Unpopular opinion: facial extractions are way too hyped up

I had this client come in last Tuesday with cystic acne, and she begged me to do extractions on every bump. I spent 45 minutes picking and ended up with red marks all over her face that took a week to heal. Am I the only one who thinks extractions do more harm than good half the time?

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2 Comments

alexc933mo ago

That thing about red marks healing for a week really hit home. It's like this whole "more is better" mindset we see everywhere, you know? People think if a little bit of something is good, a whole lot must be amazing. Like how you're supposed to exfoliate maybe twice a week, but some people scrub their face every single day and wonder why they're irritated. Or how a little bit of sugar is fine in coffee, but then you see people dumping in four packets and acting confused when they crash. It's just that thing where everyone wants an instant fix, so we pile on treatments and hacks (like extractions) without thinking about the actual damage we're doing.

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elizabethhayes3mo ago

Oh man, you hit it right on the head! It's like people think their skin is a car engine that just needs more gas to go faster. Scrubbing every day and expecting glass skin is just asking for trouble. And that sugar comparison is perfect, nobody blames the sugar packet when they feel awful, they just blame themselves for having a sweet tooth. Extractions are the same way, people see a tiny whitehead and go full jackhammer without realizing they're making a red crater that'll take a week to calm down. Sometimes less really is more, but nobody wants to hear that.

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