We recently connected with Anya Shumskaya and have shared our conversation below.

Anya, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Since I first got access to social media, at the age of 11, I would take curiosity in the way people expressed their life on their pages. As time went on, I myself started posting photos and becoming engaged in friend’s lives. We all grew, with the gadget in our hand and constantly checking each others’ lives on instagram and Facebook. Soon, influencers became a thing to also follow and comment on. However, I started to compare myself to the images I saw online, because I was slowly gaining new uninvited guests on my face, chest, and back – teenage acne. With the help of social media I learned how to cover it up and take care of it. But my acne never went away. Me and my friends would often compare ourselves to those celebrities and my confidence and mental health went down. I developed generalized anxiety. I couldn’t leave the house unless I spent at least an hour doing my makeup and hair. I was also guilty of constantly editing my photos to match the perfect skin of other people on social media. That continued until I was 23 and was still struggling with breakouts and adult acne at this point. Nothing helped. I’ve spend thousands of dollars on products, allergy tests, facials, and international dermatology help. My last resort was accutane and that’s when I, for the first time, recorded my first bare-skin and unfiltered video, where I talked about how acne has made me feel and that I will be embarking on a journey of accutane for 6 months.
Since then I am grateful to have gathered a great community of women also struggling with confidence, skin issues, and constantly comparing to the edited and filtered images of people.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I show my skin as it is, without the filters, makeup, professional lighting, and all other things that we associate with social media presence. I want to help in normalizing normal, human skin. I am also trying products to lift my acne scars – an issue that I have now after over a decade of teenage, adult, cystic acne.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Instead of judging myself for having acne for so many years, I wish I could’ve been more open about it. Now that I’m open about my struggles I have met many great people that I call friends and that support each other unconditionally, regardless of how our skin looks like on any given day.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @annatheshum
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AnnaTheShum (working on it)
• Other: TikTok: @annatheshum

Image Credits

self