No one prepared me for the amount of work it took to keep up with my acne-prone skin.
By Angely Mercado
“Teen Vogue” is celebrating its annual Acne Awards this week with a series of stories on all things acne. From knowing when to pop a pimple to understanding why some people get breakouts and others don’t, we’ve got you covered. Read all of the stories here.
My older sister started breaking out at the end of elementary school. I didn’t understand why the red bumps began showing up on her face. She wasn’t doing anything different than before, but the adults around her told her to avoid “oily” foods and to stop eating chocolate. She started buying everything she could from the skin-care department at the pharmacy: OXY pads that were supposed to sting, astringents that dried out her skin, acne scrubs with bright blue microbeads in them, and four-step lotion kits.
Nothing worked. About a year or so after she started breaking out, it was my turn. My breakouts were normal; they came and went. In some of my teenage photos my face looks fine, in others you see obvious breakouts. I looked like a lot of my friends.
Credit: teenvogue.com