Banish Jawline Acne Forever

Allure Daily Beauty Reporter

Kate Sullivan,Allure magazine

One of my favorite 30 Rock lines is when, in frustration, Liz Lemon calls Jack and Tracy "the cause of my jawline acne." Ah, if only workplace stress could explain everyone's breakouts. We asked Ranella Hirsch, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine, what the alternate causes might be and she gave us a surprising answer.

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"Jawline acne could be in correlation with your period-regular hormonal acne-but not always," she says. "There's another common reason: facial hair. Lots of women have hair there. And lots of women tweeze and that causes jawline acne all the time." There is a particular style of tweezing that is especially wrong for the area, says the dermatologist: "People really go to town. Often, the hair is not just sticking out, so it's a picking and tweezing combination-they go digging for a hair."

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But if you can't tweeze the occasional stray on your chin, what are you supposed to do? "Waxing is a great choice and, believe it or not, so is shaving-it's not going to cause that irritation," says Hirsch.

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Try it and see how your jawline acne fares...


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