The Myth: Acne-prone Skin Can Never Achieve Glow Status

That, there, is a lie. I only know this to be true after 3 weeks of experimenting with my own skin.

I have always had oily, acne-prone skin with large, exposed pores since I was 12 years old (too bad for me). I was hit hard with hormonal/puberty-linked acne all the way up to age 15, after which my acne problem started to slow down and stabilise. That’s not to say I don’t have acne or oily skin anymore—I still do. Now that I am older (24 years old near the end of the year) and with more funds in my once slit-thin wallet (Alhamdulillah, I’m employed), I have the space to explore the world of skincare products. Almost ten years later, I am still looking for products or ways to tame my very obviously hormonal acne and oil rig of a skin. Lucky for you, I think I’ve found some products that may very well lead me to the dewy life. In this beauty report, I will put more focus on how I achieve dew skin rather than how I achieve dewy skin and banish acne. Unfortunately, acne expulsion is a process that takes longer than dewy domination.

As I lay out the products I’ve used so far that helped me (at the very least) jump start my journey to dewy skin, I will also list down these products in steps so you know when I use them and in which part of my regimen. Let’s jump right in!

Unclog The Sink (And Your Pores)

Exfoliate Dead Skin // That’s another way of saying ex-fo-li-ate. This is definitely the key first step in my skincare regimen because my pores often get choked up with excess sebum and dead skin, resulting in acne of all dimensions. I exfoliate my skin to get rid of the unwanted excess, but I use one specific exfoliator to achieve this—not a facial cleanser cum exfoliator, not a mask cum exfoliator, and not even an exfoliator with beads in them said to slough away dead skin. What I use is a product I had only known for just two weeks (yes, two weeks!) but I’m already deadly sold the first time I saw the brand’s beauty advisor demonstrate it on the back of my colleague’s hand during an event. Clumps and flakes of dead skin materialised on the surface of her hand after just a slight smudging of the product. That’s how powerful yet oh-so gentle the product was. And that magic exfoliator is Bio Essence’s Bio-Renew Royal Jelly Exfoliating Gel. To add to that, it contains Niacinamide (Vitamin B3) that helps with the reduction of acne.

From the name of the product you can tell it’s in gel form. It’s a transparent yellowish gel, doesn’t smell like much, almost scentless even, but does most of the heavy lifting right from the beginning of my beauty routine. The flakes that appear on my skin (after I’ve swiped my skin with Bio Essence’s Bio-Renew Royal Jelly Cleansing Milk) are beige-ish, probably because of the colour of my foundation. I follow this with damping/patting my face with water to get rid of the flakes. (At this point of time, you can’t tell yet any difference the exfoliator gel has made to your skin.) I followed this with properly cleansing my face with Follow Me’s Mild & Gentle Facial Cleanser.

A Peek Further // I’ve been using Follow Me’s Mild & Gentle Facial Cleanser since I was 15, I think, which is also the age when my acne problem started to stabilise. I haven’t changed it out after so many years and still see myself using it often in the future because of how gentle yet effective it is on my skin. After looking at the list of ingredients, my eyes are finally open—I know what it is in this facial cleanser that’s helping my skin reach some kind of stability: a whole bunch of skin-friendly acids, namely the AHAs Glycolic Acid and Lactic Acid, and the dicarboxylic Malic Acid.

Break Up The Enemy’s Oil Defence

Sebum-secretion Control // Now that I have unclogged my pores of excess sebum and dead skin, it’s time to set the oil rigs in check with some sebum control measures. For a long time I had not been able to find anything, not a single product, that would help with my oily skin. Blotching paper was a fad—I used it a few times only because I got those paper packets for free from family and friends but never bought them myself, never, subconsciously, believed in its power. So left my skin as it was when it had oiled up: saturated and filled to the brim with grease I can’t control. And ten years later, about a month ago, I decided to take a chance on something new: clay masks.

I got myself Origin’s Out of Trouble mask on a whim (also because the beauty advisor was super kind, sweet and mild in her manners that I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt) and tried it on the next night. My skin’s oils were considerably controlled the first half of the day and would return to normal in the second half of the day. I used this once a week for two weeks, but the half-day-no-oil effect remained. Instead of being disappointed, I saw this as a chance to increase the number of applications. I started using it twice a week on the third week. Things looked like they were speeding up, and I liked the news of that. And yet I wasn’t satisfied. So on the fourth week, I used it back-to-back for three days and then didn’t use it for four days. I must say, I have found the so-called dosage I needed: as frequently as possible but not over the top. The oil on my face was starting to slow its production and I felt motivated to keep going with this dewy-skin experiment.

Please Rain On My Parade & My Desert Skin

Hydration Is Key For All Skin Types // If you’ve been binge-reading skincare blogs and posts in recent months, you might have already known that stripping your skin of its natural oils is a very bad move because it triggers your sebaceous glands to produce more sebum, thinking that it’s short on grease. To prevent that from happening (especially after all the hard work you’ve put in to get to this stage), you’ll need to immediately apply some sort of hydration coating on your skin to return it to its stable state. From reading skincare blogs, stalking derma-related pages and even reading ingredient labels of a span of skincare products claiming hydrating effects, one hydrator stood out amongst others, and that’s hyaluronic acid. So I went for a quick hunt for something—anything—that contained hyaluronic acid at a cheap price. That’s when I found out Innisfree had its own Hyaluronic Acid Mask. I got two of them the following week. The only problem for me was that I had to make time in my busy schedule to put on sheet masks that are often troublesome. So I stalled it, and the magic of hyaluronic acid went with my fading excitement. But that was also when I needed a bag to carry books that I decided to get one from Sephora, at the same time purchasing something random. I left the store with an adorable deep pink ceramic bottle of Bybi’s Hyaluronic Acid Mega Mist; there goes my fifty bucks but I was happy with it.

I am not sure how one is supposed to spritz their face with facial mist, but because my skin is generally oily on all surfaces of my face, I made sure to get mist/liquid on every millimeter of my skin, even if that meant I had spritz eight times straight without missing a beat. I then pat the mist into my skin and spread it to parts that were still…un-misted. As for the scent of the liquid, I’m not too sure what I should elude it to, because I haven’t smell something specifically like it. If there is one thing I can say, at first I thought it smelled like lemongrass. But the more I use, the more it smells like something else entirely. If anything, it doesn’t smell like roses. If you’re scent-sitive (don’t hate me for that terrible pun—that was fun), you might not enjoy Mega Mist that much. But if you’re more interested in its hydrating effects, you could never be disappointed. After applying it for three days (and on each day I spritz a maximum of three times, spread throughout the day), my face/cheeks were plumper that when I cup my cheeks with my hands, they filled my hands entirely. They also felt full and bouncy, something people with acne and oily skin never really had, probably even thought they couldn’t have, like it’s some far-fetched dream. I was so, so satisfied with the extreme hydrating effects Mega Mist gave my skin and I’m sure to continue using it until the bottle is finished. You can bet I’m looking forward to the end result.

To Sum It All Up

All in all, I was satisfied with my purchases as well as the results that my skin has achieved so far. Though hyperpigmented acne marks still remain, which would fall into a whole other article altogether, I strongly believe that exfoliation, sebum control and jet-power hydration are the first three important steps to dewy skin for acne-prone, oily skin. At the moment, the products listed in this article are the ones I’ve tried which worked magic for me. I will definitely try out other brands’ exfoliators, masks and hydrators to see if they reached the same result.

Ciao!