- Oh my God!
Look at your face!
- [Voiceover] I love playing on the arcade.
(energetic music)
- So I'm gonna be putting prosthetic acne on my face.
- We're gonna wear it for a day.
A day, right?
- Both my parents have really clear skin,
and that was just passed on to me.
I can't take credit for any of that.
- I definitely had acne for most of my teen years.
I'm really nervous about this honestly (laughs).
- I'm ready to be educated.
- My name is Doctor Alex Martin.
For the past 30 years,
I have seen various degrees of hormonally-related acne.
- Does this make you puberty
if you're giving me the acne?
- Does it stash?
- Mm hm.
- It's every 13-year-old boy's mortal enemy.
- [Alex] Ranging from very minor outbreaks
to the most severe cystic acne.
- [Voiceover] So you're about to see yourself.
- Yeah, okay.
So I'm gonna take a look.
Oh, whoa!
- Oh shit, dude, I have plans today.
- I'm just like looking at myself
and wondering what people are gonna say.
- Well, I posted a selfie on Instagram.
All the comments were just people
like trying to console me.
- Well, my friends are mostly assholes, so
(laughs) when I posted the picture,
there was a lot of guys who I think have found me
attractive at some point in my life were,
felt the need that it was the right time
to tell me how terrible I look.
- Social anxiety seems to be a result of dealing with acne.
- Finding it very hard to look people right in the face,
- I'm kind of amazed at how many people
took no issue with just staring at me.
When people stared it felt like,
indeed, you have zits.
- The first interaction we have with people
is by looking at them.
So people fall guilty of staring.
I think what we learned here is to have more empathy.
- You cannot really replicate exactly the experience
of the acne patient.
- I'm really bummed out right now.
I can only imagine how it feels to wake up
to an acne breakout and have to get through the day.
- But psychologically, I think you're gaining
a lot of information.
- I'm kind of frustrated with myself
because of how I very badly
want to tell them that it's fake.
- So my day has kind of turned around.
I just didn't really give a shit at the end of the day.
But that was not brought on by just myself.
It was brought on by my friends.
We're in Whole Foods, I didn't want to come.
- I made her come out because
she has nothing to be ashamed of.
- In the beginning, I was kind of emotional and sad,
and then I realized, I'm hungry,
I want to hang out with my friends,
I want to laugh.
- I have never been so excited
to finish with shooting a video.
I felt super duper self-conscious of the way I look.
To anybody who is dealing with acne,
you are so much stronger than me.
I had acne for a day, and I wanted to hide under a rock.
- I'm sure it's very genetic.
I'm sure you can go to a dermatologist,
and it takes time.
I think it's just important to just
practice self-love in other ways.
- It's really character and the talent that counts,
not superficial beauty.
- This experiment not only made me appreciate
and understand the insecurities of acne,
but made me just like love myself a little bit more.
This whole thing has been very helpful with that.
- If I was a stranger and I asked for your number,
would you, what would you say?
- I would give you half of my number.
Let me see what your personality is like,
and then I give you the other half.
- I get three-and-a-half digits
is what he just said. (laughs)
- Basically.