She commands a successful clothing label that Bollywood is besotted with, but if there’s one thing that we can truly count on designer Masaba Gupta for, it’s keeping things real. Further proof to that end can be sought in her viral Instagram post, where she bluntly confessed to her struggle with acne as a teenager. The post has since earned over 12,000 virtual likes and a fresh batch of real-life admirers. (Read it here.)
While discussing our generation’s poor lifestyle choices at the Ensure Dreams Survey 2017, Masaba said, “If you put up a photo of a model on your wall and aspire to look like her, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. You may not have the bone structure for it, and you definitely don’t have an entourage to feed you green juice every two hours. I see so many young girls subscribing to scary fads, in the name of beauty. No, you don’t need a vampire facial. Your regular skincare routine works just fine.”
So what inspired her to open up about her struggle with acne in an industry that prides itself on the ‘I woke up like this’ ideal of beauty? “It started when I went through old photographs. When I was younger, everyone fed me platitudes about how I will grow out of my terrible phase of acne. But nobody knew what it meant to go through it as a teenager, when everyone around you is dying to look perfect,” revealed Masaba.
“I wanted to talk directly to youngsters who feel like they look like shit, because you do feel just that. I’ve lived with acne for 14 years, and it’s not something I’m cured of even today. I take measures to treat my skin well, but I still know the paranoia that hits me each time a zit breaks out on my face,” Masaba explained, adding, “You have to cry about it, try different things on your face and experiment with beauty concoctions, do whatever it takes until you make your peace with it. You’ll come out stronger for it. Self-confidence is the message we need to be teaching young girls everywhere when it comes to body image issues”
Masaba’s too cute to handle lipsticks:
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