When I was a teenager, I, like 85 percent of adolescents and young adults, had acne. Not just the errant flare-up now and then, or a few small blemishes — I would have at least 10 prominent pimples on my face on a good day. Every morning before high school I would post up in front of my bathroom mirror, making sure that every blemish was covered by a thick layer of foundation and concealer. Sometimes I would even risk coming to class late because the thought of people seeing my bare face scared me way more than detention ever could.
No one ever bullied me or told me that having an unclear complexion was wrong, but they didn’t have to. Media and pop culture was screaming the message loud and clear: acne was a bad thing, and I could never be happy as long as I had it. Proactiv ads told me how miserable people’s acne made them, and how getting rid of it was life changing. Acne only showed up on TV as a problem to be solved, as in the dreaded “pimple before prom” trope that served as so many teen sitcoms’ weekly dilemma, or on the faces of the unlikable nerd characters.
I had plenty of problems during my teen years that affected my self-esteem, but my acne seemed like the one insurmountable barrier that kept me from being happy with myself. It was framed as something to fix, never as something I could love and accept. I tried everything in my disposal — soaps, creams, masks, ointments, you name it — but nothing worked. In my eyes, I had failed. Mirrors became my enemy. I would get anxiety attacks during holidays because I dreaded the traditional family photos. Because my pimples were all but universally scorned by society, I felt like they lessened my value as a person.
I wish I could say that I regained confidence and appreciation for my self-image by learning to love and accept my skin as it was, but I didn’t. Instead, I went on Accutane, an intensive drug that is near-guaranteed to get rid of acne, but at the cost of some pretty severe side effects. My depression severely worsened while I was on the drug, but I still kept with it for the five-month regimen. In fact, I even went on it for a second round after my pimples returned a few months after my first treatment. I was so convinced that I couldn’t be happy as long as my face was the way it was, that getting rid of my acne seemed like a matter of life or death.
It’s been several years since I’ve been off Accutane. While I’m pretty happy in my own skin now, looking back, I wish that I didn’t have to put myself through so much just to get to this point. Instead, I wish someone told me that it was okay to have acne, that it was a common condition that millions of people experience and live with every day. Most of all, I wish that my younger self had someone to look up to, a role model to show me that I could live happily without flawless skin.
Teens today are in sore need of such a role model, even more than I ever was. Social media was just getting started when I was younger, but this generation has completely immersed itself into it. This has given rise to more self esteem problems in teens, even leading to new conditions such as Snapchat dysmorphia. Instagram influencers and makeup YouTubers now appeal to audiences as young as middle schoolers, teaching girls from a young age that smooth skin is the ideal, and that they should spend lots of time, money and effort into chasing that ideal.
Luckily, there have been some significant steps in recent years towards making acne-positivity a movement of its own. Several people on Instagram have begun embracing their bare skin, posting unedited pictures of themselves without makeup to decrease the stigma around unsmooth complexions. But acne-positivity needs to break into the mainstream, much like how the body positivity movement has helped open the gate for bodies of all shapes and sizes to appear in TV, movies and advertisements. Clear skin continues to be the standard for most forms of mainstream entertainment, and it’s easy to see why. Anti-acne products are a multi-billion dollar industry, and if our culture reframed acne as a feature to accept and celebrate rather than a problem to be solved, that market would lose a significant portion of its consumer base.
This is all just a small part of the larger conversation on beauty standards and how women’s value is inseparably linked to their physical appearance in today’s society. No one should be judged on how they look for any reason, and there are several communities of women who are sorely underrepresented in mainstream media. But there are few conditions which are both as universally common and ubiquitously problematized the way acne has.
If you get anything from this article, I hope that it’s this: there is nothing wrong with the way you look now. Don’t allow our culture or anyone else let you feel like you’re worth less or need to be fixed because of your appearance. They’re most likely trying to sell you something, or were tricked by our beauty standards that are trying to sell them the same thing. Instead, try to look for beauty in your own way, guided by what makes you happy instead of our society’s arbitrary standards, and celebrate and share that joy when you can. You just might be surprised by what you’ll find.