I was showing someone a photograph of my cat when I realised just how bad things had become. “Whoa, that’s a lot of selfies,” they said, prompting sweat to start trickling out of every orifice in my body. It was a lot of selfies: 106, to be precise. They weren’t the pretty kind that you’d post on Instagram in exchange for some flame emojis, either. They were close-up, brightly lit shots of different parts of my face, tracking the progress of various skin issues I’d been experiencing. “It’s for an article,” I snapped back, quickly grabbing my phone out of this poor person’s hands.
My skin wasn’t something I ever had any intention of writing about; the plan was simply to smother myself in concealer and whatever fancy product I could afford until it improved. But then I started speaking to friends, and it transpired that skin anxiety was something many of us were experiencing. For all of us, it was also taking its toll.
