Hello everyone!
Hope you’ve been well, I’m kicking off this month with another Let’s Talk blog post. As you can tell, today’s post is all about real skin! When I say real skin, I mean textured, bumps, redness, dryness, acne – unfiltered skin, the way it should be.
Since the pandemic, I’ve noticed that a lot more people have taken a natural approach – whether it’s changing from a full coverage foundation to a lightweight bb cream, or even just skipping the makeup altogether, and using their favourite sunscreen. There’s been a real push in simplifying our everyday routines and encouraging us to show our real skin.
Take a look at some drugstore brands like Covergirl, who recently (in the past 12 months) released a Clean Fresh Skin Milk Foundation. Following in the trend of less is more, this “skin milk foundation” is likened to a bb cream as the texture is lightweight, light coverage and comes in a small amount of what I’d call, “umbrella shades” e.g. fair/light, light/medium, etc. There’s also been an increase in cosmetic brands expanding into the skincare market, therefore releasing “skincare meets makeup” products, such as Nudestix’s Gentle Hyra-Gel Face Cleanser – big brands are now realising there’s a huge potential to expand into the skincare market, because how else do you make your makeup look great? By having a good skincare foundation to begin with!
This push for real skin is also influenced greatly by Tiktok (at least I think so)…in such a social media fixated world, full of skin smoothing filters, it’s nice to see that people are reemphasising the message that what you see on social media isn’t real – whether it’s showing the “behind the scenes” of photos like this, or just fully embracing that real skin has pores and texture.
Some Instagram accounts that push the message of real skin are:
and there are so many more out there!
As someone who has experienced painful cystic acne in the past, it’s so refreshing to see content creators reminding us that we are not defined by our skin and that this IS what “normal skin” looks like. Last month I had a pretty bad purging experience, I broke out in whiteheads on my cheek and jawline – it wasn’t a great feeling, after all my skin progress I had ended up back at square one. I’m thankful it wasn’t as severe as the acne I experienced years ago, but nevertheless, it does not make me any less of a person. Self love is a lifelong journey, and learning to accept yourself for who you are is so so important. My skin has calmed down now and I’m working towards reintroducing some actives into my routine.
Real skin is not what you see online, in magazines or on TV, real skin is not poreless, textureless skin; it’s bumpy, it’s scarred, it’s red, it’s real.
That’s the end of this post, love your real skin, love who you are, because there’s no one in the world that could take your place!
If you have any other Instagram accounts that emphasise the real skin message, please leave their handles below! I would love to get to know more skin positivity creators. Have a great week!
With love,
VQP. usu BEAUTY