As a teenager, I used to pick at my acne a lot, which prompted my mother to tell me to quit it every time she caught me red-handed. “Your face has become like a baghrir”, she would say. And my face was indeed punctuated by dark brown blemishes that I would attempt to cover with foundation until my early twenties. A roommate once remarked that she had never seen me without it. It was true, I had never ventured out of my room barefaced. However, at some point between the end of my bachelor’s and the beginning of my master’s degree, I quit powder. It stopped having a hold on me. I stopped caring for some reason. It is only now, though, that I realise I was once obsessed with my skin too.