My acne has been in the forefront of my mind lately, even more than usual. I'm just now starting to get over a really horrible breakout on my chin. I'm trying some new products, I'm eating better, exercising more, all that good stuff. But my mind has been wandering through the last two decades of my life that acne has taken over, and I thought of something that happened when I was about 15 years old. It still makes me cringe, but I wanted to share it and encourage anyone else who stumbles upon this thread to share their "most embarrassing acne memory" 
Like I said, I was 15. My aunt was having a Mary Kay party - you know, when a bunch of women sit around and "oohh" and "aahh" over skincare products and makeup samples while an all-knowing consultant makes her recommendations. My mom encouraged me to attend with her...I said no way, everyone is going to look at me because I'm the one with the acne. She said no, no, it will be fine. So I reluctantly decided to go. I figured I'd chat with some family, have some snacks, sit through some product demonstrations and be done with it. Oh, no such luck...
The consultant had us all sit around the dining room table in front of our own personal facial stations...and guess what step one was? Remove your makeup. I froze. I wanted to hide. I wanted to cry. I know I was crying on the inside. At the time, I wasn't very skilled at makeup application, but I did the best I could to cover the mess that was my face. I didn't let ANYONE see me without full makeup. I made eye contact with my mom, and she just nodded her head, as if to say "it's okay, just do it". I wanted to run, but I was afraid that would be more embarrassing. Boy was I wrong. I should have ran. I took the makeup remover cloth that was supplied, and started wiping my face. One was not nearly enough to strip my layered foundation, concealer, and powder down to bare skin. The consultant said, "Oh honey, you'll need a lot more". Gee, thanks. So there I sat, wiping my disguise off. A pile of dirty cleansing cloths at my station. Everyone else had finished up with one cloth, barely a smudge of makeup on them. So they sat there and watched me struggle to clean my skin, watched my red, sore, acne-ridden face emerge. My tears blended in with my damp face. I guess I can't blame them for staring - they weren't expecting what they saw. Oh sure, they all knew I had "some skin troubles" but no one realized it was full-blown acne. When I finally finished the consultant said something like, "Now that we're all through, let’s get started." I wanted to die. I sat there as she gave me samples of their oily skin line, had me wash and tone my face. Then she had me put my face in the light so she could help me choose the right foundation so I wouldn’t have "that awful line of demarcation". At least by this time most everyone was involved in their own facials and choosing their perfect products. The focus wasn't on me anymore. My mom purchased a starter kit for me and I used the products for a long time. They were nice, though I don’t think they did anything to help my skin. The makeup was nice too, but too expensive to keep using. After all, my only income at the time was my baby-sitting money
And that’s not the moral of the story anyway. That incident scarred me also as badly as my acne has. For the last 20 years of my life I have been hiding behind makeup, trying my damndest to look presentable. In that particular situation, I was somewhat "forced" to bare myself in public. It was humiliating. You may think, oh but at least you were around family. Honestly, I would have rather been with a group of strangers. I still had to face these people in everyday life and I was convinced that when they looked at me, all they saw was my bare skin from that party.
Life goes on, my acne got better, then got worse, and that vicous cycle continues to this day. Over the years my makeup skills have improved. My approach to controling my acne is multi-faceted. As an adult, I would never put myself in a situation like that. And my mom meant well and by no means was it her fault, I think she wanted desperately to help me.
How about you guys? Any embarrassing moments that you want to share?
Ouch that story is painful, I cringed as I read it. How extremely humiliating for you, I bet you wished you'd never bothered going to the stupid Mary Kay party at all. In can totally relate to having to wear thick foundation to cover bad skin and fear of being seen without it, people used to pick on me for wearing the wrong colour/too much etc but back then felt I had no choice but to hide behind it, I couldn't bear to look in the mirror and had been so badly bullied that I wanted to pretend my acne wasn't there. I used to wear so much that as soon as I got home from school I'd have to wash it all off due to discomfort of it sitting on my skin then hide myself away until the next day.
You can't win! If you go bare faced people make comments, if you wear foundation people tell you how awful your make up looks. Depressing.
I'm much better at applying it these days too! And my acne is much better than that now (most of the time!) although at age 31 my skin still plays up a lot and has never been what one would describe as 'nice'. Sometimes I wonder if it ever will get totally better. Out of everyone I know, my acne has definitely been the most persistent which is very disheartening.
Omg every sentence of that made me cringe and you described those feelings so well that it brought up at few of my own.
I went to school to be an esthetician. Although my skin wasn't as bad then as it is now, it was still awful. The first day of school we walk into this lab, and I think this is where we start watching the demos. Nope, we were the "client" and we'd be getting facials that day. I stammered and tried to incoherently babble my way out of it but no luck. I sat there as this girl removed my makeup with who knows what kind of clogging cleanser. I was on retin a at the time so my face was on fire, plus my anxiety didn't help. So the instructor comes around "oh wow you are RED! Let me get everyone over here so they can see a good example of melasma." As the other students gathered around it was all I could do not to jump off that tale and run. I've had a few more incidences like that in school but none that traumatizing. I swear by the end of my program I wanted to write a letter to the school about the harm of almost every day facials and too frequent skin treatments lol
Oh how awful, being used as an example! Do people not realise that others actually have feelings? Ridiculous.
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