The Posterchild Of Unattractiveness

What would you do if you woke up to your face being used as a benchmark of unattractive skin?

copyright: Sophie Harris Taylor

Last week, I woke up to multiple instagram notifications: ‘have you seen this?’ ‘did you know…?’ ‘did they ask you for permission?’

My stomach dropped. Those kind of notifications can never be good.

It turns out that a random instagram account had posted a reel to their 425k+ followers titled ‘Facial Redness Increases Female Attractiveness’. They cite a study that compared photos of models and asked participants to rate them on attractiveness, health, and age. The video shows different faces and the scale of attractiveness… and then my face appears alongside the text “however, there is a point when increased facial redness is no longer viewed as attractive, when someone has too much facial redness, they can have an unhealthy or feverish appearance. Excessive facial redness is also associated with negative emotions, like anger.”

I have had rosacea for 20 years and, in that time, I have heard every insult or negative comment you can think of. I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life taking every opportunity I can to share my story, my experiences, and my naked face. I’ve written extensively on the internet and in print, I’ve appeared on TV and radio, and I’ve built a community of fellow rosaceans, helping others who feel alone and educating those who do not understand rosacea. So, to have the photos I’ve shared in good faith for the purpose of helping others be used in this way - to serve as the poster child for unattractiveness, unhealthiness, and anger - is incredibly upsetting.

Not only is it illegal for them to use my imagery (hello, copyright laws!) but from a human decency standpoint, what on earth was going through their heads when they put this video together? A fellow human being Googled ‘facial redness’, looked for the ‘worst’ example, saved it to their computer, edited it into their video, and wrote and spoke those words over it. There were so many opportunities to stop and think “perhaps this isn’t very kind, perhaps the person we are labelling as ‘unattractive, unhealthy, and angry’ might see this and be hurt, perhaps we are labelling over 400 million people¹ with these unkind words”.

I have often spoken about the double-edged sword of the internet in its modern form. The internet is where I found information about rosacea that my GP was unwilling or unable to give me when I was first diagnosed. It was where I found a community of people who looked and felt just like me. It’s where my job is focused, educating and supporting thousands of people around the world with my writing. But it’s also where I’ve received some of the most spiteful and hurtful insults. The internet has made us so casual with our cruelty. Social media is full of videos and photos of strangers being shamed for their size, their clothes, their skin, and everything in-between. There are entire accounts dedicated to correcting people’s photos (e.g. removing any trace of perceived flaws), self-proclaimed experts showing what aesthetic procedures celebrities ‘need’, or making fun of others for having those aesthetic procedures but still getting it wrong.

It’s exhausting and dehumanising. Showing your natural skin leaves you open to nasty comments and implications that you should either cover it or fix it. How handy that the account that described my face as unattractive, unhealthy, and looking angry is dedicated to ‘tools to improve your looks’. Because how can people be convinced to pay to improve their looks if their confidence isn’t destroyed beforehand? It’s the beauty industry way!

And then, on the other hand, wearing make up to cover up these perceived flaws, or paying lots of money for aesthetic treatments, is often described as high maintenance, try-hard, or vain. No matter how high or low the beauty bar, we seem to fail to reach it every time.

And apparently, in today’s bizarre internet-obsessed world, this failure could result in an anonymous Instagram account feeling emboldened to use your face as the perfect example of unattractiveness. How did we get here? And is it possible to put the toothpaste back in the tube?

For the past 11 years I’ve taken negative things about living with rosacea and tried to turn them into positives. Before this happened I planned to use this Substack to speak about some of the things that are a little more personal, a little more raw… but I didn’t think my first proper post here would be David-and-Goliathing with a business with nearly a million followers! If you’ve got this far and are wondering how you can help, I have two suggestions: the first is call out the people you see creating this kind of content. It’s become too normalised to say awful things and behave appallingly online, with the excuse that it’s anonymous or perceived to have no repercussions. But if something feels wrong to you, speak up. The second thing you can do is easy and free: support the people (like me!) who are doing this work. It’s tiring to constantly have your head above the parapet but I continue to do it because I can’t let this kind of cruelty slide and because I’m in a privileged position with the platform I have. You can subscribe, comment, like, share, recommend my work - for once we need to make the positive and useful content go viral, instead of this nasty and cheap clickbait.

1. Statistics from the National Rosacea Society put the global rosacea population at 415 million.