Engineering the Skin: Embodied Experiences of Healing from Acne Among YouTube Vloggers

Abstract

We examine how 24 adult YouTube vloggers tell their ‘acne stories’ by means of videos posted on YouTube between 2015 and 2020. In doing so, we study the relationship between embodied experiences of acne and health-seeking practices, particularly as they pertain to managing the everyday life of the body, abandoning medical expertise and embracing lay knowledge, living with disability, and engineering an improved self. Overall, we suggest that the vloggers share a general scepticism about the clinical management of their condition, often eschewing medical treatments while advocating for the modification of lifestyle practices. Ultimately, our study shows that vloggers understand healing from acne as both a personal journey that requires individual initiative and a shared pursuit best supported not by doctors and prescription medication but by an online environment that encourages self-engineering through free-market health care options and neoliberal values of working on the body.