I’ll start by saying that the Shills Black Mask is the very last thing I’d put on acne. You’ve probably seen multiple YTs showing these hard-to-remove masks – don’t even go near them if you have down on your face (unless you want the equivalent of a facial wax at the same time) or you have active spots. The Shills Mask, which I’ve used across my nose only, is one of the less aggressive types of charcoal mask (believe it or not, some people use charcoal powder and PVA glue – pretty sure I don’t even need to say anything at all here) and not only was it fairly easy to peel off, but it did work pretty well in terms of removing any blockages from pores.
I think my experience might well have been different if I’d covered my whole face and it is quite an aggressive form of exfoliation but in the context I used it, not really much different from a pore strip. As a note, if you use the very ‘gluey’ types of black mask you’re going to pull out all the tiny, barely there hairs as well as beneficial natural skin oils and sebaceous filaments – different to blackheads but if you’re a skin perfectionist, just as annoying. The way to tell the difference, apparantly, is in the squeeze – a true blackhead is a harder ‘plug’ while a sebacious filament doesn’t produce the same dramatic output. You should just leave sebacious filaments alone – nobody can see them but you when you’re a micro milimetre from your magnifiying mirror.
I got my Shills Mask on Amazon for about £8. I can neither recommend nor not recommend – there are so many reasons why you don’t need one, but the best judge of your skin is you. Oh, and there is only one official distributor of Shills on Amazon (HERE) and it’s an easily counterfeited product so beware.
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5 comments
Isn’t Shills a copycat product in itself? I always thought it was a cheapie version of the Boscia black mask they sell in Sephora, which is a real extreme face puller. I know these things are probably the worst thing you could put on your face but there is something terribly satisfying about it all the same.
It might well be.. at the back of my mind I remember that Boscia mask but don’t think I ever used it.
I tend to use very gentle masks on my face, the pore strip days are way behind me. The gentler the better for my acne prone skin, something I had never thought I’d say back when I was 14.
Linda, Libra, Loca: Beauty, Baby and Backpacking
I have seen the crazy things that people do on the internet with these masks and of course I think you hurt your skin more than anything else.
Some acne products contain charcoal as the theory is that the charcoal will bind to toxins, dirt and oil and lift them out of the pores. However, I haven’t come across any scientific study to back up these claims. Typically, most charcoal skin-care products contain other active ingredients such as salicylic acid and kaolin (a substance which binds to sebum), which can help acne-prone skin.
Simona | Skin Aspirations