Sydney Sweeney Opens Up About Her Acne Struggles
"I started getting acne when I was really young, so my relationship to beauty was pretty antagonistic growing up."
I didn’t have social media growing up, it wasn’t a part of my generation yet, so I mostly looked up to my cousins. They were about five years older than me and I thought they were so beautiful. I couldn’t wait to become a teenager like them and wear makeup and low-rise jeans. I can’t believe I ever wanted to wear low-rise jeans. But ever since I was 16, 17 years old, my biggest beauty role model has been Brigitte Bardot. She just had this beautiful yet simple elegance to her. As a kid, I always had this elementary idea of what beauty was; the girls I saw in magazines or on TV were what I thought of as beautiful.
[Social media] can be such a beautiful thing [because] I’m able to connect with my fans and people who I’d never be able to know otherwise. But it’s also a very interesting dynamic because they know the character; they know the online persona that’s not really you. I still want to make sure the person people see online is still a part of who I am; I don’t want to dissociate myself. We’re not really able to control how people respond to the image we put out and there’s not much that you can do about that, but I try to put as much of Syd as possible in everything I do.
Middle school was definitely a learning period of who I was and who I wanted to be. It was one of my first years in LA. I came from a smaller town, so when I got to LA, [I noticed that] people’s values were different. People placed more value on materialistic things and it made me realize what I didn’t want to be. After I got to LA, I had this learning period where I started to see beauty as more of a kindness with others and the compassion and care [you have] for yourself; [it’s] a confidence within yourself. I think the most beautiful thing is when [people] have the freedom to truly be who they are. I learned that through just years of meeting new people, being in different environments, and having different experiences.
I started getting acne when I was really young so my relationship to beauty was pretty antagonistic growing up. My skin and body were changing so much and there were so many hormonal imbalances going on. It was an ongoing battle to find the right products that worked for me. Because I struggled with acne for so long, I always wanted to make sure that if I was a partner with a beauty brand it was with one whose products I actually used. For a couple weeks I switched my entire skincare routine to Laneige and it transformed my skin. I wear a lot of makeup for work, so I'm constantly taking makeup off and putting makeup on; my skin goes through a lot. And so the routine was a game-changer for me. Being able to share this journey and share what has worked for me is something that's really important. I had been using [Laneige’s] Milk Oil Cleanser and Lip Sleeping Mask since I was 19.
I truly don’t think I started exploring beauty until Euphoria. So a lot of those tools [in that viral skincare routine scene from the show] are actually my tools. The ice roller is one thing that I use almost every morning. When we were filming that scene, the crew was like, what is this? [Then afterwards] a bunch of the ADs and PAs all ordered them on Amazon. [Euphoria] taught me that there’s no rules to beauty or makeup or hair or any of those things, that I could take every red carpet and photoshoot as an opportunity for me to explore different sides of myself and my relationship to beauty.
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