Flicking through social media is enough to make anyone sigh at their own reflection and think, what am I doing with my life?
Truth is, we all suffer from a little comparison-itis from time to time. Whether that’s someone’s incredible engagement proposal, travelling across the globe or someone who always seems to have really perfect skin.
As someone with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), bouts of intense hormonal acne have always plagued my face. Over the years, as social media has become more and more engrained into our daily lives, I’ve found it increasingly hard to look at other’s picture-perfect complexions.
Growing up in the 90s and 00s meant growing up with ‘the only way is perfect’ messaging. Any minor flaw was hounded and harassed in newspapers and celebrity skin was constantly under scrutiny. How could we not internalise that?
In any case, flicking through the usual doom scroll of a Tuesday morning I paused on one celebrity in particular.
Millie Bobbie Brown stares back at me, lips pursed in a sideways kiss as if to say, “are you kidding me?”. The caption reads: @florencebymills send help!
On her face is a good dose of reality. A few spots and imperfections across her complexion break the fourth wall. “So we all get bad skin sometimes”, I think to myself. And it’s comforting.
While nobody, not even those in the public eye, owes us anything from their social media posts, not their bad days, their crap skin days or their poor mental health days — it is refreshing to see images like this shared freely amidst the buffered, smoothed and impossibly perfect FaceTuned faces.
Commenters seem to think so too, with one person saying; “thank you for normalizing breakouts,” and another, ”[sic] she makes me feel so comfortable to have acne i feel almost empowered and confident in my face bc I’ve learned that it truly is normal 🫶🏻”
Looks like we all need a little bit of realness from time to time, eh?