This doesn’t seem like something anyone should ever have to say, but please don’t intentionally rub grease from a slice of pizza into your skin. To clarify, people do this. The trend emerged among internet savvy beauty bloggers who love pizza and hate the struggle of removing stubborn matte liquid lipstick that was meant to withstand daily wear and get you from morning to evening without having to reapply.

Beauty and skincare hacks can be fantastic. Saving dried out mascara with a few drops of saline solution has prevented many a tube from hitting the bottom of the trash can. And chilled green tea bags feel wonderful underneath puffy eyes. But there are certain tricks that should not be tried. From the Department of the Obvious, we present several beauty hacks you can find online that you should probably pass up.

Pizza Grease As Makeup Remover

Two things in the world are true: pizza is delicious and matte liquid lipsticks are harder to remove from your lips than stripes are from a zebra. This does not make it okay to use pizza grease as a makeup remover. The grease that forms on top of your favorite slice is mostly fat that released from cheese when it’s heated – not particularly appealing for skincare. If this oil comes in contact with the skin around your mouth, it has the potential to clog pores and cause acne.

Instead of using your dinner to remove your lipstick, give micellar water a shot at your long-lasting liquid lipsticks. Micelles are aggregates of cleansing molecules that will attract dirt and oil and remove your makeup without clogging pores. Micelles are gentle surfactants that won’t damage your skin while they remove makeup, making micellar water less irritating that other cleansers. Gentle surfactants, according to a study in Dermatologic Therapy, won’t throw your skin’s pH out of balance, causing dryness and irritation.

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Potato Underarm Skin Lightener

This beauty hack is more silly than harmful, and actually there might be a glimmer of validity to it. A popular beauty YouTuber swore that she lightened the skin in her armpits by routinely rubbing a raw potato under her arms. According to dermatologic surgeon Jennifer Reichel in an article for Huffington Post, underarms usually darken over time as a result of inflammation and irritation, often from rubbing or topical treatments like deodorant. There’s nothing dangerous about a little dark skin in your armpits.

The potato may not instantly whiten darkening pits, but it has been known to have other skin benefits. Potatoes are surprisingly rich in vitamin C, which, as we all know, is a potent antioxidant that scavenges free radicals, triggers collagen production, boosts skin’s firmness, and, yes, even suppresses hyperpigmentation. Vitamin C is a very common ingredient in skin lightening treatments. The problem is that vitamin C has a difficult time penetrating the skin without some sort of delivery system, according to a study on its efficacy published in Indian Dermatology Online Journal. For this reason, a potato on its own probably isn’t going to cut the mustard when it comes to your pit-whitening needs. It can be fun and soothing, however, to place thin slices of cooling raw potato over your eyes like you would cucumber at a spa.

 

Putting a potato in your armpit isn’t going to do you any harm, but it’s probably not going to instantly cure you of your dark underarms either. Just don’t put lemon juice on them, says Reichel in the Huffington Post article. Lemon juice is a commonly cited remedy for darkened armpits on the internet, but the sharp citrus fruit could cause irritation and over exfoliation.

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Oreo Mascara

This is another case of delicious food and a cosmetic product that never should meet. Oreo cookies taste great, but applying them to your eyelashes is a bad idea. For one, you’re wasting cookies. Beyond that, though, the health risks far outweigh the cost of just buying a tube of mascara. One YouTuber used crushed Oreos, rubbing alcohol and lip balm to create her own mascara. The obvious risk here is corneal laceration or abrasion and eye infection. Your cornea is the transparent, outermost layer of your eye and it can be surprisingly prone to damage, especially from the rough edges of a cookie crumb. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, corneal lacerations in particular can be very serious. If they’re not tended to immediately, they may cause permanent vision loss. When you can buy a safe, reliable drugstore mascara for the cost of Oreos and milk, it’s an easy choice to make to protect your vision.