Since I was ten, my face has been bright red with rosacea. I had tried what felt like many different ways to treat it, prescription creams that helped but also dried out my skin, and so many varieties of face soap. Looking back, it’s pretty obvious I didn’t exhaust my options for cures; but being a kid is tough enough, and in the end, I just decided it wasn’t worth my time. 

However, if I really stopped and checked in with my feelings and self-esteem, I would have realized it was 100% worth my time. It wasn’t until I was seventeen that I looked in the mirror and thought “I hate the way I look, but I can do something about it.” And so I went to the mall and I bought makeup. I fell in love with it, never in my life had I felt more beautiful. I found that if I felt beautiful, I also felt confident and powerful. But only with the makeup on. Once I took it off, my face was red, disgusting, even more so than before. It was clogging my pores and giving me acne, the more I used the more I had to use. My mother even pointed out how worse my skin looked but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to leave the house without a full face on anyway, so what did it matter if I was covering up more blemishes than I used to be? 

And that’s how it was for four years. 

When I was in Japan I planned a solo hiking trip over my spring break. I’ve lived my whole life surrounded by trees and mountains, rivers and lakes, it’s hard to feel at home if natures not nearby. Therefore, the flat urban landscape of the Chita peninsula where I lived, and the city of Nagoya where I commuted daily, was very difficult for me to live in. When I found my spring break unexpectedly free, one of the first things I did was google “hiking in Japan” and planned a four day, three-night trip to hike a stretch of the Kumano Kodo, an ancient pilgrimage path and UNESCO world heritage site. Its a popular destination with a well-established tourist economy full of wonderful services, including the ability to have your luggage shipped between hostels while you spend the day hiking to the next location. I bring this up not because it was fantastic and I used it, but because I am a college student and couldn’t afford it. I would be carrying my normal school backpack (as opposed to a well-structured hiking pack) with me as I hiked, so I had to pack light. This meant not bringing all of my makeup. 

But it’s me, so of course, I couldn’t do that. I wanted to take selfies that I looked cute in, I wanted to meet new people and feel confident talking to them. I decided to compromise with myself, I would go to the drug store and buy a BB cream, a single, lightweight product that I could use to even my skin tone and call it a day.

Allow me to take this moment to caution travelers to Japan. The makeup section of a Japanese drug store is not equivalent to the makeup section of an American drugstore. In America, one expects to find products ranging from a couple of dollars to maybe fifteen. Anything fancier than that can be picked up in an Ulta or Sephora. A Japanese drugstore is more comparable to Ulta, they carry a range of brands, low and high end. They have 500 yen (five dollar) products and 5,000 yen (fifty dollar) products. I knew this going in.

I was on the hunt for an inexpensive, 1,000 yen BB cream. I started swatching some products on the back of my hand when a sales associate approached me. She was really kind, I told her I was just looking for a BB cream and she showed me one that was not from a makeup company but a skincare brand, Sekkisei. I had never heard of them before and she was honestly a little surprised and explained to me that they are a very popular brand among Japanese women and overseas. She convinced me to let her put some on my face and I knew that I would be walking away buying the product. Not because I instantly fell in love, but because if a sales associate spends that much time with me I start to feel guilty. 

That evening, sitting alone with my purchase, slightly shocked that I so knowingly walked into the sales trap, I turned to google to get the scoop on my purchase. I can’t speak too much to the specifics of the BB cream as I don’t really understand the ingredients and the benefits. But what I do know is that it is surprisingly full coverage, lightweight, and even when it was the only skincare product I was using my face would look less red after taking it off in the evening. 

After falling in love with not only with this product but with the way it made me feel, I began doing further research into Japanese skincare and created a routine for myself, consisting of a double cleanse, exfoliant, toner, and two moisturizers. I was hesitant to invest in so many products, thinking “am I really going to stick to such an intense routine?” But after seeing the results, I can’t imagine not taking care of my skin this way. I haven’t worn a makeup base other than the Sekksei BB cream since buying it, and honestly most days I just put on moisturizer and sunscreen. My friend complimented my foundation the other day to which I responded: “I’m just wearing sunscreen.” That is how much taking care of my skin has affected the way it looks. 

I don’t want to get too preachy at the end, but there is a reason I felt compelled to share my story. Western beauty culture taught me that if I didn’t have flawless skin, just fake it. It left me with worse skin and worse self-esteem. I don’t want to shame any women who honestly loves full coverage foundation on a daily basis, I believe in doing what makes you happy. But if your makeup routine is giving you only temporary happiness and self-love, know that there are other options. 

I always knew I would learn a lot from studying abroad, you can’t live in another culture for so long without picking up some life lessons. Yet never in a million years did I think one of those lessons would be about how to care for myself a little more. Thank you so much to everyone who supported me on my journey overseas, and to the sales associate who roped me into paying 3,000 yen for a BB cream.