Search Instagram for #acne and you'll find the most popular post isn't an ad for a cleanser or a makeup tutorial on how to layer concealers. Instead, it's a screen-shotted, highly liked Twitter post by 18-year-old artist and acne blogger Hailey Wait. "Reminder that acne doesn't make you ugly," it reads, "a heart full of hate does."
Wait, who describes herself as "pro pizza face," is one of a growing subset of influencers focused on a new self-love movement: acne positivity. The same way that body-positive bloggers encourage you to embrace stretch marks, the acne-positivity community is working to destigmatize zits. Wait and other bloggers like Kali of @myfacestory and Em Ford of @mypaleskinblog regularly post photos of their unretouched, blemished skin, with captions like "Acne or not, you are beautiful" and "Your skin isn't your life, so don’t make it that way."
"I got tired of waking up each morning and covering my skin up, and over time I noticed that it only made my acne worse," says Wait. "I needed to let my skin breathe, and so as an experiment I started posting selfies on my Instagram that showed my acne. I was expecting loads of hate, but at the time I had a small but very loyal following, and instead of being disgusted, the majority of the feedback I got was praise." Today Wait has more than 135,000 followers who've taken a great interested in both her skin and her art.
When teen blogger Leia Immanuel, who posts under the account @artdr3am, started getting comments like "I wish I looked like you" or "I want to be as perfect as you are," she decided to set her audience straight with a makeup-free selfie. "You always see these 'perfect' people with the ideal skin and body visual on social media, and I wanted to spread the message that these people have flaws too, so don’t compare yourself to what you see online," she says. "Acne is OK, scars are OK, so don’t be ashamed of it!"
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Acne art even went viral earlier this year, when FIT student Peter DeVito shot a photo series of unedited skin close-ups emblazoned with phrases like "retouch" and "acne is normal." Cara Delevingne reposted one of Devito's photos, adding, "It's so wrong that if I had taken that picture of myself, then I wouldn't have posted it."
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But it isn't just teens embracing acne online. Celebrities in their twenties and thirties are also having more honest conversations about their skin. When fans noticed Kendall Jenner’s breakouts on the Golden Globes red carpet, the response was overwhelmingly positive. "Ok but @KendallJenner showing up and strutting her acne while looking like a gorgeous star is what every girl needs to understand,” wrote one fan. Jenner responded: "Never let that sh*t stop you! 😎✨"
Where posting a makeup-free selfie was once a way to garner glowing press, that same praise can now be said for sharing an unedited photo of red, angry spots or zit cream. Chrissy Teigen's shared photos of her "period skin"—and how the inflamed splotches come like clockwork each month. Rachel Bloom posted a photo from the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend set to show how hormones and stress manifest on her face.
Riverdale’s Lili Reinhart wants fans to know that her secret skin care ingredient is “movie magic.” As she told HelloGiggles, “I have a makeup artist doing my makeup all the time, and I do have beautiful lights on my face to kind of block out some of the blemishes.” Bachelor contestants—once an object of ridicule over their stereotypical, clone-like portrayals of beauty—are now, too, refusing to participate in the fantasy of perfect skin. “When people tell me my skin is ‘flawless’ but I’m wearing three different foundations,” Bekah Martinez joked in her Instagram story. Just this week, Justin Bieber (of all people) sent headlines into a tailspin after deeming "pimples are in" on Instagram.
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For followers, acne-positive bloggers help challenge the notion of “good” skin. Ruth Knight, a 25-year-old London-based PR specialist, used Roaccutane (the non-U.S. version of controversial acne medication Accutane) to help fight her acne. “I found the Instagram Roaccutane community so supportive when I was going through the treatment,” says Ruth. “It also helps knowing that you’re not alone in what you find difficult: Why should something that is largely out of my control—and a perfectly normal problem to experience—make me feel so bad?”
"In the era of body positivity, we often forget to see our skin the same," says Mary Gage, 25, a blogger in upstate New York. "I personally suffer from hormonal acne and try to cover it up whenever possible. If more influential beauty and skin care accounts were honest about their struggles with acne and attempted to normalize it, I think they could create a broader definition of body positivity."
Even for those who don't get regular breakouts, acne positivity can help put those rare zits in perspective. "A few months ago my skin went. I started putting everything on my face, but nothing really worked—it was very stressful," says Carrie Reichardt, a 25-year-old in New York City. "I wished I knew about this acne positivity back then, but I would still have wanted to treat it. I think the idea of acne positivity also invites people to talk about their acne and not feel ashamed to ask for help."
Much like the body-positive community, the pro-acne community takes to comment sections to cheer on their torchbearers. But lurking among the enthusiastic supporters are “concern trolls,” people who give unsolicited, unwelcome advice. Wait says that she “never asked” for advice on how to get rid of acne but gets plenty of it in her comments. “People kept telling me to wash my face, as if that must have been a foreign concept to me. The idea that people with acne don’t do everything in their power to get rid of it is so absurd to me because we’re often the ones who put more care into our skin,” she says. In fact, some even collaborate with skin care brands, like Kali of @myfacestory, who often posts about the acne-scar treatment Banish, and Em Ford, who's partial to RCMA foundation.
This does lead to a somewhat gray area within the community. Acne-positivity bloggers straddle a nuanced line between fighting acne stigma and working to clear their skin. Unlike some body-positivity role models (think Ashley Graham, who’s made it clear that she has no interest in losing weight), acne influencers actively and openly test products, diets, and treatments, all the while exhibiting that those efforts and acne positivity aren't mutually exclusive. The goal, these influencers say, is simply to accept your skin through every phase of the journey to clear, or not-so-clear, skin. "Recently my acne has started to clear up, and I do embrace that too because it’s a natural part of the process," says Wait. "It only means that I’ll focus on acne scars next, because I know there is still quite a lot of stigma left. I don’t think I’ll ever have perfect skin—and I want to embrace that in all of its forms."
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Still in its infancy, it's hard to say whether the movement will catch on beyond social media and become a more normalized part of the imagery we see every day. Similar to how Aerie and Target pledged to remove airbrushing from their promotional materials, CVS will no longer edit photos on beauty advertisements. The move shows how brands can continue to sell women products without encouraging an unattainable standard of perfect, blemish-free skin. So it's possible that spotting a zit here or there in an ad might not be far off.
