I Gave Up Popping My Pimples for a Week — And Here's What Happened

 Day 1

As you can see, I had a few red marks and blemishes. Okay, more than a few — I had picked at my skin the night before. It started with one little zit, which turned into unclogging the blemish next to it, which turned into a whopping 15 minutes of touching my skin with my fingers. Yuck.

Day 2

The second day wasn't so hard. I just had to keep looking at my red skin, still raw from poking at it the previous night, to stop myself from touching it again.

Day 3

Trying not to pick my skin was tough — especially when I realized I still had a rather giant pimple. It just sat there on my cheek, glaring at me and looking pretty terrible, even under my foundation. (Note: I realize I could just stop wearing base makeup and my skin would clear up, but since this is an experiment regarding popping and picking, I thought it best to keep all other conditions the same.)

Day 4

My skin started looking better, thank goodness. There were still some clogged pores, but (surprise!) they were doing just fine without my "helping" e.g. squeezing them.

Day 5

My skin looked so good, I only used a tinted moisturizer instead of my regular medium-coverage foundation. Clearly (hyuck hyuck), the experiment was actually helping, which I honestly wasn't sure would happen. I had been apprehensive, irrationally assuming that a ceasefire on my squeezing could potentially lead to tons more blackheads when in reality, the opposite was true.

Day 6

Almost there! There were still a few blemishes, but they were significantly less noticeable than on Day 1.

Day 7

Voila! My skin is by no means perfect (nor did I expect it to be), but as you can see, it's less inflamed and irritated. The red patches are more even, the pimples are less puffy. All in all, I think I'll just look at these photos any time I need to remind myself not to touch my face, no matter how tempting it is.