Bad skin

[newsboyhat]

So I am reading this YA novel. There is an undesirable boy the protagonist uses to "explore" sexuality--and emphasis on the "uses": she basically seduces him, clams up when he goes too far for her comfort, then gets him fired from his job. Yeah, okay, he's not the nicest or most pleasant guy to have around, clearly a foil to the majestic and overly

Comments

[asakiyume]

I know :-(

I got acne rosacea in my second pregnancy, and it flared to hideous in my third pregnancy. Right now I take antibotics every day to keep it under control. So yeah. I always, always am envious of people with good skin.

To answer your question, I think people subconsciously see bad skin as a sign of underlying illness. Or maybe it's overlying illness. You can be suffering from all sorts of maladies and no one will ever know, but if you have sores--and pimples, I think, count in people's minds as sores--then people's subconscious says "Yikes! Danger!"

It's very depressing that the treatments for skin conditions are so limited and dangerous, too.

As for you, though, my dear, you are beautiful, you really are. Do not fret about your skin. You are beautiful in your photos and a thousand times more beautiful in real life.

[sartorias]

Yeah, being a person who still gets zits at nearly sixty, I totally hear ya.

[hjordis]

It's interesting that you use weight as the closest comparison (I agree with you, btw, on everything) because I feel as if a YA author used weight as shorthand for a "bad" character, people would be more apt to criticize. I've read critiques of Harry Potter where they accuse J.K. Rowling of it (the Dursleys and so on)!

For some reason, I guess bad skin is something you can mock and deride without criticism, which is sad and wholly unwarranted.

[calligraphe]

When I was a teen, people used to always tell me pimples were just an annoying pain (most) people went through. Usually it would be accompanied by a pitying tone and downcast eyes

I had the same experience. I always got the sense that pimples were a sort of shared pain, since they are a common affliction. Still, complexion could be always be leveraged against self-esteem. I remember I usually just had to be thick-skinned (hah!) about it into an opportunity to create a sorta embarrassed camaraderie with my classmates.

And that works, yeah, but everyone expects bad skin to go away after you've finished riding out the aftershocks of puberty. I still have bad skin, and it feels like a moral failing. I know it isn't just me imagining things, too, for the exact same reason you've identified: "bad skin" is sekrit code for "nasty person". Which pisses me off.

[danceswithwaves]

I agree. I had acne starting in fifth grade and started going to a dermatologist in sixth grade. Finally, ten years later, it seems to be under control (but note I did not say "gone"). It's probably the one thing about my appearance I really am self-conscious about -- I've forcefully ignored every other confidence-withering idea society has dumped on me.

I think asakiyume has a point about the illness thing. It's a subconscious ick-factor that no one really talks about. (Whereas "proper" body weight has fluctuated based on society's ideas, what made you look wealthy, etc, acne has never really been "in fashion.")