Back in middle school, I often found myself in two places: the mirror or my phone. I would spend hours staring at the new bumps on my skin, as it looked back at me with white and blackheads mocking me. If not in the mirror, I was on Social Media, begging to have the skin of influencers and celebrities I would see. This type of behavior continues until this every day at times…
My relationship with Social Media has always been a rocky rollercoaster. I have been on many corners of the Internet, yet as someone who enjoys makeup and fashion, I find myself with skincare-related posts more and more frequently. Posts like “Get ready with Me” reels on Instagram or the infographic of products that are “acne safe” have been like a double-edged sword. Even though I enjoy that form of content, it still adds to the many layers of insecurity about my acne. Social Media, at its core, is always about keeping up with your digital appearance. As a collective front, most will only post the most exciting and perfect portions of their life. While I am very guilty of knowing Social Media’s nature and its facade, I would still fantasize about the clear skin and continuously keep swiping on the posts to torture myself. To keep up appearances, there is a grand illusion that everybody has some form of perfect skin. It's that illusion that creates this comparison between the influencer’s shiny and clean skin through the screen and the rough, dark-spotted, acne-proneness skin that I wear every day. These comparisons have built the foundation for my reliance on makeup and skincare by the time I was a sophomore in high school.
My love for makeup, originally, stemmed from the insecurity that Social Media gave me. I would look up tutorials on YouTube about how to cover up all sorts of different types of acne and other insecurities on my face like my eyebags, ending with me buying hundreds and spending thousands on concealers, foundations, color-correction sticks, and other products. As, always, the goal is to achieve that perfection in seamless coverage to at least assimilate the ideals of perfect skin. Yet, as many know, makeup can easily continue the circle of clogging pores and affecting the skin’s healing process. However, it was more important to continue my distorted perceptions of keeping my “flawless” skin. Social Media has told me that I need to take care of my skin. If it doesn't look as perfect as Bella Hadid's, then I must cover myself with douses of makeup to make up for it. It become exhausting after so many years, yet there is a constant paranoia that I live with that says that people will notice the texture and markings on my skin and see me with disgust. This fear tells me that I need 27-step skincare with cleansers, serums, moisturizers, toners, sunscreens, exfoliation, scrubs, masks, and pore strips, and all these people and posts telling me each a different “optimal” order to follow.
One of the biggest issues about Social Media, in terms of this topic, is how it loves to dictate my skin through trends. Trends have always been about the big and new thing everyone raves about. But in recent years there have been more and more of these trends and all these trends run for a shorter and shorter time. A few of these skincare/makeup trends that have been prominent are “Skinimalism” (embracing a more natural look), "Clean Beauty" (natural or organic ingredients in skincare/makeup), and even "Virtual Try-Ons" (allowing consumers to see the results of their skincare or makeup look desired without anything on). The biggest trend for 2023 was the emergence of the “Clean Girl” aesthetic that took hold. This aesthetic shares quality with the previous trends mentioned, as it focuses on a well-curated skincare routine to have a natural but glowing complexion. This could be easier said than done if you already had the beauty attributes and clear skin that these “clean girls” influencers have. But if you were like me, it was rough as this trend demands you to have that dewy skin. So, you should spend all your money to obtain it, right? But I hope that you haven't spent all your life savings because now there is the “Glass Skin” trend on TikTok. For reference, this trend revolves around the idea of using Korean-based products that have the inclusion of rice water to purify the skin and leave it with an almost reflective shine. For me, this is ridiculous, as it's hard for us, as consumers, to stay in faux with the trends or get products that are “the one”. It leads to a lot of confusion, anxiety, and hyper-consumption. It's this hyper-consumption that gives me a lot of these troubles, as personally, I want to try all these trendy products to see if I can get dreamy skin but yet, but a lot of these products are highly expensive and out of my budget or become inaccessible in my area. I remember when the “Ordinary BHA Acid” was released and everyone was racing to get it and blessed it with high regards, but when I tried to order a bottle, it was all sold out and the prices shot up from $9 to $30 for a small bottle. It felt dishearted and even outraged, I blamed my acne for a time on the fact that I didn't have this one product and not on the millions of factors that I could or couldn't control over. Overall, the trends and hyper-consumption of products have contributed to my perception of how I see my skin.
Social Media is so many things, including being ageist. I feel that the current environment has created a mass wave of panic over the natural process of getting older and the need to stay as youthful as possible. This idea of youthfulness is one of the strong foundations of the skincare industry, yet they never define what it means to be youthful or how youthful should one be. They tell consumers that they need victim C serums for their skin to be bright but yet, where is the research to back this up? Skincare is cosmetic in the eyes of the US FDA, not medical, so technically there are few restrictions or proof of a product to sell a product. There is so much craze in anti-aging that I fear not only for my zits but wrinkles, wrinkles that I have yet to develop because I am a young adult; but this fear, in recent terms, has distilled into children who are much younger than that. The news has been calling these girls the “Sephora 10-year-olds”. These young children see all these skincare-related posts on social media (in the same vein that I did) and begin to worry about aging, wrinkles, sagging skin, and cellulite before puberty has even hit for most of them. They run to stores and beg and force their moms to get them the “Drunk Elephant Bronzer Drops” out of this fear (for context, that product is for people in their late 20s- early 30s). A lot of these products can harm youth skin if you’re not of age or in need of it. So, on the one hand, I envy them for having this type of knowledge so they can build up the habit of washing their face every day. When I was growing up, I did not have those opportunities to learn about skincare, beauty, or fashion of any sort which led to regretful photos looking back on it now. When I did have these opportunities to try this stuff out, it was always my mom’s old stuff or stuff she didn't like; the kids, these days, have the Internet at their disposal to help them out in these awkward moments of their lives. However, I, also, pity them and their parents for falling into Social Media schemes and their trends.
The most important thing that I have been learning as I start to detox myself from all of these build-up fears is to not get overwhelmed by skincare's Social Media and their products. Instead, focus on the products that work for you and recognize that there will always be markings on your face. For me, skincare is now more about the self-care I give myself every night before bed. I have accepted the insecurities of my dark under-eye bags, now, it is time for me to accept the spots on my face.
Victoria Nikolaeva
I can't say that I know what it is like to struggle with having acne. But as a girl with brown skin the pressure to have "flawless skin" due to social media trends I can understand a little. Social media has definitely taken over young girls confidence about being in her own skin. The need to have expensive skin care products or even makeup products is crazy. I do really like how you highlight harmful effects of social media's obsession with being young and beautiful. Everyone is beautiful in their own ways!
$9 to $30 for a small bottle is crazy and the frustration of that is very relatable! Personally, I have struggled more with the makeup-side of skincare and less about my acne but it all stems from everything you talked about in this article. Being able to recognize all of the effects and influence that social media has had on basic health in skin care is the first step to stopping it in future generations. I am glad you have overcome so much of this and we are all in this together!
As someone who's struggled with acne I appreciate this topic. As someone who's written multiple papers on consumerism I appreciate this topic even more. Unfortunately, it's makes sense to me that the skincare industry has become this dark example of the dangers of hyper consumerism, as they have been able to exploit such a common insecurity.
I didn't struggle with severe acne but a lot of my best friends in high school did and went on accutane. In the past few years I think skincare has become more of a trend than a health practice, especially with little kids. (Sephora 10 year olds) The "ageism" online has gotten so bad it has prepubescent children using retinol on their faces everyday to not get wrinkles. Like ????
I'm not familiar with makeup or skin care communities online but in reading this, I was surprisingly able to draw some parallels between these communities and black/natural hair care communities. With some overemphasis on products and elaborate routines, I too have fallen into the trap of buying unnecessary products because of influencer opinions. It's interesting how these ideas can be seen in seemingly very different spaces.