skin issue # 20 a matter of not being sorry
You should stop saying it. I should too in fact.
Three weeks ago, I travelled to Stockholm to visit a friend who lives there. The day before I arrived, I picked up my phone and sent her a WhatsApp saying I would arrive with acne on my face.
It might not be big news for most, but I had been wondering how to soften the blow of the dreaded spots that had burgeoned on my chin, landing in the same sweet crater they had made for themselves years ago. A few days could go by without anything to fill it, but it would always explode somehow.
That same week, my lip had developed a cold sore. I barely raised an eyebrow. This last month, I’d run like a headless chicken between assignments to refine for my counselling course, glasses of red shared with friends, parched lips biting on wooden forks at lunch, a sign from my brother who was about to visit, checking my phone in-between making fried rice for dinner, bathing it in amber soya sauce, dropping the bottle on the floor, staining the lino and cursing myself.
Stress had come with a bang and like the spots on my face, it was here to stay. Maybe that’s why I needed to send my friend a disclaimer about the acne.
I read the WhatsApp a few times, waited for the blue tick, tapped my chocolate painted nail on the back of my phone. What would she reply? But hey, what could you even say to that? Why had I felt the urge to tell her this? She would only offer kindness in return, yet I acted like I’d confessed a crime. She was welcome to say I couldn’t stay anymore. Welcome to report me to the skin police. I’m kidding, but only to a certain extent. Sometimes I feel there’s a law prohibiting women from ever seeking to be anything less than perfect. That was it. I’d put my finger on it: I wasn't the perfect woman anymore and that hurt.
To me, the perfect woman didn’t get spots. In fact, she was not even a woman. She was a girl. She was forever without wrinkles, wore perfectly-cut trousers with no cat hair, didn’t say like or obviously or literally. She was cool and smart. Never one word too much, never not enough. Just right. She just didn’t worry about anything because she had flawless, glowy skin. I’ve never been that girl, but I’ve pretended so hard to be that some people had bought it. And somehow, the pillar I had put myself on was sinking, down and down and down. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think of myself as super hot or particularly beautiful, but there were some ground rules of cool, and acne was not cool. Acne was for the girl who hid behind her fringe, wore chipped black nail polish, refused to open her blinds without foundation on. That girl was supposed to buried. Was I digging her up?
Three months prior, I’d swapped one contraceptive pill for another. The original one had been very high in estrogen, playing with my skin further, developing eczema on my fingertips. I’d been on it for years. I stared at the new pack, turned it around in my palm and after a few days simply popped the pill in my mouth. I downed it with a glass of orange juice I never usually drank, coughed on the bitter bits stuck in my trachea. What was the worst that could happen? Sure, I saw myself back at fifteen, catching glances in every reflection to see how big the spots were, how I could hide them, hide me. But I decided to throw that out the window and settle for my comfort. So three months passed and right on the clock, after December and the days filled with slumber and chocolate had passed, a little red dot grew and grew on my chin. More came along. They often arrived in threes: a duo of small ones and a massive one that took weeks to heal. At least I didn’t scar, I told myself. Maybe I had learned the lesson not to pick.
It was after those three months, having somehow welcomed acne back into my life, that I arrived in Stockholm. Although I knew my friend wouldn’t judge or make any comments, especially since I’d already told her, I still caught myself pulling my scarf up over my chin. In a country where everyone (or almost everyone) looked blonde, fit, sporty, I found it difficult to part with images of perfection I had crafted for myself. I stood out in a sea of beige and black clothing, wearing my green and pink tartan scarf, struggling to walk on icy pavements. The spots were just another item on the list.
I arrived in Stockholm, wanting to justify myself. Was I looking for absolution? Confirmation that, yes, it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to justify it to myself, for having thought I’d finally beaten acne, that it was gone forever, that I’d never have to worry about it again. For years, I’d had no spots, perfect clear skin. Damn, I’d cracked the code. I didn’t shy away from photos, didn’t hide behind my hair. My jawline was an angle to be admired for its cutting edge. The best profile. And now, it was all back to the beginning, where I didn’t like anything about it. Although I still didn’t wear foundation. That was limit. Somehow, a little part of me that I found hard to pay attention to whispered, louder and louder fuck it, fuck you. But still, I felt like I’d betrayed something, someone. I wasn’t the same as I had always been.
Perhaps it’s just some good old woman’s conditioning: an instinct to apologise for gaining weight, for getting spots, for growing hairs. A trigger warning, almost. We go through life expected to hide what’s not meant to be seen, and if it is, then we have to warn people, just in case they run away, disgusted by the fact that we showed our true selves. Is it the truth or is it the fear? Was it what I was doing? Apologising for showing my true self to someone I’d known for years? It’s funny how something that covers barely 10% of my body can take over my mind, can make me say sorry; like when I apologise for no reason, just as some sort of interjection. Sorry for taking this spot. Sorry for standing in front of you. Sorry for not understanding.
I’ve vowed not to say sorry as much, but it’s hard in the UK. It’s hard as a woman. And yet, I think I take back my almost-apology to my friend, because yes, these spots are part of me now. Not new me. Just me. Just with a few additions.
And then I came back from Stockholm,. And I heard myself mentioning the spots again, here and there, to different people. No one said anything to me, but I dived in first. Some sort of preemptive measure. Was I apologising, or was I choosing to attack first?
Just twelve days later, I heard Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter receiving complaints about their outfits and performances at the Brit Awards. Charli XCX responded a few days later, cheekily reminding everyone that it was the “era of freeing the nipple.” She didn’t apologise. She looked like she didn’t care, she was a brat, after all, but some kind of response was still necessary. She still needed people to know that she’d heard, that she’d cared, in one way or another. Of course, I have no idea what Charli XCX actually thinks. But just as I worry about my spots, I imagine she worried about the dress comments, even if only slightly. As a woman in the public eye, how could she not? You probably expect it all the time. Actually, you don’t even need to be in the public eye. You just need to be a woman. And just as Charli knew whatever she wore could be picked apart, I thought it was better to make my spots obvious to the daring eye. I thought about the WhatsApp again, about how I had almost dared my friend to say something. Better to wear a see-through dress that’s completely opaque than something just a bit daring. Better to flaunt my spots than to try to pack them away under makeup.
Sometimes, I wonder if, no matter what we do as women, the game is rigged. Wait, I know the answer. It is. There’s no winning here, no best play. Any response, no matter how careless it seems, like me laughing about the spots that have come back again or Charli XCX making fun of the complaints, is a defense. Because all you do is wait for the attack. For every time I’ve been commented on, told to try argan oil, omega-3 supplements, La Mer creams, and everything in between — for a problem that was never my fault. One that has always been hormonal. One I have some control over, but only to an extent. One that would take most of my savings to fix on Harley Street. For all of that, I know the attack is inevitable, but the apology isn’t necessary.
And I think about us, women. How we wear clothes, amours, anything that makes us stand out, puts a barrier, because we’ll face backlash one way or another. Maybe behind our backs, maybe thrown in our faces. Actually not giving a single fuck is the conclusion I need to reach, but one I struggle to wrap a bow around. To simply be proud of the fact that my chin sometimes looks like I’m fifteen again. But hey, I should be happy about it, right? Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to want, to look that age again? So aim for the moon. Aim for not giving a fuck. Like everything else in this newsletter, it’s a work in progress for me.
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