Skin Cycling vs Microneedling vs Simply Shrugging Into the Abyss

Spoiler: do what the spirit moves you to do, we are all dying anyway!

I do not have perfect skin nor will I ever go on Accutane or birth control pills, so I may never have Clean Girl/glass-skin suitable for a “no airbrush” campaign splashed across billboards, taxis, subway stations, and weekend-only mall activation storefronts. Sometimes this deeply irritates me, as a beauty writer and general vain person, but mostly I have come to terms with it and I have developed a deep appreciation for high-coverage concealer, zit stickers, and a very trained ambivalence. And truly, I love zit stickers. They are a pleasure to me, and sometimes I wear them like face jewelry just because. In my Tumblr era I used to write little flash fiction about all the acne bumps along my cheekbones, how I would sometimes pretend I was Maleficent, the monstrosity of sebum buildup transforming me into something mythical and therefore less mundane if not conventionally beautiful. If I can’t be perfect, I can be mythical, monstrous, terrifying - and honestly, that might be preferable.

At the end of the day, flaws can be rewritten to be origin stories. And I’m a storyteller. I want stories. I want the fantastic, memories that seem more like myths - the kind that people lean into you to hear you tell them. I am lucky to have a lot of those kind of stories already. I got to spend my early twenties traveling the world writing things I wanted to, and what matters in those memories isn’t how perfect my skin was but the experiences I got to have. I researched beauty wherever I wanted to go. I can’t remember if I had bad breakouts in any of these places. It would be depressing to me if I could.

Acne and I have a relationship together, all across my body, and fighting it is not a war I’m ever going to win. Would it be cool to never feel pressure to have blemish free skin? Yeah, sure. But do I also find enjoyment in the rituals of beauty and the pursuit of an unreachable goal? Yes. Some days I do have great skin, and it is a high that makes doing my makeup just that much more pleasurable - I focus less on texture and color correction and more on playing with color, angles, highlight. And the rest of the days I find pleasure in learning what a difference a minute makes to setting a concealer properly. Learning patience in the process and seeing the difference in how everything fits together is something I find satisfaction in. I am better at technique because of my breakouts, I am more invested in learning about efficacious skincare ingredients, about the importance of clinical tests, about oxidation, about skin barrier health - because that knowledge makes me understand my body better, and knowledge is as close to control as I’ll get. And it is something I can share while perfection is an individual reward mostly reliant on great genes. But knowledge? Yes, I can give it out, to whoever, forever, and they can share it too. I keep learning how to do things better than I did them the day before, and if I couldn’t find joy in that I would be miserable. Find joy when you can, we are all going to die before capitalism is destroyed. We might as well get some fun out of it.

I take pleasure in trying out different beauty services and sharing knowledge with you. I would probably do it less if I had perfect skin. I’d be afraid of messing it up, the perfection would feel fragile - NOBODY MOVE / VALUABLE ART IS PRESENT / LISTEN UP FIVES A TEN IS SPEAKING - but if I’m already breaking out, I can always immediately see the results. This year I have focused on trying out different kinds of facials and changing my skincare routine rituals to see if it would make a big difference. Many of you have asked about skin cycling vs microneedling, knowing I’ve been trying out facials all across Los Angeles. So here are my thoughts: