SKIN DEEP

Skin DeepSkin Deep BY ISOBEL, L6

The human skin is our body’s largest organ, a soft landscape punctuated by freckles and scars: rosy, ebony, alabaster; shining like sunlit copper. If you have read To Kill a Mockingbird, you may have stumbled upon the idea that “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his

skin and walk around in it.” It is perhaps this idea that the skin encases our very being which makes me so terrified about the state of my own. Skin is like the cover of a book, concealing a story, fiercely visible, always first to be seen.

So whilst life as we know it explodes into chaos, I have been standing in front of my mirror as a painfully imperfect face stares back from behind the silver glass. I should be smiling, but each spot, dimple, frown line; each tiny triviality seems to transfix me. Don’t get me wrong; I know how superficial this is. People get spots… life goes on. Nevertheless, the pressure placed on teen girls to conform to society’s standard of beauty is so immense we may as well be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I’m sure many of you feel trapped by a similar desire to constantly inspect your appearance, especially because of the constant teams calls in which your own face “…beauty is somehow becomes more interesting than that Duffy poem or ionic equation. not simply in In times like these, we are encouraged to focus on values like friendship, compassion and love, but this can be hard when we are overcome by how you look, desperation to escape the skin we inhabit. Just last week my beautiful little sister applied a concoction of bicarbonate of soda and rosewater to but how you her face in an attempt to clear her acne. Those of you studying chemistry will be aware that bicarbonate of soda is rather alkaline and the result of her quest for glowing skin was more red-hot poker than soft radiance.

act.”

It’s a bumpy world we live in. We cannot let the texture of our skin define our own self worth. You can spend your whole life striving for perfection. You can buy all the tea tree oil and charcoal soap you want but your spots will not vanish. These worries are skin deep. In fact, acne is caused by an overproduction of oil by the sebaceous glands and contrary to popular belief, is pretty much out of your control. Anyway, perfection simply doesn’t exist.

So in this time of confinement, where screens and mirrors seem to dominate existence, we should aspire to let go of what we can’t control and focus on what we can. I hate to break it to you, but we are all little cosmic irrelevances. Nevertheless, the impressions we leave behind on others seem to haunt our existence. One of Maya Angelou’s most famous quotes is: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” So when a spot the size of Mount Vesuvius next erupts on your forehead, remember that your beauty is not simply in how you look but how you act. Having spots does not make you ugly or disgusting. It makes you human.

Smile, let your friends know you love them, help whenever you can, laugh boldly. It is impossible to erase every tiny blemish, wrinkle, and pockmark but we can decide to be kind; people remember kindness, not acne.