What Skin Under A Microscope Looks Like - Gross But Fascinating!

There are certain things in life you just know you shouldn’t do – like eating a whole tub of ice cream – but the more you know you shouldn’t, the more you want to. Looking at your skin under a microscope is one of those things. It’s pretty disturbing, so disturbing that if you do it, you’ll be down that microscopic rabbit hole for at least an hour, marveling at all the grossness you never knew was there.

Obviously, we wanted to share this fascinating microscopic world with you, because as gross as it, it’s also really interesting. We took a look at all kinds of different things under a 40x to 1000x microscope, from blackheads and whiteheads to ice pick scars, broken capillaries, and pimples! Be WARNED, this is not for the squeamish!

Here’s what your skin looks like under a microscope:

Blackheads:

Flip to see the results of a blackhead-removing pore strip!

You can see that some blackheads have been extracted and that the skin is noticeably drier than before. Check out the blackhead-removing pore strip in action:

Whiteheads on chin

Flip to see whiteheads that have been slightly squeezed (or don’t, because it’s gross).

but not as gross as this…

Whiteheads squeezed on an oily nose

or this…

An unpopped vs. popped pimple

If this isn’t absolute proof of why you should never pop a pimple, we don’t know what is! By popping the pimple, the skin is now broken, making it open to infection and much more likely to scar.

A small whitehead among blackheads on the nose

Dandruff

Dry flakes and crusty skin!

Oily Scalp

The shiny, glass-like scalp surface and bulbous hair follicle show where oil is accumulating.

Healthy hair growth

In this image, you can see that some follicles have two or even three hairs growing from them, which indicates good hair growth.

Mole

Ice pick Scar

An ice pick scar is essentially a very deep pore that can look like a hole. This is the hardest type of scar to treat since it’s small but goes very deep. Ice pick scars are often seen on the cheeks and temple after acne has cleared. This ice pick scar is just above the brow and barely noticeable.

A broken capillary

We know you guys must be feeling pretty gross right now, so sorry about that – but at least you’ve learned this is something you should never do! Now you can see how important it is to look after your skin (even though your skin would still look this gross under a microscope), here’re 5 skincare rules you should absolutely know for happy, healthy skin.