My skin is the worst part of my body…
And it’s everywhere.
I feel like people are judging me because I have huge cysts under my skin, scars and pit marks that won’t be disguised no matter how much make up I slap on. When it comes to body acceptance, I can come to peace with most of me but the bits of me that don’t work are the most difficult to accept. And I hope that’s ok. I want to be honest. Lots of people assume i’m the most body positive person ever and that the best way to practice body acceptance is to reinforce the good things and never talk about the challenging things.
I have parts of me that I can’t accept, or that I’m resigned to ignoring in favour of better things. However I can’t ignore that my pancreas and thyroid are screwed, it’s a daily battle. My social anxiety and depression are also ever present. And the thing that holds me all together, literally, is covered in blemishes and scabs. And bruises, slash marks and cigarette burns.
I punish my skin because it lets me down. It does a pretty good job of holding all my guts inside, but it doesn’t measure up to normative beauty ideals. No matter how many lotions I apply or tablets I choke on, nothing has worked. So when I was young I decided to punish it. Squeezing, scratching, picking, burning, slashing and tweezing. It only just recently occurred to me that I’ve been self harming in this way for so long.
I don’t know what to do about it anymore. I’m 30 years old and I have so many scars, no I have scars that lie over scars. My skin is basically a network of scarred hide, and still I get more cystic acne and blemishes. I’m pretty sure tablets won’t help at this stage, unless it’s roaccutane. I’ve always shied away from that option when dermatologists bring it up because I already deal with mental illness and depression is a common side effect. You’ve got to get blood tests every few weeks too, and I don’t need any more needles in my life.
I have used make up since I was 12 to mask my skin, and at one stage I was so ridden with anxiety that I would not answer the front door without it. I still struggle with my dependence on make up, but I’ve been posting more and more photos of my bare skin here on tumblr and trying to make myself visible. Because fuck, this is my skin. Even though it doesn’t conform to most people’s standards and makes me feel like I am gross and unattractive, I exist within it and it is part of me. I am valid and deserve visibility, and if people want to erase my image because my skin isn’t clear and unmarked it’s not about me. It’s about lies they’ve been told about what beauty is and how it is constructed.
I want to be able to remove negative judgements about parts of my body. I’ve always referred to my skin as bad or terrible and even though I know it doesn’t help me I can’t eradicate how I feel just as simply as striking out words. Practicing better internal self talk can help, yes, but it takes a long time. And why do I have to be the person working on her own self talk? Why isn’t everyone looking at the sheer diversity of body things and stuff and realising that the normative ideal is restrictive and harmful, even for people who fit within that ideal!
So I don’t know what this spontaneous vomit of feelings about my skin is about, but I just wanted to talk about it. How I feel about my casing, how I am still learning about my relationship with this body. As much as I rant about shitty “cosmeceuticals” and the beauty industry, I STILL BUY THIS SHIT THAT DOESN’T WORK! I am still paying in to the dream. Right now I’m trying out a High Profile Skin Care Regime Endorsed by Celebrities. I’m that desperate.