Drink water, wash your face everyday, get enough sleep, and remove stress from your life and you’ll get clear skin! Guaranteed! Oh that doesn’t work? Try buying my product! “why is acne so strange?” is a piece written that attempts to question the social standard of clear skin. Join us while we unpack beauty expectations imposed on us by greedy capitalists, and dive deep on why we believe that having acne is an ODDITY.

thumbnail by: Pete Devito

This essay reviews the history of “beautiful” and possible explanations as to how beauty standards are the way they are. With the recent changes in how it’s defined and having eliminated the judgmental and selective nature that it once carried, what are the implications for us? For the segregation between the “beautiful” and the “ugly”? Or has the definition even changed at all, or will it remain to be something we all dream for?