Pearls on my face: Growing up with acne
By Isabella Brocollo
Image from Vogue
It’s a laborious task for me to remember my life without acne. I got my first pimples when I was ten years old. At first, I didn’t mind them, but eventually they became the target of insults from friends and the subject of critique from adults. Gradually, the shame crept in and I tried as hard as I could to get rid of them. My Oma told me to wash my face with baking soda, so I did. My Mom told me to take birth control pills, so I did. The dermatologist told me to try topical antibiotics. The woman at Ulta told me to use toner. The doctor told me to use sunscreen. The echo chamber of beauty gurus on Youtube told me to change my face wash, to get moisturizer, to drink more water, and above all, to cover my hideous imperfections with full-coverage foundation and concealer.
Nothing I ever tried worked. My skin-care regimens were thorough but my skin remained scarred, red and speckled with dots all throughout middle school and high school. I tried to make my peace with it by telling myself that it was just part of adolescence, and that it was perfectly normal for a teenager to have acne. Imagine my horror when I turned twenty and my acne was worse than ever before. Years of smearing my skin with creams, poking it with metal tools and squeezing it with my own fingers had all been for nothing. The writing was on the wall as clear as the bumps on my skin. This affliction was never going to go away. I felt cheated and I felt ugly, but more than anything, I just felt defeated.
Ironically, this exhaustion and fatigue is what made me accept my skin more than ever. I was too burnt out to try another moisturizer that I knew would just break me out more, too tired to try a new birth control pill concoction and risk heightening my anxiety, and too tired to switch my face wash again. I just couldn’t fight my own face anymore, so I raised my white flag and admitted defeat. I stopped trying to change myself and instead accepted my face for what it was. I had acne. Whatever. It’s just part of my skin. And admittedly, I think there is something punk rock about having acne, like merely existing with visible imperfections is my own form of silent rebellion against the society that made me feel like my skin would never be good enough.
Even though I had tentatively made peace with my acne, I wasn’t really able to fully embrace it until last year. During one of the autumnal months of 2022, I stumbled upon a tik tok of a girl dancing around with what looked like bad cystic acne on her face. When she moved closer to the camera, I realized that her acne wasn't acne at all. The girl had glued pearls to her face. She smiled in the video, gleefully showing off her new beauty trend, but I did not share her enthusiasm, and when I saw the video, my blood boiled. How dare this girl with perfect skin stick pearls on herself for fun? Why would someone willingly dress their face up with acne? How dare she take the thing that had caused me so much inner hatred and pain and present it as something beautiful?
But before I swiped away in anger, I started to think. Memories of my mom talking to my childhood self floated back to me. I remembered her explaining pearls to me. I remembered her telling me that they are created when irritants, like a grain of sand, get into a clam. I remembered her saying that clams coat the sand in spit until it stops being itchy and instead shines beautifully. And as I swam through these memories, I realized: acne is kind of like that. My own skin takes irritants and creates pearls on my face. So maybe this girl in the tik tok was on to something. Maybe my acne was worth celebrating. Maybe they weren’t blemishes so much as they were pearls on my face. What a beautiful thing my body is capable of creating.
