I am always bruised and cut too. It dosn't bother me, I wear pants if it's too bad to shave.

Arnica will bring out the bruise quicker if you want things to clear before a special event.

For scars I have had success with a wound/scar on my face from ice climbing with a product called Mebo burn repair www.acesshealthcare.co.nz( no idea if you can get it overseas). It's all natural smells like sesame oil but my pharmacist rated it over the other products.(it may just be the rubbing it in helped keep blood flow up but I use it on all sorts of scratches and scars and it seems to help.)

Fashion is communication. Like the words you use in a post and the manner in which you speak, you are communicating visually with others around you about what you think.

On Friday, I helped my wife at a craft fair. She was selling her jewelry and after we first setup my wife was very aware that she was not having many people stop by to see the wares she had laid out on the table. Many of the first visitors were stopping to admire the wreaths of candy that were being sold next to us. My wife commented that maybe the problem was that she wasn’t fat enough. Looking around the room, it was clear that visually my wife stood out. It wasn’t our skin color, it was our weight. I was also the only man in the room. Clearly we were physically in a place where we were socially not acceptable.

I joked to my wife that while we stick out a little, wait until she takes her sweater off and shows off her guns. Unlike everyone else in the room, my wife has a bulge on top of her arms and not below. What was in fashion in the room was being short at fat with more effort put into the hair than has been put into a gym. In my opinion, tall, slim, and jacked is better, but I was really in the minority in that room. The people in that room chose to look the way they looked, they may not have made a conscious decision to be fat, but they daily make decisions about how much exercise they get and if they are going to spend their money on a gym membership or jeans that are 2 sizes too small.

Ann kept her sweater on, not because of fashion or to help sales but because it was cold. The woman with the candy made some sales early to the people who were most eager to see what was for sale at the craft fair. Soon the woman next to us was sitting with her laptop checking facebook and playing some gawd offal music. Me, I was selling. And selling and working. Ann makes beautiful, but not cheap, jewelry and our sales were not about selling many $5 pieces but a few $70 pieces. Eventually, some women stopped by who knew the value of what we were selling. One piece we had on the table for $165 would probably go for $900 in Borshiem’s. We sold them some pieces and “made our table” and just those few women made the difference between a good show and a waste of time.

I didn’t know that we would have some people who stopped by who knew what we had, but I hoped. I sold what we had brought to the best of my ability. Ann isn’t going to change the type of jewelry she is makes, especially at a show. She makes what she likes and we spend the effort trying to find customers who think the way we do rather than trying to convince everyone.

Which is a really, really, really long parable for saying it is easier, and better, to find people who like what you have (bruises and all) than it is to try to change to fit their expectations.

I have a scar about 5" long from the removal of a bone tumor in my tibia. I used "Mederma" (available at CVS) to minimize the appearance of the scar. It worked really well.

Well, I think you're missing the point we're all making then.