You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin

You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin

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You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin
You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin
Skin Cycling vs Microneedling vs Simply Shrugging Into the Abyss

Skin Cycling vs Microneedling vs Simply Shrugging Into the Abyss

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

Arabelle Sicardi
Sep 26, 2022
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You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin
You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin
Skin Cycling vs Microneedling vs Simply Shrugging Into the Abyss
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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:

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