"I Hate My Oily Skin"...
Your Experiences with Oily Skin & Acne

​Having oily skin and acne can be an extremely painful experience. It can make you want to hide from the world, skip social activities, or even skip school or work.  When it seems that everyone else on the planet "looks normal", it always helps to know that you aren’t going through this alone. Hearing people's struggles is heartbreaking, which is why this website is dedicated to finding solutions for acne prone, oily skin. Here, we ask our readers to share their stories. 


Feel free to share your skin story with us by filling out the form below. For confidentiality reasons, your email and last name will never be published. In fact, the "Name Field" is NOT required, so feel free to enter a fake name or remain anonymous.

Readers share their experiences on dealing with acne & oily skin:

*Stories below were previously compiled from the Skin Solutions website. New stories will be added as they come in. 

Carla: Plain and simple, acne makes you feel ugly. I wonder a lot why people look at me funny, or almost like they are scared of me. I guess zits are scary to some people. They just look at me all wide eyed, like maybe the acne is contagious or something. I try to hide it with makeup, but there's only so much you can do. It makes me feel like a monster. I have even researched why people treat ugly people like they are different or lesser, and can say that is definitely the case with me. They even say babies are scared of ugly people, and babies are scared of me.  It's proven that the best jobs are offered to pretty people, regardless of skill. That explains why I'm great at my job, but people who do far less work, yet are attractive, get paid more at the place where I work. You can read all the self help books in the world, where they say to look beyond what you think makes you ugly. That's just fine, but how do you get OTHER PEOPLE to look beyond what makes you ugly? 

Jenny: Kids in high school used to call me grease ball, or grease monkey. I’m a girl, and I always cared a lot about fashion and makeup, so that really hurt my feelings. I didn’t get asked on a date until I went to college. My skin was still oily then, and probably always will be, but at least the people there weren’t so judgemental. ​

Jade: I was meeting my boyfriend’s family for the first time last Christmas. I come from a lower middle class family, but they are very well off, so I was already nervous about making a good first impression.  When I hugged his grandmother, my makeup smeared all over the collar of her white coat.  It was so embarrassing I wanted to cry. My face is so oily and foundation never stays on without smearing. I can’t go without it because I have so many acne scars. 

Adam: It was winter and I was outside with a new kid eating lunch at my high school. He asked why I was sweating so bad, and if I was sick or something. I told him I wasn’t sweating, that I was cold. He told me that my face looked wet. When I went to my locker to check, I saw that it was just my oily skin. It gets so greasy that my face actually looks wet. ​

Cyndi: I had started using Retin-A when I turned 18. It was making my skin peel and get flakey, but I still had acne and oily skin. When I was at a boy’s house on a double date, we were sitting in front of his TV, when he looked at me and frowned – then asked if I had been burnt in a fire at some point in my life. Thinking it was a really weird question, I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My dry skin was peeling away from my face, and it was all caked in makeup. I looked disgusting and immediately left without explanation. ​

Corina: My life has pretty much been a nighmare because of my nasty skin. I have a big nose, and oily skin, and sometimes I get bad acne bumps. Ever since gradeschool, kids have been mean to me. They would call me witch, because along with a hideous face, I also have long black hair. They tell me that my warts are coming out. It’s so depressing, especially because my family doesn’t have money to buy expensive remedies for me. I know they would if they could. Maybe some day I will be able to fix myself up so I don’t feel like hiding in a cave my whole life. 

Anonymous: People think it's a joke when you say that acne is ruining your life. It's something you will never understand until you experience it for yourself.  "Acne" to some means having a few little zits here and there, which nobody even notices. It can easily be hidden with makeup. "Acne" to me means huge red bumps that are seen just as easily under makeup. They take weeks to heal, and they hurt so bad they make me cry. It's impossible to hide a 1 inch lump protruding from your skin. When you deal with that, acne really does start to ruin your life. People look at me funny, they don't take me seriously, and they act like I don't clean my face properly. Some look downright disgusted when they talk to me, even though i try so hard to cover the bumps. They leave deep pitted scars too, so even after the acne goes away, I'm still left looking disfigured. I would need thousands of dollars to remove the damage acne has caused my skin. 

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​Jessica:
I’m just here to rant about how much I hate my acne scars.
I have bad scars left behind from when I had acne in high school. It’s so weird because most of the time you can’t see them, but if I’m looking sideways and light is hitting my face from the side, my face looks like someone bashed my face with a meat tenderizer. The strangest part is my skin feels smooth, and if light is hitting me from the front, you can’t see the scars. It’s so bad that when people meet me for the first time in certain lighting conditions, they look scared of me. Then when I meet up with them again, they will swear either they never met me before, or they compliment my makeup skills. The worst part about scars is that no matter how much makeup you pile on, they will always be visible in certain types of light.  

Maryann: 
So here is my oily skin story. I went to the beach with a couple of friends. At the start of the day, I looked super nice! My makeup was perfect, I used waterproof EVERYTHING, because that’s the only makeup that will last for me, plus we would be swimming. Then I topped it all off with setting spray. I wish I had the type of skin where I could go without makeup, but I had such bad acne in the past that scarring is a problem and it looks really uneven.

We had a half mile walk to the beach, and I had to lug a giant cooler. By the time we got to the beach, I was already sweating, and the oiliness seemed to increase 10x, so I could feel my makeup getting sticky.  I blotted with a towel, and it helped a little. We went swimming and after 2 hours, I took a look in the mirror. I looked a mess! My skin was so greasy it even started dissolving my mascara, which smudged under my eyes. My foundation was almost worn off, and on top of being cursed with oily skin, I also have hair that frizzes out when it starts drying.  I looked like a crazy person. I hurried off to a sani-hut to in attempt to get myself back together, but at the end of the day, it was useless.
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Oily skin really does effect your self esteem. I looked so bad that I walked with my head down as to not make eye contact with anybody as we left the beach. My friend commented that I looked really tired – which I wasn’t, I just looked a mess. It was something only a full shower, scrub-down of my face, and full makeup application would fix. I declined going to a nice dinner with them because I was ashamed of the way I looked.  

Anonymous: 
​My makeup feels like it just melts off my face because I have such oily skin. It makes me feel disgusting to be honest, and it’s so high maintenance. I feel like I can’t go anywhere without a full makeup kit that has foundation and powder. Plus I have to carry oil blotting sheets everywhere, and have astringent pads in my car and at work in case my makeup starts to look all thick, so then I can kind of make a fresh start. My friends act like I’m crazy because I’m so hypervigilant about my skincare, but if I ignore the oily skin I look horrible and it ends up causing breakouts. People without oily skin just don’t get it. 

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Oh so true... this is a veritable checklist of annoying things people say if you have oily skin! 
Bustle Article: Things People with Oily Skin are Tired of Hearing