THE MAGAZINE · THE ĖDITURE

From Pizza Face to Skincare Junkie

How a rock song and an absurd number of breakouts sparked my love affair with skincare.

By Cordelia Garza

I wasn't born with amazing skin. I had acne, texture, breakouts everywhere and a complicated relationship with the mirror. In the nineties there were no skincare tutorials and no TikTok. We had soap, some little cream an aunt swore by, and a lot of faith.

But there was one moment that changed everything. One day, a boy at my school decided to sing me Cara de pizza (“Pizza Face”), a song by the Mexican rock band Cuca. To me. Because, apparently, the pimples on my face were the pepperoni.

A teenager just trying to survive puberty, now turned into a pizza franchise. Thank you, dear classmate. How thoughtful. Today it makes me laugh, but back then it really got to me. I think that's where my obsession with skin began: I became a private investigator of my own pores.

I started seeing dermatologists and specialists. I wanted to understand why I was breaking out, what I could put on my skin and what I should avoid. What started as desperation turned into curiosity. I learned that not everything that promises miracles works, that a very expensive cream isn't necessarily better, and that using twenty products doesn't mean taking good care of your skin.

Over the years, my dermatologist visits, facials and discovering new ingredients became some of my favorite rituals. I can walk into a pharmacy in Paris or New York and lose myself for hours among creams and serums. Some people get excited in a shoe store. I see a good serum and my heart starts racing. To each her own problems.

I also learned that skin changes. What worked in my twenties doesn't necessarily work now. I used to try to dry out my breakouts; now I try to keep my face from drying out. Lovely.

For a long time I thought my love of skincare was born out of insecurity. It probably was. But over the years it stopped being about hiding something I didn't like and became about taking care of something that's mine: my skin.

I don't have perfect skin and I'm not trying to. I like caring for it, pampering it and finding out what works for me, but I don't want to spend my life fighting with my face anymore. Taking care of yourself because you enjoy it is very different from taking care of yourself because you feel something is wrong with you.

And if I could go back to that day at school, I'd tell that boy thank you. Without knowing it, he sparked a curiosity that has stayed with me my whole life. Although humiliating me in front of my classmates wasn't really necessary for me to discover salicylic acid. And to think it all started with some pepperoni.

The girl who wanted to hide her skin grew into a woman who loves taking care of it. Not with perfect skin. With mine.

— Corde