In Beauty Freak, a column for Highsnobiety, Sable Yong explores how the culture of beauty impacts our lives.
Today’s youths have it good. Yes, they are contending with climate change, political unrest, and the threat of AI world domination. But at least they have acne — or at least the stigma around having acne — mostly sorted out.
As I remember, breakouts were at the top of the list of possible catastrophes during my adolescence. Even the smallest blemish took up space in my psyche — more than it ever did on my actual face. Who knew that the solution to such anguish was so simple: Put a sticker on it. If my 13-year-old self could’ve stuck a star sticker on top of a zit instead of (checks notes) a smear of toothpaste topped with a glob of poorly matched concealer, it would have done wonders for my fragile sense of self-esteem.
The origins of the modern zit sticker actually go way back: They’re essentially targeted wound-dressing patches, modeled after medical devices that used hydrocolloidal material to absorb the goo oozing from an injury while protecting it as it healed. (And what is a pimple but an infected pore?) The earliest form of blemish patch can be traced back to the 17th century, but those decorative wound dressings weren’t exclusively zit-focused (there were more unseemly facial blemishes to cleverly disguise back then).
We can thank South Korea, the most reliable country for aesthetic solutions, for the modern pimple patch, which was most widely made as a small, translucent circle. These were first introduced to the U.S. in 2012 by K-beauty e-comm site SokoGlam; the popular skincare brand MISSHA sold them in boxes of 96 patches for $7. Now, nearly every K-beauty skincare brand offers a kind of acne patch.
It wasn’t until pimple patches were made hyper-visible that the stickerization-of-the-face culture really took off. Starface launched in 2019, deploying the same hydrocolloidal material in sheets of yellow stars, which came packaged in their own plastic star-shaped compact. As it turned out, while it was impossible to imbue pimples themselves with a sexy new PR spin, giving them a colorful, fun (and affordable) wardrobe transformed the problem of a zit into the site of a tiny status marker. The combination of the overall skin positivity movement, social media dictates of self-expression, and the ability to see celebrities like Justin Bieber and North West with yellow star stickers on their faces all created the perfect conditions for Starface supremacy.
As a result, wearing acne patches on your face has officially become cool (and memeable). You don’t even have to have blemishes underneath them. These stickers have become their own kind of functional-to-fun form of self-expression, sort of like when it was cool to wear glasses without prescription lenses.
And the selection has never been better: Your choice in pimple patch is now an opportunity for self-expression. There seems to be no limit on shape or IP that can be patchified. Beyond the usual stars, there are also hearts, butterflies, flowers with gemstones, and even Snoopy stickers. There are post-pimple patches, pre-pimple patches, and ones with “teeth.” Starface’s hydrocolloidal stars now come in all different colors, including holographic and glow-in-the-dark. They’ve collaborated with Sanrio, Glossier, and Marc Jacobs Heaven to release limited-edition characters and shapes.
The patches themselves have also leveled up in their technology: Peaceout Skincare and ZitSticka offer pimple patches with “microdarts” or little pin-pricks that function like microneedling to discourage deeper, underground pimples from emerging. Some also purport to treat post-acne blemishes, meant to help fade any leftover pigmentation. Hero Cosmetics offers their Mighty Patches in several sizes and shapes for targeted areas such the nose, the forehead, and the chin; Squish Beauty’s pimple patches are the first I’ve seen with a bit of 3D bling.
In fact, the concept of skin-dressing is no longer relegated to blemishes. In the vein of sheet masking, the act of slapping a temporary physical barrier onto our skin has since become a great way to deliver skincare to a specific area.
You’ve undoubtedly seen countless eye-mask selfies on social media: Dieux’s Forever Eye Mask, the luxurious Chanel Le Lift Flash Eye patches, and now Rhode’s Peptide Prep Depuffing Eye Patches help push targeted doses of treatment onto the delicate undereye while serving as mini billboards for the face. There are plenty of reasons to feel cynical about that, but unfortunately, the eye masks do work. (I keep mine in the fridge for extra cooling when I wake up particularly puffy or tired-looking.) And that’s more than many of us can say for a lot of skincare products on the market.
What makes these star-shaped and other face-related patches so popular is their ability to destigmatize. Your “problem areas” become, ironically, quite eye-catching. Every time I see someone wearing a little star on their face, it reminds me that beauty culture can always benefit from taking itself less seriously.
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