I have some problems with my skin, so I use a few products from acne.org to help keep everything under control. The stuff I use lasts me such a long time that I only have to visit the site like once a year to reorder, so I don’t visit the site that often.
I went there a bit earlier today to place my annual order, and started browsing around some other parts of the site (which I’d never done before). I found a message forum, which I looked at out of curiosity.
One of the threads, which was started way back in 2003 or something, was called “Meanest thing that someone has said about your acne”. I clicked on the thread — and then spent about an hour reading just a fraction of the posts.
I cannot believe some of the things these poor kids were writing about. There were some standard things, like “Why don’t you wash your face?” or “Haven’t you ever heard of Clearasil?”, but there were some pretty terrible ones too. For instance, one teenage guy with bad acne was working as a camp counselor and one of the 11-year-olds assigned to his group said, “Ewww, I don’t want to be with him!” right in front of other campers and counselors.
It got worse, with kids reporting that bullies at their school had said things like, “If I was that ugly, I’d hang myself” or “Why would you even leave your room?” And of course, there were countless posts about all the stares, disgusted looks, and grimaces from perfect strangers at the mall, restaurants, etc.
I also noticed that just as many of the mean comments came from “friends” or family members as from bullies.
As I was reading this, I felt so bad for the kids — especially the ones with usernames like IHateMe or AcneScarredandSad.
My God, I hope these kids know the acne will likely pass (or at least get far more manageable) and that it’s not the end of the world, though it certainly might seem like it.