Skincare is so personal that it’s almost impossible to tell which ingredient/s in your products cause your skin to react positively or negatively. And then of course there are also products that by their very nature cause your skin to “purge” in order to clear out pore blockages, such as those with chemical exfoliants (acids) and retinol. It can get confusing that even for me it’s hard to tell, but I do have some advice for you!

Before buying skincare, you probably read hundreds of reviews before hitting the checkout button. Of course it's important to know if the product you're eyeing causes people to breakout, but you may also see some reviews that talk about “an initial purge”. Because purging is also characterized by the appearance of acne, it can be confusing to tell the difference between the two. Should you keep using the product and allow the purging phase to finish, or should you throw it out stat?

I used to have a nonchalant attitude towards buying makeup and skincare. I didn’t care much about what’s in a product so long as people talked about it. I’d buy something on sale because it’s from a known brand and it looked pretty, and worse, I tried anything that the Internet said would work on my acne-prone skin. I DIY-ed the heck out of treatments that more often than not worked horribly. All this because I didn’t make time to talk to my skin and ask “What do you need?”

At that time, it seemed silly but doing so could’ve saved me my money and my skin. Makeup and skincare, I realized, does not carry the “one size fits all” tag.