Disposable toilet seat covers - my new fave beauty product

It’s not every day that I come across a beauty product that is extremely effective, easily obtainable and free.

For years, I’ve been wasting my money on tiny squares of oil blotting rice paper in elegant little packets. Since my complexion is the Exxon Valdez of oil slicks, I easily go through six of these itsy bitsy squares per blotting session. The upside is having the complexion of a 16-year-old, although I’m now 36. The downside, is well, having the complexion of a 16-year-old and all its acne-ridden glory.

I was bemoaning my oily fate to my dermatologist one day when she suggested I try using the toilet seat covers in restrooms. They’re made out of the same rice paper, and they’re big — so one seat cover should do the trick.

Initially, I was grossed out by the suggestion — having a toilet seat cover plastered to my face is not my idea of an elegant beauty treatment. It doesn’t conjure the same nostalgia of watching a lady discreetly powder her nose with a lovely mirrored compact… although it is probably more effective than its intended use to protect my ass from touching other people’s ass germs.

Most women will attest to the fact that women’s restrooms are downright disgusting and the seat is never dry, so putting a paper seat cover on a wet toilet seat just creates a pee-pee papier mache — not something you want to sit on either.

Long ago, while backpacking through Europe and encountering unspeakable public toilet horror on Italian trains and Greek bus stations, I perfected my patented, no-contact, hover method of using the potty. By the end of my trip, I had quads of steel. And ten years later, my ass still hasn’t touched a public toilet seat.

I decided to give the seat cover a try in a mall bathroom after a hot afternoon of shopping left me greasy and sweaty.

Oh. My. God. Talk about results. My face was perfectly matte and flawless. Not even my $40 Shiseido face powder can produce those results.

I stole a bunch of seat covers to stuff in my purse for touch-ups. I just hope that I never drop my purse in public and expose my petty theft of toilet seat covers.

I don’t know what would be worse — being mistaken for an obsessive-compulsive, germophobic, klepto cheapskate or exposed as someone who likes to use ass paper to blot her oily face. It’s the Sophie’s Choice of beauty conundrums.