Having Sensitive Skin Might Be The Worst Ever

Winter is coming, and if you've got sensitive skin, you are gearing up several months of unbridled misery. If you are anything like me, the first sign of a chill prompts you to immediately strip off all of your clothes and insert yourself into a giant tub of bag balm to preemptively soothe your harried outermost organ. It sounds dramatic if you haven't experienced it, but if you are part of Team Sensitive Skin, you know I speak truths.

Being gentle of dermis means that a lot of things other people enjoy are, for you, tinged with discomfort. A visit to the beach isn't a chance to sun yourself, mainline corndogs and ogle members of the opposite sex – it's a battle of wits between you and the sun. Even the not so sunny days are a challenge. Your friends are frolicking in freshly-fallen snow and they want you to follow suit. You'd do it too, but your delicate foot skin is already starting to itch due to the inclement conditions.

There are perks to having sensitive skin, it's true. You can fend off department store cosmetics people in droves, and you can refer to yourself as a delicate flower and mean it in total sincerity. But let's be real – the stuff you have to contend with on a daily basis? It totally outweighs any "good" things about having sensitive skin. Here are 12 things people with sensitive skin have to deal with on the regs.

1. Zits

You thought you'd escaped zits the second you left your teenage years behind you. But no, it seems the zits are here to stay. Start a new job: your sensitive skin breaks out. Stare at a ham sandwich: two zits for you. Pull a new shirt on: zits for days. Next up, wrinkles, and possibly dermatitis.

2. Low Self-Esteem

I'm well aware that there are people with bigger problems than chronically dry skin, but I swear to god somedays I would totally take having just one eye over lips that cannot keep skin on them for love or money.

3. Embracing The Gross

Your friends might cringe, but if smearing tar on your skin is supposed to soothe easily inflamed pores, you're going to try it. I mean, what harm could it do, right?

4. Curious People

"What's wrong with your face?"

"Oh my god! What is on your aaaaaarrrrrm?!"

The only thing worse than explaining your weird random rashes to people is that they then think it's totally cool to ask about it like it's something special that you guys share. Like roommates and a George Foreman Grill. Only, you know, disgusting.

5. Going to the Beach

In order to go to the beach, you've got to slather yourself in all the SPF protection that the local pharmacy has. Even then, it's still all about a floppy hat, a massive cover-up, an umbrella and using the '90s flick Powder to explain your excesses to your confused tan-crazed friends.

6. New Foundation Peril

It isn't a jealous rage that sets your skin ablaze – it's that new foundation you were stupid enough to think you could try out without any consequences. Now you get the fun of trying not to scream and flay your own flesh from your bones while enjoying some rolls at chain eatery.

7. Considering a Full Facial Tattoo

You wake up and you can't even with the rashes, blotches, and other weird things happening on your face. If it weren't for you intense fears of both needles and outsider cultural you would totally get another face tattooed over your own face.

8. Animals

You love animals! Dogs, cats, rabbits, tiny baby owls...all of 'em, can't get enough. The same cannot be said for your skin. You can pet them, and try to sneak the odd snuggle, but it doesn't last very long. Soon, their dander turns your skin into a topographical map of despair. The animals all have a name for you and it is the Touch-Me-Not.

9. Acceptable Bouts of Vanity

As a rule, we are not encouraged to walk around being all, "DAMN, I LOOK FLY." But when you've got sensitive skin, those days where all of your parts meet in perfect harmony are few and far between. When they happen, you've more than earned a celebratory bout of self-congratulations. Vanity shmanity.

10. Being Sensitive...Everywhere

When you tell people you've got sensitive skin, they mostly just imagine you having to buy special face moisturizer. Those people are blessedly naive and mercifully spared the image of you frantically applying salves to your butt skin after a new laundry detergent has your hindquarters looking like performance art representing the Black Death.

11. Bullshit Lotion Promises

Lotion companies are minions of satan with their promises. Others might fall victim to products that swear up and down that they will leave your skin clear, bright and firm. But not those of us with sensitive skin. We know such sweet nothings are as likely to be true as the fact that we were all created by a Baby Sloth King who watches over us from the stars. God I wish that were true.

12. The Awful That Is Shaving

Guys love to bitch about shaving their delicate faces. They somehow think because we don't shave our cheek skin, we aren't dealing with a dangerous razor situation. But you know what? Unless you are riddled with sensitive skin all over your body, you've really got no room to gripe, dudes. Even then if you are male with sensitive skins you are spared the heinous task of shaving a sensitive womanly garden, a task which has totally given me PTSD. As such your arguments are invalid.

Images: Getty; Giphy (12)