Kendall Jenner has opened up about the realities of suffering from adult acne, while calling out the importance of speaking about blemishes that impact grown-ups, just days after she faced backlash for her Proactiv MD commercial.
In a controversial move, the 23-year-old partnered with the skincare brand last year while praising its products for helping to clear up her skin, having spent years battling blemishes and persistent acne.
And now Kendall has spoken out about the importance of recognizing that blemish-prone skin plagues people far beyond puberty and teenage-hood, detailing her own struggle to deal with adult blemishes.
Flawless: Model Kendall Jenner, 23, detailed her acne journey on Thursday in an event with Proactiv MD in New York City
The struggle: She revealed how her acne came back after going off birth control
![Speaking out: '[Acne as an adult] is not any less painful, for lack of better words,' she said. 'You know what I mean? It's not any less annoying, it doesn't suck any less when you're older](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/06/24/13/15097788-7168477-Speaking_out_Acne_as_an_adult_is_not_any_less_painful_for_lack_o-a-9_1561380797411.jpg)
Speaking out: ‘[Acne as an adult] is not any less painful, for lack of better words,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean? It’s not any less annoying, it doesn’t suck any less when you’re older
Pushing through: Kendall, pictured in January 2018, confessed being a model made having acne more stressful
‘As women, our hormones shift every six to seven years and everything changes,” she told Bustle at a Proactiv even in New York.
‘[Acne as an adult] is not any less painful, for lack of better words. You know what I mean? It’s not any less annoying, it doesn’t suck any less when you’re older. If anything, it could suck a little more when you’re older.’
Breakouts started for Kendall when she was 14 years old.
She would get the occasional zit until eventually her forehead was covered in little milia — small white bumps that form often near the nose and cheeks when keratin becomes trapped underneath the skin.
‘And then it just grew from there,’ she said. ‘It started to happen all over my face — milia and also gnarly zits.’
Her acne went away at the age of 16 after going on birth control, but the blemishes then came back in full force once she decided to go off the pill for health reasons.
‘I experienced [acne] in two different times in my life,’ Kendall explained. ‘One being high school, when all you’re trying to do is be accepted and be part of something, and I wouldn’t even look people in the eyes when I would speak to them.
‘The next time it came around, I was supposed to be this model who has everything together. That’s never the case, first of all — good skin or not. But the whole world is looking at you, and it’s like a magnifying glass on everything that you do and what happens to you.’
Controversial? Her event comes after Kendall faced backlash for a video she shared of herself washing her face using the skincare brand
Step-by-step! Kendall first squirted out a dollop of product before massaging it into her skin. People criticized her technique and leaving the water running
She has since partnered with Proactiv and said her next phase with the brand will focus on ‘realness’.
Her focus comes after the model experienced backlash starting the very first day she joined the brand as a skincare ambassador, when people accused Kendall of being disingenuous about her struggle with acne and using Proactiv.
Yikes! The model has faced backlash after sharing the video, as dozens of her followers have criticized her for wasting water by leaving the tap running for the video
Recently, Kendall shared a video of herself washing her face with the product. But it only sparked a variety of critiques from fans.
The video showed Kendall massaging a dollop of facial cleanser into her skin before rinsing it off with water.
She captioned the video: ‘My daily face washing routine never gets old…@proactiv #proactiv_ambassador.’
And since the video was uploaded last week, fans have been quick to point out a few problems they see with her routine.
Several have criticized Kendall for leaving the water running while she washed her face, with one Twitter user saying: ‘It gives me so much anxiety when she didn’t turn the water off.’
One user said: ‘I’d feel so guilty if I left the water running for that long,’ while another simply instructed her to ‘turn off the water!’
Several others criticized the amount of time she spent washing her face, with many stating that she cleansed her skin too quickly.
One user said: ‘It was really that fast… she not letting the product soak in her skin. It’s not really helping her if her does that fast.’
Another added: ‘Who washes their face that quick tho? What’s it cleaning?’
Kendall never responded to the criticism after she first shared the video last week.