Discussion about this post

User's avatar
River Selby (they/them)'s avatar

I got my first dark spot when I was twenty-nine, right after my mother died from suicide. It was on my right cheek and I thought it had to be cancerous. "No," the doctor said, "you're just getting older." After that, I began to regularly use chemical exfoliants (Dr. Brandt pads to be exact) because I didn't want hyperpigmentation. The catch? The chemical exfoliants accelerated my skin's hyperpigmentation! The real catch? We all fucking age. It's a natural process. I got brown spots early because of the years I spent working as a wildland firefighter. I wouldn't trade those years for "better" skin, and I also question the binary of good and bad skin that the beauty industry is obsessed with.

What I love about you and your writing is how well you weave your personal experiences with historical and cultural narratives. I struggle with dermatillomania and I can relate to your pulling-spree. I haven't been in a big city since I left Seattle, but throughout my life I've experienced this phenomenon where I'll get dressed at home and leave the house feeling great about myself, only to get to my destination and feel suddenly overwhelmed with a baseless shame and self-consciousness. This happens to me primarily in cities, where I feel people are constantly assessing one another based on appearance. I have always felt messy and unkempt in comparison to others and it took me FOREVER to realize that feeling stemmed from perfectionism, not reality. I hope you start feeling better soon, because you 100% deserve it all, and you are 100% amazing, and your amazingness has absolutely nothing to do with your appearance. I wish we could live in a world that was interested in who we are rather than what we look like.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I moved out of NYC a few years ago and every time I go back I feel wobbly and unworthy, instantly forgetting the life I've built in a place I love where I feel held and cared for by a solid community and where I can romp around in old sweaters and boots with unbrushed eyebrows (gasp!) and look just right. I suppose the degree of vulnerability I feel in NYC is in direct proportion to how deeply I've been indoctrinated. Your experience doesn't read like hypocrisy--it reads like an access point for the rest of us. It's a personal, specific illustration of the system's imposition on the individual.

Expand full comment
48 more comments...

No posts