Conversations about acne #1: Struggling with my skin

‘Conversations about acne’ is a series at The Mancunion Fashion & Beauty section in which Manchester students share their personal skin struggles and offer some tips based on their own acne journey. It’s time to talk about student skin and normalise the common reality of adult acne, so read on to find out how your peers are coping…

The vast majority of students have struggled with acne at some point in their lives. I say “struggle” because acne isn’t just something which is casually present and easily ignored, in the same way that an overflowing kitchen bin can be. For me, acne was a struggle and an ordeal; something which I had to contend with for the vast majority of my teenage years, and even now at the start of my twenties.

The ‘acne ordeal’ can often become a sizeable mental, physical, and aesthetic affair which can affect anyone in varying degrees of severity. Out of all the “struggles” acne inflicts on a person, I found that while the physical side of acne may increase and then eventually diminish over time, the mental and emotional ordeal is the one which really leaves its mark. But, as time passed, I found ways to be able to treat and cope with the mental and physical side of acne.

Work out what works for you

After eight years, I have only found what truly works for me and my skin in the past year or so. When it felt like the world was ending (or, I had a spot rear its head overnight), I remember that I was buying and trying anything which I thought might help. If an acne columnist wrote that CeraVe changed her daughter’s life I bought it; if a Tiktoker proclaimed that witch hazel made her scars vanish overnight I was already calculating the shipping cost from America to Britain.

Time and time again, I fell victim to buying products whose promoters declared that my acne would simply – magically! – disappear as soon as a small dollop of the pink-dyed, rose-smelling product touched my skin.

The most effective thing was working out what worked for me, according to how my acne looked at that point in time. When I felt like it was at its most severe, I sought advice from my local GP, who prescribed me medication which I wouldn’t have been otherwise able to access because it was for more severe cases of acne. As time went by, the medication did its job, and my acne became far more manageable. As did the mental and physical struggle.

As my acne became less severe, I knew that I never wanted to venture back into that particular time of my life again. I no longer fell victim to grabbing any product from the shelves of Boots with the words “acne”, “spotty”, “oily” – what a delightful repertoire acne vulgaris has! – emblazoned on their clinically clean minimalistic packaging. I decided to be methodical and create an ‘acne routine’, following The Inkey List’s five-step skincare guide. This routine allowed me to consider, understand, and use what I felt would work best for my skin. It should be clarified that this worked for me; such a rigorous, multi-product regime may not work for someone else.

More importantly, I felt like I was regaining control over something which had controlled me, and how I saw myself (unsurprisingly, not in the most favourable light) for so long. The guide provides users with step-by-step instructions for selecting five products which fit the recommended five steps of skincare. First, you clean your face with a cleanser, then you are advised to use a hydrating product, a treatment product, a moisturising product, and finally SPF. All of my selected products addressed different concerns and insecurities, which provided me with a detailed, personalised skincare regime which worked for myself and my skin.

Be consistent

It is incredibly frustrating when a product works for so many people, but doesn’t work for you. I remember that if something didn’t work for me in a week, then I figured that it would never work for me. But this isn’t always the case. Consistency is crucial to managing acne, and sometimes skin takes longer to react to a product than is desired. That “miracle” product is better kept in your regime than in your bathroom cupboard, as it often takes weeks or months for the work to be seen. This is also the case with a skincare regime too: consistency encourages change. Even if you feel like there would be nothing worse in the world than moving from your bed to the bathroom sink, unfortunately, you must if you want to see real, beneficial results from the products you are using. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Be confident

Throughout my life, I have been a confident person, but when my acne got to its hardest point I lost a good chunk of my confidence. I went from always (voluntarily and involuntarily) being the centre of attention, prancing around, and talking to anyone at volume ten, to being incredibly self-conscious. At school, I didn’t want to sit too close to another person because I feared that my acne would somehow transfer to their face; or that they’d see my face close-up and think, “ew”. I dashed to the bathroom at the start and end of every lesson just to check that my face didn’t need to be declared as a national emergency.

I think that this is genuinely the most annoying thing people can say, but don’t let acne take too much of a toll on your confidence. Acne doesn’t define you, nor should you let it overrule you. It doesn’t make you any less worthy, any less beautiful, any more unclean, or any different to your peers. Acne doesn’t decide who you are, what you can or can’t do, or how you should be treated. It is something which the majority of people struggle with and then overcome.

I don’t want to blur over things: having acne, especially severe acne, was awful. The spots transformed into a struggle which had a mental, physical, and aesthetic dimension to it. The scars from my teenage years are still present, but less noticeable. Spots may still appear, but they go fairly quickly too.

The funny thing is, for the past two years I’ve had more compliments on my skin than I can count. The compliments still make my stomach turn like a washing machine and my face burn red, as I stutter a thank you but immediately think “Well, you never would have said that a few years ago,” or, sometimes, “You’re lying.” When it was at its worst, I never felt like I would ever receive compliments, let alone have clear skin. So remember, acne is a long game. However, by working out what worked for me to form my own skincare regime, being consistent with the regime, and remembering that it shouldn’t make me any less confident, the struggle became more and more manageable. You will get to where you want to be with your skin, but it just takes time.