Quarantine has sparked more self care in all our routines. Truth is, it’s also made a lot of us feel like we’re forced to glow up (???) in a certain way. Have the perfect skin! Get the perfect body! We’re looking at ourselves more on Zoom every day and are quite literally faced with everything that’s “wrong” with our skin. Acne can make us want to turn our cameras off (or filters ON). UM??? Let’s talk about this.
It’s kind of a lot being whiplashed with messages like: Be you! Be real! But also, be perfect like this! Through quarantine, the major pivot has been finding confidence in the healthy skin journey rather than confidence as something unlocked once we achieve clear skin. Just scroll through your TikTok #fyp or find your way to #skintok.
Healthy skin isn’t “perfect” and perfect isn’t real. Thank goodness for that—it means healthy skin is real and for everyone. While it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, we also know there’s no overnight solution to relearning this mindset. It’ll take time, and like anything, require a little love and practice. As a skin-focussed team, we deal with it ourselves. As a brand, we’re just trying not to contribute to the filtered faces. We’d rather focus our energy on healthy skin, a healthy you and a healthy us! We know you’re ready for that too.
Why does this matter?
Last time, we opened up the conversation about acne in our Celebrate Skin campaign (Psst! Allure and DailyMailUK wrote about it if you want to read more). We talked to 1000 of you about cystic, hormonal, body, and teenage acne. Tbh nothing was off limits. Since that conversation, almost two years ago, we’ve seen a lot more skin + body care brands up their inclusivity game in campaigns to reflect the beautiful range of healthy skin, and honestly, we’re so happy to see it. This includes skin with acne, scars, unblurred pores, you get the point.
Healthy skin comes in all textures and colors. Healthy skin is also home to our acne scars, dark spots, pores of all sizes, freckles and birthmarks—how special is that? The fact that healthy skin can still be home to all our spots and scars, proves that healthy skin is pretty perfect (to us).
A few stats from Celebrate Skin:
- 64% of you defined beauty as having clear skin.
- 71% said they’ve experienced depression, anxiety, low self esteem or felt alone because of their acne.
- 1 in 2 said someone in their life has made them feel ashamed of their acne.
Protect + Nurture
These are still super real feelings and experiences but it doesn’t need to be taboo. Since that campaign, we’ve also noticed a rise in products promising perfect skin. The consequence? Some pretty harsh chemicals that damage natural skin barriers. With following updates from dermatologists + skin experts, plus chatting with many of you (hi!), we’ve realized that a lot of our community have come to Blume looking for clean alternatives that would produce the same results to what would otherwise have damaged their skin. Our team wants to protect and nurture skin barriers so you’re at the right place! Nothing to hide here.
You’re still gonna breakout
In many ways, healthy skin is perfect skin. This doesn’t mean you won’t breakout from time to time (we’re human), that your pores will suddenly shrink or that the dark circles you inherited will disappear. And that’s OKAY! It’s always been important for us to make sure our community is seen and represented in our campaigns. It’s always been our way to say, you’re not alone.
What would otherwise be labelled as #flaws (with the constant pursuit of getting rid of them) in the journey to perfect skin, healthy skin welcomes them—and is home to them. If we’re all able to start shifting our mindset from chasing “perfect” to focusing on nurturing our skin back to health, we think it could be pretty amazing what would happen to not only our relationships with our skin but overall SELF LOVE. We know we can’t solve these issues overnight but it’s time to unlearn the concept of “perfect” and start learning what healthy skin means to you. So what do you say?
P*RFECT SKIN
We can all have a hand in changing this. The next generation will know healthy skin, rather than p*rfect skin. Join in our Healthy Skin conversations by following us on Instagram + TikTok @blume and Twitter @meetblume!
