There have been some brilliant beauty launches over the past few years that make me wonder how I managed to cope before they were a thing. I count spot stickers in this elite group. It can be the cheap see-through salicylic acid-soaked ones or the pricier micro-dart stickers, if you give me a pack I’ll go through them in a matter of days.
I love them, but would I wear them out for the world to see? It’s a question I’m pondering this week as a new beauty craze starts to emerge. TikTok and Netflix have brought to my attention the fact that people (namely Gen Zers) wear these little stickers as patches of honour. They head out to the shops in them, they stick them on for school and, if you feature in the cast of Too Hot To Handle season four, you wear them to bed with a man you’ve known for about two hours. Plus, they aren’t just wearing the see-through ones; they’re sticking on star and animal-shaped stickers in fluorescent colours.
Let’s pause on that for a moment because if you’re reading this thinking “what is a spot sticker”, we should cover the basics. Blemish patches, spot stickers and acne patches are all the same thing: little stickers that work to reduce the size of a zit in a matter of hours. You simply peel one off and pop it on the pimple.
And different brands use different methods to zap a blemish. On the cheaper end of the spectrum you have the likes of Revolution Anti-Blemish Stickers, £6 here – see-through in colour (very discreet) and coated with salicylic acid. On the pricier end you have ZitSticka KILLA Clarifying Microdart Patches, £27 here. These actually puncture the blemish and deliver spot-fighting ingredients like tea tree oil right to its core. Then you have the ones that the younger generation seem to love: brightly-coloured and star-shaped hydrocolloid patches like Star Face Hydro-Stars, £11.99 here. These work to draw the fluid out of spots overnight.
I’m prone to a large pimple, and when I get a particularly bad one that I think I’m at risk of prodding, I stick a see-through patch over it and cover it with a bit of concealer so I can wear it out during the day. However, even this makes me feel self-conscious. Until this week I hadn’t ever considered them to be an accessory, but seeing TikTok flooded with users wearing them as nonchalant as they might a pair of earrings, I do have to nod my approval.
Thinking on the mental health angle of breakouts, anyone who has previously suffered from spots and acne will know how daunting it can be to go out with visible pimples. Being able to cover them in a healthy, healing way without feeling self conscious can only be a good thing, surely?
I, for one, will be doing everything I can to make this trend work. Who knows, I might even invest in some of the Gen Z stars for myself.
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