Student Blog: “Actors Can't Have Acne” (And Other Lies I've Believed)

Life is rough, and so is my skin. When I moved to New York in the fall of 2019, I was faced with major changes. A new living environment, a new school, new peers, and lots of stress... which manifested itself on my face in the form of acne. I'm not talking about a few pimples; I developed severe cystic acne which cloaked my face by the end of my first semester in New York. I couldn't hide it with makeup. I couldn't put my face on my pillow because it was so painful. Worst of all, I felt I couldn't look at people. Here I was studying theatre performance in New York City, and I did not want a single pair of eyes on me. I was engulfed with shame. I was so embarrassed about my skin that I avoided looking people in the eye. I felt the eyes of strangers on my face when I walked down the street. I even had a teacher ask me, "What's with this acne? What's going on?!" on the first day of my second semester. When I told another teacher about the remark, they responded by saying, "I know what they mean; it's really severe." Their assumption was that I was not trying to care for my skin, when that couldn't have been further from the truth. I tried everything to clear my skin, to no avail. I enlisted the help of an esthetician who looked at my face and said, "Oh, you poor, poor girl." I felt hopeless. I truly believed that I was not worthy of pursuing an acting career. I was convinced nobody would want to work with me or hire me because of my acne. Someone once told me that "actors can not have acne." Was this true? I thought about celebrities. They don't have acne. I thought about people in film and television. They don't have acne either. At least, that's what I thought. But guess what? Those were lies.

We live in a society where anything other than perfection is considered unworthy. Advertisements, social media posts, and magazine covers are airbrushed and retouched. I've grown up comparing myself to unattainable versions of people. Social media has had a big influence on what I have considered "normal." Fact is, the content we see on Instagram is simply not reality. Online, we can blur our complexions, remove acne, and choose to post our best angles. On Zoom, we can "retouch our appearance." Even movies are altered to change the appearance of actors. Emma Stone has shared that during the filming of Easy A, her stress acne was so bad that it was airbrushed out of the film. I was shocked but relieved to discover that there are actors who have struggled with acne. We are constantly sold the message that we need to make ourselves look better than we really do. There's nothing wrong with wanting to feature ourselves in our best light, but sometimes it goes beyond this, and we feel it's necessary to change how we look to be accepted by others. So how do we deal with this? For me, it's been a slow process of self acceptance.

In the past year since I began the process of clearing my skin, I have had to learn to accept my acne. At first, I refused to. I tried not to look in mirrors and vehemently avoided photos being taken of me. My tactic wasn't working, and I needed a new plan. I decided to pretend to be confident in who I was. I worked on maintaining eye contact with people. I placed post-it notes on my mirror with little positive messages so every time I looked in the mirror there was something good to see. Ironically, three months into this process the coronavirus hit the United States, and I found myself in isolation with no one to look at me or my skin. Every time I saw someone from that point on was with a mask over my acne, so no one even knew I had it.

Sometimes I get mad about the irony of all this, but I feel like my experience taught me one of the most important lessons of my life thus far: what other people think about you is out of your control. If people choose not to cast me in projects because of my acne, then so be it. That's on them. If someone feels uncomfortable looking at my face, okay. That's their problem. It is important to recognize what you have control over, and what you don't. Sometimes we don't always have control over how we look, but we can control how we present ourselves to people. People will remember your essence more than your appearance, so why waste time hiding? The biggest thing I learned was that people did not care about my acne like I thought they did. My second semester in New York, when my acne was at its absolute worst, I made new friends. I was cast in a play and was embraced by the entire cast. Nobody seemed to care about how I looked, when I was obsessing over it. One day, I had a dance rehearsal where I was inches away from my partner's face as we waltzed. I was utterly humiliated by my appearance and did not want to look at him. He reminded me that we were supposed to maintain eye contact. I said I was bad at eye contact, and he asked why. I expressed that I didn't like people looking at my face. Without missing a beat, he said, "But you have such a beautiful face!" He saw me, not my acne. That was a turning point for me. If people weren't spending time thinking about my acne, why was I?

Is my acne gone? No. Is it better? Yes. Will it stay that way? I'm not quite sure. But that's reality. I have been able to educate myself on why I breakout, and have developed tools to manage it. While I still care about the appearance of my skin, I no longer view it as my entire worth. I still struggle with accepting myself as I am, but that is a life-long process. I was hesitant to write this article because I still struggle with accepting my skin. However, I wanted to share my story to let people know that they are not alone. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, 50 million Americans struggle with acne, and 85% of people between 12 and 24 experience acne. It's a widely experienced struggle that can be extremely destructive to self perception. It's especially difficult for those of us pursuing performance careers, where people sit and watch us while we work. The truth is, we all have something we don't like about ourselves. Right now, that's my skin. If my skin were clear, it would probably be my nose, or my round face. It's a continual process to accept yourself. When I look back at my life, I'm sure I'll regret all the time I wasted worrying about being "perfect." There simply is no time to waste. So why not accept ourselves where we are at today?