Everyone experiences puberty (without choice), and while going through this process of growth, it is completely normal for teens to have acne. It is still hard, however, for them to ignore the blemishes on their faces.
“I currently have a lot of acne,” said Christy Yoon, a freshman at Palos Verdes high school. “All these blemishes on my face make me self-conscious and worried that I will be negatively looked upon.”
Unfortunately, Yoon is just one of the gargantuan number of female teens who are depressed about their acne. In the article “Juvenile Acne” from the American School of Nursing, a young girl (anonymous) says to her therapist, “It’s lucky us acne-minded kids have someone like you to talk to.”
Although this young girl does not directly say that she is depressed about her acne, it is clear that she is constantly absorbed in the thoughts of it.
In addition to the self-stress these teens experience, societal pressures add on to their struggles of maturation. In our rapidly changing world today, females are often pressured to be beautiful, or so called “flawless.” In the opinions of many female teens, acne is not something that can be on their faces if they want to be “flawless” and “perfect.”
“The desire to be beautiful is understandable,” said a middle school advisor at a Palos Verdes high school (who wishes to be kept anonymous). “However, these teens need to be very open and honest about who they really are.”
Many adults, including this advisor, believe that female teenagers need to be “honest” about who they really are and what they have, not conceal the truths from society. Being natural is the true beauty in life, and the fact that a girl has to be spotless in order to be called perfect is ridiculous. It is unreasonable for a girl to lose confidence and think that she is not beautiful because she is in the inevitable process of puberty.
It is heart-sinking enough to see these young teenagers experience such stress, but the greater serious consequence to this problem is a real heartbreaker. With the peer pressure of being beautiful and the self-stress of acne added together, depression is often the result. Not only is depression unhealthy, but according to the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, it often leads to poor self-esteem and body dysmorphia, which is an even more serious matter.
Most female teenagers often believe that it is horrifying to see their faces without
some sort of concealment; they see a face full of pink, purple, even yellow spots that don’t seem to go away. Right away, they know that they are “different.” To them, it is clear that they lack the flawlessness their clear-skinned peers have.
This mistaken belief quickly leads to depression and female teens are not easily able to come out of the thought. It is unfair that these girls have to be stressed out each day about covering their acne so that it doesn’t show. It doesn’t make sense for female teens have to feel bad about themselves because of these spots.
It is unfair for them to have to fake a different personality.
Although it may be understandable that a female teen may lose some self-confidence because of her acne, it is unreasonable that she has to conceal what’s really on the surface to not be worried about public judgment. While I understand that the issues with acne may be inevitable, female teenagers should be able to comfortably express who they are without fearing what others may think of them.
