To remove “troublesome redness,” the author says that he “generally [applies] the acid nitrate of mercury with care by means of a spun-glass brush,” and “divide[s] each engorged vesicle with the point of the lancet; and, should the hæmorrhage be much, I apply a small ring of silver or steel…I then insert a minute grain of nitrate of silver, which at once stops the bleeding…leaving only a small black discoloured spot, which may be easily removed by the application of a solution of iodide of potassium.” The author notes, however, that the “above treatment may appear somewhat heroic for so common an eruption.”

Previously in series: What Did You Want To Accomplish When You Grew Up?, Twenty-Seven, “Dear Abby, When I Was A Young Man”, and The Cost Of Being A Kid In A Classic Adventure Novel

Sarah Marshall maintains a flawless complexion by rubbing her face with kippered herring every night before bed. Michael Magnes sleeps every night in a Foreverware container.

★★★★★ A day all its own. Nothing was going to stop the people who insisted on wringing dramatic ironies from a pathetic fallacy, and so the standard nonsense went out about how eerily identical this fine September weather was to the fine weather on the same date in another September. For the record, should anyone care about the record, at 9 a.m. the temperature was in the mid to upper 50s, a full 10 degrees cooler than it had been 11 years before. The sky was not a faultless blue, but washed with whiteness, especially at the horizon. On Prince Street, a man walked by in a fireman’s dress uniform, the double rows of buttons opened. On the other side of the street, crew unloaded parts for scaffolding. Facing downtown, the glare was a little hard to take.

“People in the United States took more prescription drugs than ever last year, with the number of prescriptions increasing from 3.99 billion (with a cost of $308.6 billion) in 2010 to 4.02 billion (with a cost of $319.9 billion) in 2011.” Numbers were particularly strong in the all-important depression/anxiety and ADHD categories.

“It’s kind of masochistic. It’s a little — I can’t think of the word — it’s a little painful, disciplinary.”
 — GUESS WHAT! This is a tough one.

The First Video That Meant Something To Me: Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”

by Shani O. Hilton

Part of a series for the new Awl Music app.

I was of MTV-watching age right around the time the channel was transitioning from showing long blocks of music videos to reality-show programming. And, of course, “Undressed.” But between mornings before school, and “TRL” in the afternoons, and late nights, there were still a few hours a day when you could catch a run of clips. While I can name a dozen or so that made an impact, Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody” was maybe the most important. It was the first video that showed me hip hop could be both sexy and weird.

Sexy I understood. Women have been decoration in hip hop and r&b; (and rock and pop) for as long as the genres have existed. Artsy or raunchy, it was all the same: Women’s forms are for looking at. But Aaliyah — dead eleven years this past August — stands firmly in the center of her videos, practically demanding that you look at her, yes, but you’d better look her in the eye.

She is, of course, ridiculously beautiful. And she is backed up by many dancers who are also beautiful. Their moves (and baggy pants + crop tops) elegantly combine the masculine and feminine and somehow they come across as both aggressive and sinuous. The aesthetics go from standard (shiny track pants) to weird (suddenly they’re performing a flamenco). A baby coos in the background. Also the whole thing is set some sort of underground bunker that they got to by motorcycle. And even though the song is really long — try listening to it on its own and you quickly realize that the last minute and a half is fairly repetitive — with the dancers, it’s mesmerizing.

Besides, the video was such a huge hit that it was eventually retired from “TRL.” Which, when you’re 13, seems like something that matters.

Shani O. Hilton is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

“Give him four years to get his thing together, and finish this deal out. You heard what Clinton said. You loved Clinton, didn’t you?”
 — Snoop talks politics at the Toronto Film Festival.

After The End Of Men

by Mallory Ortberg

We were warned about The End of Men — but we did not listen. When the time came, the young were the first to go, dropping their toys and books and tools in the schoolyards, the fields, the trails running steady toward the horizon. The fathers and the aged followed shortly thereafter. It happened always with the same progression: the blank and curious light behind the eyes, the stiff and frozen gait, and then the hurried, silent exit. Women who were previously pregnant with sons ended up birthing stubs of candles, handkerchiefs, even fountain pens. Within a matter of weeks, the men had abandoned social life altogether, and no amount of hunting or pleading could bring them back.

This was all largely before my time, of course. My recollections are a patchwork of faded memories, snatches of poetry, my grandmother’s tales by the fireside. Since the days of my girlhood, all talk has been girl talk; all time was girls’ time; all nights were ladies’ nights.

I pen this late at night with the Sisters asleep around me. I do not know if anyone will find this confession, nor what good they might do once it has been read. The hour grows late — it may be too late — but I will write, and wait, and hope.

Before The End, men were plentiful. Not as plentiful as they had been in the Elder Times — the high days of song — but there were men nonetheless. They roamed the grassy interior of the continent in vast and gentle herds, pausing by our wells every summer during the Great Migration. The first Sighting of Men was always cause for excitement in the hot, dull days, and at the first sign of their approach we children would rush down to the water, screeching and laughing. We knew the rules: one may look upon a man, but one may not feed him or keep him. One may not touch a man; the others would turn on and cast out any one of them who had suffered the touch of a woman. The rejected ones would crawl dejectedly behind the herd, but, weak and dazed as they were, rarely survived more than a few dusty miles.

But that summer, that particular summer, I was down by the well at dusk fetching an extra bucket of water before prayers — when I saw him. The herds had passed through our village weeks ago. He must have been lost or cast out by his fellows. I’d never seen one alone before. At the first sound of my footsteps he leapt up from the stream, face smeared with dirt and tears and he looked at me. I know how it sounds and I know the Sisters would have mocked me roundly had I tried to tell them, but he looked at me and I saw something in his eyes that hot moonlit evening I’ve never been able to forget. He was so young. For a few moments we just stood there staring. I thought he might have been ready to speak — until the sound of a frog splashing into the river sent him running for the trees.

Later, when the herds were rounded up and decimated (and they were decimated, no matter what the Shepherd’s Council will try to tell you), I couldn’t stop thinking of that boy’s eyes. They called them Man Caves, the places they took them. Man Caves. As if any man could have survived in those mines.

I wonder, often, how long he lived. I wonder what finally dimmed then extinguished the light behind those eyes that stared at me on that grey mossy night, when I still wore the robes of a Ceremonial.

Now there are no men, and we speak not of them, except in these forbidden memoirs. The mines have long since been abandoned to whatever unspeakable crawling things first explored their nightmare passageways. Now there is no one left to speak for the days before we sinned, but I will go to my grave saying we should have suffered those men to live, with the memory of those eyes haunting me always.

Related: Other Things Missouri Representative Todd Akin Believes To Be True About The Uterus, Besides Its Ability To “Shut Down” A Legitimate Rape

Mallory Ortberg is a writer in the Bay Area. Her work has also appeared on The Hairpin, Slacktory and Ecosalon; Kate McKean’s her agent.

A spokesperson for Rahm Emanuel was forced to deny that the Chicago mayor “likes Nickelback.”

You don’t have to be crazy to be the President of the United States, but it sure helps.