The Cheapest Girl Around

Nivea Body Sun-Kissed Firming Moisturizer (Light to Medium Skin)

What: Nivea Body Sun-Kissed Firming Moisturizer (Light to Medium Skin)

Price: $7.49

Nivea Body Sun-Kissed Firming Moisturizer
Image from Nivea.

So, Spring has definitely sprung here in my part of the world. That means it’s time to break out the shorts and the bathing suits…which means it’s time to do something about my pale, pale legs so I don’t blind people with reflected sunlight. Regular tanning is, of course, out of the question. Even if you don’t have coloring like mine, tanning still puts you at increased risk for skin cancer! (I also have almost every other risk factor, like family history and a history of bad sunburns as a child, so I’m controlling the one factor that I can by not tanning and wearing SPF 30+.)

That’s why I love gradual self-tanners. It’s almost impossible to wind up with streaks using them (you would have to miss the same spot several days in a row), and they give you a finer degree of control over the color of your tan than traditional sunless tan formulas. Plus, they are usually combined with moisturizers, and you don’t have to wait nearly as long for them to dry.

This spring, I gave Nivea Body Sun-Kissed Firming Moisturizer for Light to Medium Skin a try. (They also have a formula for darker skin tones, but I can’t really tell you how well it works.) This lotion promises two things: to give you a gradual, natural tan, and to give you firmer, younger-looking skin. It takes about three to five days to get the full color, and it will gradually wear off over several days once you stop applying it.

The tan was subtle, and natural looking. It didn’t make me look like I’d just come back from a week in the Bahamas, but it did make me stop glowing in the sunlight. The color was very realistic, and not orange or fake-looking at all. It faded evenly, too, so I didn’t have patches or streaks of different-colored skin at any point in the process.

I didn’t notice much firming in my skin, though. It was also not very effective as a moisturizer. The formula was very thin, and although that made it easy to spread everywhere, it also made it easier to use up the bottle. I got about three and a half weeks’ total use out of it, and it’s not really a small bottle. It’s just hard not to use more than you really need, because it squirts out in huge globs in your hand.

My final verdict: this is great as a gradual self-tanner, but kind of crappy as a firming moisturizer. It’s a couple of dollars cheaper than most comparable products I found, so I’d definitely recommend it if you only want it for its tanning effects.

Posted by Leigh | April 10, 2010 at 12:22 pm | Cheap Thrills | 1 comment | Tags: moisturizer, nivea, rite aid, self-tanner

Friday Mugshot: Spring Break!

My spring break started today. I started fake-baking for it a week ago. Normally I don’t mind my pallor, but I don’t want to blind people with reflected sunlight when I put on a swimsuit or shorts.