I’m a Jersey Girl who just wants to make the world a more beautiful place.  So, what is a “Nouveau Yuppie”.  Well, yuppies are those obnoxious people you think of in 80′s movies, like the neighbors in “National Lampoon’s Christmans Vacation”. They were young, working in the corporate world, and defining themselves by their money and material goods.  It’s all about the Evian water and sleek apartments.  The “nouveau” part refers to the current generation of yuppies, who wear “natural” makeup and carry cloth totes and Sigg bottles and shop at Whole Foods. We’re still schlepping our butts into a corporate office, but we’re wearing Havianas and Uggs instead of stockings with socks and sneakers. We still want to live the good life, we just recycle more now.  I’m part of this new generation of yuppies.

 My obsession with beauty and skin care started when I first noticed small, red, flakey patches in my armpits when I was 15  (lovely, right?).  I was convinced I was dying OR that I just had dry skin OR an allergic reaction to my deodorant. So I started moisturizing religiously with Vaseline Intensive Care Advanced (or something like that.) and Neutrogena Mutli-Vitamin moisturizer.  Well, at 21, after years of these patches popping up in places like my scalp, back, and legs, (and spending TONS of $$ on various moisturizers)  a lightbulb went off in my head: I have psoriasis.

I only knew about psoriasis because my dad’s second wife’s sister (so my ex-step-aunt?) had it and I vividly remember seeing the large, flakey patches on her elbows and shins, but didn’t understand exactly WHAT psoriasis was, except you have dry skin. Yeah, if it were JUST dry skin, all the moisturizing and exfoliating I was doing should have made my patches better or smaller. So, upon having my “lightbulb moment”, I asked my father to take me to a dermatologist. Yep. Diagnosis: Psoriasis.  

Since I got my first perscription for some bright blue non-foaming shampoo and some cream, I’ve tried so many different meds and “natural” remedies:  Clobex, Taclonex, Dovonex, Tazorac, nightly baths with Ahava bath salts (got very expensive very fast), Egyptian Magic Cream (it’s neither Egyptian, nor magic), T-Sal Shampoo, ingesting so much flax seed oil each night that my stomach was “not happy”, going to tanning booths (NOT AT ALL RECOMMENDED).   Some of my patches have gone the way of the Dodo, while others have been steadfast and stubborn. I’ve gotten new patches and have dark spots where a patch used to be (thanks mostly to the Excimer laser treatments I’ve started getting).

Along this journey I’ve taken to improve my skin and cure my disease (it’s caused by your immune system mistaking healthy skin cells for damaged ones and the patches appear in your immune system’s attempts to repair the damage, thus resulting in extremely fast turnover of skin cells, so until my immune system decided to “smarten up”, no cure for me.), I’ve leared more than a thing or two about beauty and skin care. I’ve also learned how to love myself and be confident, even when my patches are dry, cracked, painful, and bleeding and I feel so ashamed of my skin and myself.

Well, no longer hide my psoriasis and I’ve learned to deal with it physically and emotionally and makeuply Hopefully, I’ll have some nuggest of wisdom for you “out there”. So, read on, read often, and hopfully you’ll see a more beautiful you!

XOXO

Nouveau Yuppie