It was mostly just my face. I got a, like a little bit sort of just here [points to chest/collar], and occasionally on my back, but not very badly at all. So that was quite lucky, yeah.

And were there any differences that you felt about the sort of facial acne versus like the sporadic bits on your back and chest?

In a way I was I think more self-conscious when it was not on my face. So it’s kind of more socially acceptable to have acne on your face rather than anywhere on your body. So I wouldn’t sort of, even now if I, I’ll occasionally get sort of a little spot here [points to chest/collar], I wouldn’t wear anything that shows it cos I feel like that has more of an implication of, you know, She’s not clean rather than anything else, yeah.

Okay. So would you hide that acne like with clothing or anything?

I’d cover, I’d cover up with clothing. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t put anything on it though I don’t think, yeah.

I think with the back and the chest acne it’s sort of, it’s harder to have topical stuff, cos if you have to put it on yourself it’s quite hard. I mean it’s not too hard but it’s, it’s different to having it on your face, and as well sort of topical stuff’s a bit harder to put on cos it’s over aespecially on my back it was pretty much my shoulders completely, all the way along there, which is a lot aa bigger area. So, topical stuff isn’t, isn’t as good I don’t think, so it’s better to take pills and stuff like th- for that. But because I only had a bit on my chest and not, I mean not too much on my face at that point, then it was fine to just put loads on my back. But it’s a lot better to, I found anyway, to take Roaccutane (isotretinoin) as the pill because that just, it basically just clears up, it up everywhere, and you don’t even need to focus on specific parts of your body or anything like that.

When I was younger it tended to be more on my face, across my nose and cheeks and my forehead. Now it tends to be more along my jaw line. I still get them all across the front of my chest, and all the way down my back. The ones on my back tend to be smaller now, which is good. But I don’t know, it’s still things like when you’re washing yourself in the shower and you can feel all of them. Even though I can’t necessarily see them as much, you still know they’re there. I don’t tend to get them anywhere else. So my arms, my legs, the rest of, the rest of my body seems to be okay, but. Yeah it’s, it’s not pleasant to, to have them everywhere. Especially when you can’t get to them, almost. Like the ones on your face you can make sure you’re washing and keeping clean, and things like that. But the ones down your back, you can’t really help that. Try to wear more natural fabrics and things like that, when I have a breakout, just so they can breathe a bit better. Like I say, I’ll wear things that have more of a collar or go higher up, just to cover them up. But that’s not, it’s not wholly impractical. A little bit when it’s summer, because don’t want to be covered up, or end with a gazillion tan lines. But it’s, it’s, it’s been okay.

When it’s on your face it’s just like every time you look in the mirror like you see it, like, if you, if you’re looking at someone in the, you know, you usually make eye contact, but if you see their eyes move – like even if it’s just down to like, say, this side of your face, you know, that they’re kind of, they’re kind of looking and you, it just makes you feel really self-conscious.

And, and, yeah, like every time you look in a mirror, I don’t know, even from a distance you can see like it’s, when it’s flaring up and it’s just really difficult to deal with.

If you go swimming, like if you’re wearing make-up obviously it’s going to come off. So I think that did kind of bother me like I never really wanted to get my face wet because like I’d be kind of exposed as it were. But like but we didn’t really often do that kind of thing. But yeah it was definitely something I thought about. And like on holidays as well like we, we sometimes went on like cos I really like horse riding so like sometimes we’d go like riding or something and then like, you know, you want to like splash your face cos its really hot, like you’re in holiday, but like I’d never really want to and then [laughs]. So yeah I think, I think yeah it did kind of affect my behaviour but probably not my clothing so much because there was nothing I could do.

The soreness definitely is an issue. For example the ones I’ve got round my jaw line here [points to right jawline] are really quite sore at the moment. So much so that I’ll sort of wince if I catch one of them, which I did at work the other day. And you kind of don’t want to show that you, you’re in pain. Cos then people go, Oh, are you alright?’ And then you have to explain, Oh, I’ve caught one of my zits. And that’s embarrassing. So that can be quite difficult. I had one on my nose a couple of days ago that I just caught when I was scratching, and it bled. And I couldn’t see that it was bleeding, and someone else had to say, “Oh, did you realise you’re bleeding?” And that’s quite embarrassing, to have to go and then patch yourself up, and have a scab on your nose for a couple of days.

With the creams it was just – I think they’re very aggressive. And different ones would be worse than others. So I think with a lot of the gel or the lotion, they dry my skin out really badly and I’d have like sort of cracked skin around my mouth. And obviously you couldn’t really get them like near sensitive areas but if you accidentally did, and I’d have like kind of almost eczema-like sort of bits on the sensitive eye areas and around the mouth in particular. And that, and so that’s not that pleasant. But then I think my doctor did eventually give me one that was a bit more moisturising. And I also learnt to use like slightly less [laugh]. I think there’s always a temptation and most of it is that you use a lot of the product, when actually the recommendation is to use like a pea-sized amount and I was probably using like a handful [laughs]. So it was probably exacerbated by that.

I mean, yeah, especially if you have shave and you have acne, that’s probably the worst combination you could ever have, because your skin, that alone, you know, just when you’re shaving there’s a blade close to your skin which is already taking that hair off, then you’re probably going to end up slicing acne into little pieces and you’re going to bleed more. It does sound disgusting but it’s like, how it is. So, no matter how you look at it, if you shave or something like that, it’s just going to make it worse.

Was that a concern for you when you sort of first started shaving, if you had acne at that time?

Yeah, I just wouldn’t shave.

Yeah.

To be honest like, it comes to that point where you experience it once or twice and you know, you’re using an aftershave but you’re still using prescribed creams on your face that just like combines, and it’s either one or the other basically. So you shouldn’t really combine chemicals to begin with. So that’s just going to make it worse.

With the bra fastenings

Yeah.

is that something that you did research on, when you looked up about

Oh, yeah. I did look up some stuff about that. Like, for instance, you have bras that can do a clip in the middle so you get the bra straps instead of being like that you get them to cross. But it’s, as I say, it’s quite difficult for my size at the moment, I’m quite small but my cup size is quite big so it’s kind of difficult to get the good bra straps for that. And I would like to feel comfortable in that department as well, that you don’t walk around feeling like, OK you can, everyone can see, so I’m quite comf-, used to looking at clothing that fits every part of the body that I have now and how it also interacts with my skin. So I still feel comfortable, more comfortable with various clothes that kind of cover my spots up a little bit, even if I have tiny little spots, then I would still want to cover them up as much as I feel comfortable in, yeah.

Every so often I’ve had a few spots on my back and a few on my chest but nowhere near as many as I’ve had on my face. And right now I’m not actually sure but I think I’m, I probably don’t have any on my chest and my back.

Do the different locations have any sort of significance for you in terms of the way you feel about it?

Now that is an interesting question because I do remember once considering wearing a backless dress and deciding not to because of acne I had on my back which is interesting because why would that be more of a problem? Is it that it’s a lot harder to cover it up with makeup? I mean I guess I could have had a friend to help me but it’s not really to ask, you want to ask of your friend. It could also be because I’ve got a kind of a faint birth mark on my back but I definitely remember it being the acne that was the problem. Is it because it somehow seems acceptable to have acne on your face and not on your back? That could be it. I remember my housemate last year, she had had acne and had taken a course of I think it was a steroid cream that had cleared it up. And kind of going on and on about how she had bacne’ and how much she hated it. I think that kind of created a bit of a stigma about back acne that for some reason I don’t feel about face acne.

And was the occasion with the dress was that since you had that housemate or was that a previous experience?

I think it was since I had that housemate, I think she was a bad influence on me [laughs]. It’s not something I think of very much but this is primarily I guess because I don’t expose my back that often.

Could you tell me a bit about what you first noticed and where you first noticed acne coming up?

It was, I sort of first noticed it on my face itself. And that was one of more places, one of the places which was sort of the worst. It was predominantly my face through secondary school as well purely because people didn’t see my other, you know, my back, they didn’t see my back. Or they’d only see that if it was during P.E. and you’d have to get changed so they’d only see it then. But I’d sort of found different ways to come around that, to stop people from noticing by, say, wearing my P.E., P.E. clothes underneath my school uniform and different things like that. To just sort of save that hassle

Yeah.

of having to deal with people like that.

Sort of being quite conscious of having sort of spots, particularly on my chest, meant I didn’t go swimming for a very long time, because it was on display sort of then and it sort of affected anything from sort of the clothes that I bought and things like that. So it was more me being self-conscious about it and not wanting to show it that had an impact on the things that I did.

Could you say a bit more about the clothes that you bought and how it had an impact?

Yeah, so because my scarring is in this sort of area [points to chest] I’ve got a high neck thing on now, but I didn’t buy any clothes that could possibly show it for quite a long time. Because I didn’t want anybody to see the sort of the scarring and the scabs and things. which was always a bit of a shame, because when I’d go shopping with my friends and it would be like, arr this is really nice’ and I’d be like well, I’d sort of pretended I didn’t like it so much, because I didn’t want it to show. Yeah and that sort of, that didn’t change until I was about sort of 16 and my mum went and did some shopping and she bought me some tops which I really liked and I wanted to wear despite them showing it, so.

Do you remember what it was like when you did do that, when you started wearing tops which maybe showed a little bit more of the skin?

I guess the very first time that I ever wore one that my mum had bought me that showed it, I was a little bit self-conscious. But sort of, I think after I realised that no-one was sort of saying anything or looking then I started to sort of mind less having it on show.