Glossier is good at monetizing a dream, be it blush the texture of clouds or perfume that smells like, well, you. With the Glossier Zit Stick, which launches September 6, it feels as if the brand peered directly into my brain, sorted through the names of discontinued lipsticks and 1,300 minutely different password variations, and pulled out the skin care fantasy I wanted most. The Zit Stick is essentially a Tide To-Go pen for your face, which you dab on and watch as your zits vacate the premises. It's fun as hell to play with, and as you'd expect from the brand behind quote-unquote effortless skin, it gets the job done.
The brand relied on tried and true zit-fighting ingredients for the pen, filling the pink and red tube with a combination of 5 percent benzoyl peroxide and capryloyl salicylic acid. Benzoyl peroxide might sound familiar from your high school medicine cabinet, but the formula gets an edge from the calming ingredients also included—among them glycerin, which pulls moisture to your pimple to avoid the dried-out ring that too often forms around spot-treated areas. Niacinamide, a brightener, is also in there, which gets to work to lighten the inflamed area.
Despite my mental picture of using the Zit Stick to viciously rub zits out of existence (Ă la my Tide To-Go technique), that's not how the pen works. You twist the red screw at the bottom, and after a few clicks (the first time takes about 20 though, FYI), the formula blooms up from around the applicator's metal ball tip, which you then use to distribute the goo wherever you want it. It goes on clear, and while your mileage may vary, three clicks was enough to cover my four smallish zits.
I've been staring these pimples down for the last week, and here's my only sticking point: While the Zit Stick comes with its alias, the "breakout eraser," printed on the tube, it did not erase my breakout. My stubborn pimples could be an anomaly, but more likely, they're just not the kind of acne that responds to benzoyl peroxide (typically, its best for red, inflamed spots caused by bacteria). The brand says that after three hours, 83 percent of subjects found their pimple reduced in size; after six hours, 80 percent of them said redness and swelling were reduced, and that their pimples were less painful. After 24 hours, 80 percent also said that their swelling was gone and their pimples healed faster than normal, and more than half of their pimples were erased.
So is it a life changer? Not for me, but our senior beauty editor, Lindsay, also gave it a test run on a few hormonal spots, and said about the same as the brand's test subjects. It didn't totally knock her zits out overnight, but they were noticeably smaller and didn't dry out like harsher spot treatments often do to her skin.
I wouldn't say it reinvented the wheel, but it did make the wheel look cute, fun, and undeniably Instagrammable. And you can bet people are going to shoot this and slap it all over their feeds. One small step for acne treatments, two small steps for talking about our zits.
Glossier Zit Stick, $14, glossier.com
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