Outside of my full-time job, I've had the opportunity to freelance write for Mockingbird’s print and digital magazine. In “The Quest of Perfect Skin,” I researched the beauty and skincare industry to expose the impossible beauty standards women are expected to live up to—and where we should look to find our true identity.

Here’s an excerpt from The Quest for Perfect Skin:

If you’ve been on TikTok, Instagram, or any women’s online magazine in the past five years, you’ve probably come across one, if not all, of these various skincare trends. There’s dewy skin, glass skin, skin that looks like a glazed, Krispy Kreme donut — all in the name of achieving “flawless” skin.

We’ve all been there. We spot a wrinkle. A blemish. A pore the size of a crater that we need to spackle with concealer before we can leave the house. So, we find ourselves down the rabbit hole of skincare ranging from pouring on acid solutions to protecting our skin’s barrier.

The quest for perfect skin is no better exemplified than when you step into a dermatologist’s office. When I walk into my primary care office, I’m advertised about eating a healthy, plant-based diet and getting regular exercise. When I walk into my dermatologist’s office, I’m advertised about how to anti-age and erase my skin’s imperfections.

“I saw ads for all of the following beauty procedures: Botox, skin fillers, non-invasive cool sculpting fat reduction, radio-frequency wrinkle reduction, laser skin rejuvenation, liposuction, and upper and lower eye rejuvenation,” Renee Engeln, an award-winning professor of psychology and director of the Body and Media Lab at Northwestern University, recalled about one of her dermatologist visits.

This is a symptom of a much bigger problem. And according to Engeln, who wrote Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women, never before in human culture have we been so flooded with nonstop beauty messages and images.

“There is nothing ‘natural’ about the current beauty climate,” she said. “In the same way that abundantly available sugar can have a negative impact on our health, abundant images of highly idealized female beauty can make us sick.”

While there may be nothing natural about the evolution of our beauty standards, it is intentional. For each advertisement we see, whether in an office or a drugstore, we’re shown how we’re falling short then given a solution. And it’s making a fortune.

According to Statista, the United States is the most valuable beauty and personal care market in the world, valued at nearly $98 billion in 2023. Personal finance site Mint.com estimated that the average woman will spend $15,000 in her lifetime on makeup. And the number of cosmetic surgeries on women in the U.S. increased by 538 percent between 1997 and 2015.

So, with all of the money we’re spending and solutions we’re being sold to achieve flawless skin, why are we seeing rates of inflammatory skin conditions like eczema increasing and the prevalence of psoriasis more than doubling between 1979 and 2008?

First, let’s start with soap…