2 Faced

When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait for the skin benefits I was told would come with getting a little older. Though I didn’t have acne, my cheeks were quite rosy and I almost always had at least one pimple on my face. It was frustrating, but, fortunately, concealers existed for the pimples, and the rosiness on my face was sometimes seen as cute. It always bewildered me that people purposefully put blush on their cheeks when I wanted to get rid of mine, but I was happy it was seen as trendy. It also seemed like frequent pimples happened to almost all my peers. I was still eager though, as were my friends, to get to that stage in life when pimples would become few and far between. I also looked young for my age, very young, and I was excited to get older. To be treated as such.

I began wearing makeup towards the end of high school. It was exciting. The world of makeup. What it could do to define my eyes, lift my lashes. I was content with minimal amounts, because I had never worn any before, other than concealer. I also never wanted to look “unnatural.” Or worse, have a painted face. I kept my trips to Sephora minimal, only to restock on the few items I used: concealer, eye shadow, eye liner, and mascara. This minimalist style continued throughout all my college years, undergraduate and graduate. 

Then I returned to Boston and made a trip to Sephora that would drastically change my appearance for the rest of my remaining twenties. I was approached by an employee who asked if I wanted a free tutorial. She had me at the words “free” and “tutorial.” I said yes. In those few minutes, I imagined I was a model getting touched up. I felt like a woman. Older. Feminine. What I was always trying to achieve, that felt just out of reach. When she held up a mirror in front of my face I saw that one side looked flawless, airbrushed, and the other (makeup free) half looked blotchy in comparison. The employee told me she had applied a liquid foundation on half of my face to show me how I could look if I simply smoothed out the blemishes. I’d never realized how much rosiness and unevenness showed until I saw it juxtaposed right next to the photo-shoot ready version. Still, I had not been planning to use foundation, especially a liquid one. Seeing my trepidation, she told me that the high SPF content in it would actually protect my skin and that it was just medium coverage, not heavy. This helped calm my worry that I would end up looking like a clown. 

I walked out of Sephora that day with my first tube of liquid foundation. It was still the summer season, so I started using the liquid foundation right away, grateful for its sun protection. 

My face sometimes felt really hot wearing the new foundation and it easily stained anything it touched, but I liked the SPF content in it and the glossed over look it gave me. Contrary to what I expected with age, I began gaining facial acne, to the point where a light concealer would not have been enough to cover it up. I was relieved to already have a strong foundation that matched my skin tone in order to help hide it, consequences aside. 

I hoped the acne would pass- I was entering my mid twenties after all! But it did not. It got worse. I felt embarrassed to do anything that would require people seeing me take it off my face. When I went to the beach, I avoided dunking my head under the water, even though that had always been my favorite part of going into the ocean. What would people think if the foundation washed away and they saw the monstrosity underneath? 

I was as addicted to my foundation then as some of my clients at the time were to drugs and alcohol. I was not able to leave the house without it. I was even afraid to be in my own place without it; I didn’t want my housemates to see my bare skin. If anyone slept over, I often waited until they went to bed to take it off and rose before them to put it back on. If I knew I couldn’t manage this, I would go to bed with it still on-despite knowing it was terrible for my skin. For me, that still beat the risk of embarrassment being seen without it. 

When the acne was clearly not going away, I realized I must be one of those rare adults that gains acne in their twenties, rather than the opposite. Once I came to terms with this unfortunate circumstance, I decided to take action. Acne is curable, I thought. I didn’t want to keep suffering.

I looked to wellness social influencers to see what their recommended skin care routines and products were. I figured their suggested products would all be free of harmful chemicals. I didn’t want to end up buying cosmetics that harmed animals or could cause harm to humans. I don’t like to do research for too long (it exhausts and overwhelms me), so I primarily stuck with all the recommendations from wellness women. I also made an appointment with a well reputed dermatologist, so as to not put all my eggs in one basket. 

I originally thought I’d be buying one or two products, but apparently good skin care required much more than that. A morning moisturizer, an evening one, applicators, various oils and serums, primers, and toners. Each one cost a mini fortune, but I was desperate. I bought all the recommendations from that wellness influencer. 

Quickly, I realized that this change in routine was time consuming. Enough that I needed to wake up earlier for work and start getting ready for bed earlier. A minor inconvenience I thought for what would soon be healed acne. Though nothing seemed to happen the first couple weeks, I was reassured by product descriptions and reviewers that encouraged waiting for up to a month to see results. 

A month went by and I still saw no positive changes. Additionally, my face felt hot all the time. Every time I took off my makeup at the end of the day, I immediately applied a heavy duty moisturizer. I also had layers of stuff on my face underneath the foundation during the day, to protect and moisturize my skin, as the wellness social influencers had advised.  In retrospect, I wasn’t letting my pores breath. 

One day, I was out with my sister and her boyfriend when suddenly my sister freaked out seeing my face. She told me I was experiencing a major allergic reaction. I wasn’t too concerned, I figured some of my facial foundation must have worn off and she was seeing the acne underneath. Her boyfriend had also already seen my facial acne a lot and since I wasn’t concerned, he remarked that it was probably one of my normal acne flare ups. But when I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I gasped. This was not normal. My whole face looked like a tomato. My skin now appeared as hot as it felt. Fire hydrant red. Even the foundation couldn’t cover it up. I was mortified and disgusted. I took all my makeup off to let my face breath and covered it with ice packs. Only then did it start to subside.

This continued to happen every so often when I was in a warmer environment. Though I blamed the heat, I thought it was strange that it never used to happen to me before I started wearing heavy makeup. Luckily, my dermatologist appointment was coming up, a rare situation where I had to bear the embarrassment of showing up without my foundation on. At least I was in the right place, I figured, surrounded by people who were maybe in similar boats. 

I left the dermatologist with a prescription for Retinol and a suggested change in birth control. I swapped my birth control to one from her suggested list and switched over all my expensive moisturizers and skin products to her recommended ones. Since the Retinol was the main applicator she recommended and she didn’t even want me to use it too frequently, it cut down on time spent from previously applying a multitude of products. She also told me to avoid using it without sunscreen, but luckily that was already present in my liquid foundation. Although I followed all her instructions it still caused extreme dryness. My skin got so dry it started peeling, and not from sunburn. I called the dermatologist to let her know. She recommended using it even less frequently. 

Around this time, the pandemic had been getting more traction and masks became required, everywhere. Since my acne was all concentrated around my mouth and chin area, this meant I could temporarily stop wearing my liquid foundation?! 

Though I hated wearing a mask, it was my one chance to stop wearing that foundation and I was going to seize it. Though the mask caused some acne of its own, I started to notice my face was still overall improving. 

That’s when it dawned on me. What if I hadn’t suddenly gained acne out of the blue in my twenties? If it had just been hormonal, shouldn’t the change in birth control have fixed it, or at least improved it? What if the liquid foundation was to blame? Blasphemy. The very thing that was supposed to cover up my acne could have caused it? I did a little research about the foundation I had been using and discovered that there was an ingredient in it that could create or exacerbate acne. I was relieved to finally get to the root of the problem. I bought a different liquid foundation without that ingredient and waited for my acne to go away. Since I assumed it was just the brand that was the problem, the new one I bought was also medium coverage with high SPF content. The mask rule was starting to become optional at this point, so I needed coverup again! Underneath the new foundation, I swapped between using the expensive homeopathic products I bought and the dermatologist’s recommendations. Maybe my skin just needed variety, I thought. 

The acne remained, as well as my facial heat and discomfort.The Retinol, too, felt warming. One day, my sister was getting rid of some aloe based skin products she had been gifted (she doesn’t wear unfamiliar skin products). When I looked at the ingredients, I saw, with excitement, that though there were many listed, they were all natural and recognizable, like yucca, and chinese ginseng. Still unsatisfied with my skin, I wanted to try them out. After washing off my foundation one night, I applied the aloe product on my face. It instantly felt immensely cooling. If my skin could sing, it would have. Having hot skin during the day was one thing, but I hated experiencing it at night. I had even taught myself to sleep on my back to avoid having my face touch the pillow. That helped a little, but not by much. It wasn’t until this aloe product (and nothing else) covered my face, that my skin didn’t feel like it was burning. From there, it didn’t take long for me to come to the realization that all the moisturizers and products I had been using only further diminished my skin’s chances to cool down and breathe. I stopped the Retinol then, threw away all my expensive products, and stuck to only putting cooling things on my face at night, like rose water and the aloe cream. 

My skin began improving in great strides! But my skincare story doesn’t end there (you’re so close!). The acne and the inflamed feeling in my face during the day still remained, just slightly less noticeable. Then one day, I was talking to a friend/coworker who told me that liquid foundation had caused her terrible acne. She said the pandemic gave her the opportunity to stop wearing it long enough that her skin could heal. That same occurrence had happened to me, but I had pinned it on my specific brand of foundation. I wanted to try terminating all liquid foundation use as well, but was no longer in the masked period of the pandemic. Since it takes weeks or even years for acne to heal, she advised using a powder foundation insead, which she told me was significantly less intense on the skin and wouldn’t leave residue on everything it touched.

I was scared to have lighter coverage on my face but ready to give it a try. The powder was so much easier to take off! And made me feel less masked and artificial. Whereas applying a colored liquid on my face felt icky and deceptive, applying the powder felt whimsical and light. I wasn’t afraid to be seen doing it. For the areas where the powder based foundation did not feel like enough, I went back to my old fashioned technique of just applying concealer to those spots. I guess my younger self was smarter in some senses. More sheltered, but less manipulated. 

My face looked worse publicly before it looked better. I had only showed the world my painted face, what I’d always vowed not to do. But the painted face had damaged my real face. And the coverage of the powder was minimal. Though my acne began improving significantly once I stopped using the liquid foundation, I had to accept that people would have to see some flaws, and acne scars, if I wanted to heal. 

When I couldn’t find my powdered foundation one day, I used my prior liquid one and was shocked to experience how hot my face felt in comparison. Some of my acne immediately began flaring up again. I knew then that those goopy products really were the problem. I’ve always been sensitive to heat, so of course my skin would feel smothered in these heavy products, even the ones that were supposed to “heal” acne or just be “light” coverage. All of them have pore clogging oils. Ones that my skin had begun drinking. It didn’t matter if I removed it every night or not. The damage was already done during the day. No amount of retinol could rectify that. 

Though most of my acne is now gone, those liquid foundations left me with scars and increased rosiness (not the cute kind). Thus, I still don’t feel comfortable just going back to concealer. I use the powder foundation over facial sunscreen, during the day. At night, I just put rose water on my face and moisturize with the cooling aloe cream. My skin continues to improve, and best of all, I don’t feel like my face is burning anymore (unless I’m extremely embarrassed).

In short, I believe my foundation caused my acne, and then became essential to me in covering it up. A nasty cycle. Everybody’s skin needs are different so simply copying skin care routines from other wellness influencers only worsened my situation. My skin was crying out for me to notice what was really going on, but it took me years to hear it out. I wish I listened to my body sooner. I needed to do my own research, not just accept miracle solutions from online strangers, or listen to a doctor who was only allotted ten minutes to assess me. I truly believe that most of the answers are within us, and we are better off following our instincts rather than letting someone else tell us what to do. When something feels off even though it’s supposed to be “the answer”, when a new product or prescription isn’t working, we should listen and not doubt ourselves. 

I temporarily gave away my power, my instinct, my knowledge of self and discernment. I gave it away in exchange for the false relief of easy answers. I learned the hard way how “new” and “quick” is often too good to be true, and why it is so important to actually do the work yourself. No excuses. Research before you say yes, wait before you buy. It’s okay to say no. I wish I knew this that first time trying liquid foundation in Sephora. I wish I told the sales lady thank you, I’ll have to think about it. And left. But I didn’t know how to do this then. I was young and eager to be guided, to be “fixed.” But I wasn’t broken.

No one knows your needs as well as yourself. That’s why it’s so important to self advocate.

I’ve come to realize that, in society, women are often pressured to achieve perfection. “Just smooth over the blemishes” the Sephora woman said, back when I had little to no acne. “Just a little botox to clean up those forehead lines” people suggest, after also telling women to smile more.

“Fill in those lips.”

“Take fat out here.”

“Add fat there.”

Each “corrective” product or procedure is expensive and sometimes detrimental. Why are symptoms of expression, scars, freckles, discoloration, and blemishes even seen as bad? I think they showcase who we are. I am still learning to accept myself exactly as I am. I hope one day I can view the makeup and botox free version of myself as fully beautiful. I know that is the lens through which I see others. We are our own harshest critics, but I’m trying, every day, to be kinder to myself. I don’t want to have two faces.

I want to have one.