And so what about the cream that you said there was quite a lot of complicated instructions for?

Oh, that’s, there’s, that’s most of the creams that I’ve used. There’s always stuff like, so like, I don’t know, the branded ones will always be like, Put it in your hand, rub it, a thin layer round your face, wash it off with hot water and then pat dry. Which is really stressful. And then the other one was sort of like, Rub it in until it disappears. But the problem with those ones is I don’t know whether I’m supposed to moisturise before or after, or whether I’m supposed to wash my face at all before that. I probably am but like, whether I’m supposed to wash my face before or after in case it comes off. So like you kind of have to work out. So like I stopped using moisturiser when I used the one that you just rub in, because I figured that you wouldn’t like, and [sister’s name] was like, You probably shouldn’t do both. But then again that didn’t help because I wasn’t moisturising. So that left like dry skin and stuff. So it was kinda, it wasn’t very well explained on the back basically.

So were some of the instructions more complicated than they needed to be?

Yeah.

But also missed off stuff

Yeah.

– that you needed to know?

Yeah.

Okay.

It would be nice if they were like, Put it on your face, wash it off, apply moisturiser afterwards. Because then at least it’s just all there and then you know what you need to do and you don’t have to worry about, Should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? Which is quite annoying. Because it’s already stressful enough having spots without having to worry about what sort of treatment you have to do and how you have to do the treatment.

At the moment it’s just wash my face every morning with like warm water, soap. Eat breakfast. Straight after breakfast swallow a pill with water. And that’s pretty much it. And then in the evening wash my face. Oh, and moisturise in the morning and moisturise in the evening but after washing my face with soap and water. But before that it would be a lot more like stressful because it would be a lot more like wash my face with soap and water. Apply cream stuff. Apply moisturiser, Go on with my day and do that at the end of the day. Which made it kind of like less me wanting to do it in a way. Because at least with the pill it’s really quick and easy. Because I just take that and I’m, hopefully that gets to work hopefully. But unlike the topical where it’s a lot more, like you get, if you miss it and you get into bed you’re a lot more like, Oh, I don’t really want to get up. Because that takes a good five, ten minutes to do all that. Unlike this tablet which is just like, if I forget to do it and I’m about to go out to school I’m just quickly like, Oh, yeah quickly and just take it. So it’s not the end of the world. So I don’t know. At the moment it’s a lot quicker than it used to be.

So you said that one of the components in the 6 step treatment you use is a moisturiser. Do you remember what any of the others are? Sort of cleansing and toning?

I think the first one is to like dry your skin like thingy. It’s called glycol I think?Yeah it’s to make your skin dry so that your skin can peel and then like you won’t have scars. And then the second one it’s something to, wait let me think what I read about it, oh it’s to reduce inflamed acne. So like when you have acne and it’s usually like red and stuff so when you put the second one it won’t be too inflamed. The third one it’s to remove the bacteria I think, like to prevent the spread of acne. The fourth one is the moisturiser. The fifth one is. I’m not too sure what the fifth one is but I think it’s like, it’s to. I think it is also like to make your skin dry and then it will peel sort of thing. Yeah and then to make your skin look like more smooth like not shiny but like more nice I think. And then, oh there is also sun block

But now it’s just having that daily routine when you go up you actually have to use that face wash. Then you have to make sure it hydrates it. Then you come home, then you’re going to use a tonic to make sure, you know it smoothes everything out. Take the dirt of. Then you can also hydrate it again. Also wash it. So that daily routine is just a little bit stressful to me and when you forget it, it just makes everything worse because you forget it one day or one night, it just messes up the whole thing and you’re going to have to basically restart it again. So, yeah, just that routine of it, like, cleaning your face and you’re using three or four different types of products so that’s like, you know, if you’re tired, you don’t really have energy to do it. But if you don’t do it then your skin does suffer in the end.

Was pain or soreness part of the acne for you?

Yeah and [laughs] and it still is unfortunately. It’s just, you know just particularly nasty spots randomly breaking out – sometimes several, and sometimes only one it’s really, really painful especially with shaving as well, as that can be quite cos you’re sort of like, you know you’re chopping them all off which is really unpleasant. And especially if sort of you knock it or pick it or whatever is it makes it worse and it can be really, really painful and uncomfortable. But i- it’s notI mean it’s manageable but it’s definitely uncomfortable, so I much prefer not to have any, any sort of thing.

Could you tell me a bit more about shaving and sort of how you dealt with that whilst you had sort of active acne?

When my acne was quite bad, with shaving it was actually sort ofbecause I was breaking out a lot of sort of yellow-heads and not very nice, sort of looking infected, and with shaving it actually seemed to clear my skin up a bit because it, it got rid of all the horrible bumps and stuff like that, but that leaves behind quite bad scarring, cos I’m sure like on my cheeks and stuff like that there is a bit, and that’s probably is from shaving, and as I said it can be pretty painful. But yeah sh-, it’s not particularly bad except it does make yourcos I sort of had a bit of redness around my chin, and shaving makes that quite a bit worse I think. But it’s not, it’s not too bad shaving with acne except it can lead to scarring and a bit discomfort pretty much.

I’m personally I’m not for like buying from a pharmacy a lot of medications just cos I was saying like it’s difficult to sustain financially for the amount of time I think you would need to have it and also like it’s just there, there’s so much stuff out there that I feel like I’m unlikely to find like a miracle cure on the market that I’ve never found from like a doctor. So yeah I don’t really use them. But for a long time I did but I didn’t see any change personally.

And so those would have been like the branded ones like

Yeah.

Clearasil and Neutrogena and stuff?

I feel like they probably work for milder acne and like a few spots or whatever but I nev-, I didn’t find them very helpful. But that, but that was potentially because I couldn’t afford to sustain them, like had I been able to afford, cos some of them are like £14 for a small bottle, had I been able to afford to have that over, and also you can get through those bottle in like two weeks, three weeks or something. I’m not sure what the impact would have been, but that’s a difficult method to sustain so I would always say go to a doctor if you can just like purely financially it’s a lot more like, it’s a lot easier to afford and potentially even it’s free.

And you mentioned with the benzoyl peroxide as well having the bleaching agent in it and causing problems with towels and so on. Did that cause any other problems in terms of like ruining clothes or?

Clothes wasn’t too bad, cos I was always, I didn’t realise it would bleach things. And it was only when I looked, I started to use my towel, then it’s, it was like, Oh, okay, it’s. And then I looked into it and I found that it was sort of a bleach-based thing. And from then on I was really conscious of, so like when I’m taking a tee-shirt off, I’d like carefully lift it over my face. I remember being quite conscious of other people’s towels in, if I went to stay over at someone’s house. So after I washed my face, I’d make sure I’d do it really thoroughly, and then just like try and pat it dry as gently as possible so I wouldn’t stain anyone’s towels.

Because I like to try and get any products that I have on my skin off in the evening. if I am going out now or staying over with friends now – that can be a bit of a pain, because if I can’t take it off, I feel quite like, oh no, I am going to end up with really bad skin tomorrow. So I do always try and come back and take it off, but. I spose that’s a bit annoying. And also when I go on things like the Duke of Edinburgh Award and my assessor was like, Why do you have all these products in your bag? I was like, Well, I don’t want my skin to be really bad after four days [laughs] of hiking. So he thought that was a bit strange but I wanted to take them with me [laughs].

So he didn’t quite understand that it was quite important for you?

Yeah, I don’t think he understood quite how important I thought it was to make sure that I had the right products and how much I cared about yeah making sure that my skin was okay.

If you’d, if you’d gone back to me then and said, Look, here’s, here’s make-up product, try it out. I probably would have tried it out. It’s just I’ve never actively seeked out a make-up product like a foundation or anything to sort it out, but now my mum, sort of, recommended me like something called BB Cream.

And that, I mean it might, might be OK for someone with acne, but for me who’s kind of got like a little bit damaged skin and I can still kind be a little bit red and blotchy sometimes it just gives like a nice matte finish to the skin, but when, like I said, when I had acne I didn’t, I didn’t really use anything.

It’s just now after, it’s kind of nice but if I could go back I would have probably used stuff to cover it up.

So do you use BB Cream on like a daily basis now or?

[Sighs] I’d say, out of the seven days of the week, I probably use it maybe three days. Like if I’m going out like – if I’m going to the gym, I’m not going to use it, but if I’m going say around town or, you know, I’m going to, you know, going out on a night out or I’m going to like a meeting somewhere

Yeah

I’d probably use it then. Because you don’t really need to use that much and a, a little tube lasts quite a while so.

I don’t, I mean there have been odd days where I’ve felt really embarrassed about my skin but, well I mean there have been odd days and I would generally make sure that I wore make-up if I were going out to see people. If I were going out to the library I’d, I just don’t care but if I am actually seeing somebody then I would make sure I wore make-up. But while there have been odd days where it’s gotten me down they really have been odd days. I wondered when I say this kind of thing if I am protesting too much and actually it is terribly important to me and I’m just not allowing myself to acknowledge it but I, it’s just not really something that I’ve noticed myself worrying about that much. I don’t feel like it’s affected my friendships or my social life or my relationships. And obviously, given the choice, I would rather not have acne but given that this is the situation I am in, I’d rather just get on with my life and not worry about it that much.

Also I used to have like really, also like if you have acne and you have a fringe or if you have like hair that just falls over your face, you can really make the acne worse, because the oil and bacteria from your face gets under your hair- I mean from your hair gets onto your face and stuff, yeah.

So has that meant that you’ve changed your hairstyle?

Yeah, like when I was a teenager and back when I had bad acne, I used to have hair that practically covered my face. And I think I was also partially because of that cos you don’t feel comfortable with yourself. Yeah, but it’s fine now.

That’s a bit of a catch 22′, isn’t it. If you want to cover it but it’s making it

It’s making it worse, yeah.

I used to always wear my hair kind of like, like down like this, so that it wasn’t as obvious. Like say if I pulled it back in like a pony tail, then you could kind of see it. And I used to like prefer going to like parties or things when it was dark, so you, you couldn’t really see it that much. And I used to wear, I used to do my eye make-up like really nicely. So then people would kind of l-, notice that rather than looking at my acne. And, cos I couldn’t really wear any foundation or anything. So I used to do like eye make-up and then like really bold lipstick, so people would kind of like notice that rather than the spots.

Yeah so well because we weren’t, obviously we weren’t allowed to wear it at school in secondary school until well like sixth form they didn’t really mind so much so yeah I think I must, yeah I was in like the first year of sixth form when I started wearing foundation and it just, arr, that was so liberating and even though my skin was a bit better them because I’d had the first course of Roaccutane (isotretinoin) and it had helped but like my skin wasn’t always perfect and obviously it was, I think it was still kind of like recovering from you know, the sort of the treatment and stuff. So it definitely, like it didn’t look perfect all the time. And so like the fact that I could just like cover it all up and like, yeah, and just look like everyone else does, that was really nice. and, and obviously then like later on when I had to go back for more treatment I like when I went with my mum, the dermatologist said like, Well so, you know, what’s it like? and she said, Well I don’t really know because Naomi always wears make-up so I don’t see it. [laughs] and like, yeah then, oh then obviously people would say, Well, you know, if you didn’t wear make-up then of course you wouldn’t have bad skin, and I just felt like they just didn’t understand [laughs].