Lili Reinhart shares photo wearing acne patches and says she wants to 'normalize acne in the industry'
Lili Reinhart is getting candid about one of her biggest body insecurities for an important reason.
The Riverdale actress, who recently starred and executive produced the Netflix film Look Both Ways, took to her Instagram Story on Saturday to share a photo of herself wearing flowery acne stickers from Charli Howard’s company Squish Beauty. Howard’s products were purposely created in order to celebrate one’s imperfections, rather than hide them.
Reinhart captioned the photo, “Been struggling with a really bad acne relapse for the last few weeks which has taken a huge toll on me, mentally. Acne is a big trigger for my [body dysmorphia] and I always want to crawl under a rock when my skin is breaking out. But I'm trying to not let it defeat me.”
The Surviving Jack alum concluded, “This post is me trying to normalize acne in my industry to make myself, and others, feel more accepted and less ashamed.”
Reinhart, who has battled mental health issues like anxiety and depression, has long been open about her body image struggles. In September, the TV star appeared on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, where she spoke about navigating bad feelings about her body while working on Riverdale.
“I just started to gain weight naturally and it felt like I couldn’t get a handle on it," she explained. "I was also simultaneously filming my show, so I couldn’t take a pause and figure this out and then come back to it. So it felt like I was going through this very deeply personal thing with my body in a public way. And that was what was so hard to navigate. I was going through these obsessive thoughts about my body, about what I was eating, about all these things, and I couldn’t do it in the privacy of my own home.”
Adding that she never felt she had a “perfect CW girl body,” the actress shared, “That’s why I talk about [body image issues] and I’m vocal about it because I think it’s so weird that not as many celebrities talk about it. It’s such an issue because everyone is insecure. How is there not a more collective conversation, especially within an industry that’s so obsessed with being thin, having this ass, having whatever it is.”
Later that month, Reinhart also opened up on the interview series Scan My Brain about acne and her body dysmorphia.
"My skin was really bad so I started to deal with it, not about my body, but very much focused on my skin,” she said at the time. “I was doing my makeup in the dark, like I didn’t want to wake up and turn on the fluorescent lights in my bathroom and stare at my acne, so I would do it in very dim lighting. I would not want to look at myself, but then was also obsessively looking at myself to try and see how I looked at different angles, to look at the acne at different angles and its kind of like a 'I hate looking in the mirror but I have to' obsessive sort of component there.”
Reinhart added that she struggles with being publicly body positive while having insecurities of her own.
"It's hard when I very much try to preach the idea of loving yourself and accepting yourself, and you don't have to fit a one-size-fits-all image in your life, especially as an actor," she said. "Like it's OK that I don’t look like all these other people. And then on the inside feeling like I do need to look like those people, so it's a bit of a hypocrisy feeling. Feeling sometimes like a fraud or that I'm lying to myself or lying to my fans who look up to me because I am trying to promote these body-positive messages but I'm also still learning them myself."
Reinhart is not the only actress to speak about acne affecting how she sees herself. Her Hustlers co-star Keke Palmer spoke to People last year about why she often shares photos of her textured skin and talks about the hormonal acne she deals with thanks to her PCOS diagnosis.
"I share because I think a lot of people think that I'm perfect, or they might assume that things are easy for me," Palmer said at the time. "So for me, my honesty comes from a place of wanting to let them know, like, hey, I'm going through stuff too. And by the way, maybe you can help me, give me some advice, or give me some information."
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