HOT Competition (Instagram): Dermatologists believe that facial pores

The first thing that jumps out at me is the word “both”, since it’s a key parallelism trigger. But there’s interesting happening here: “acne” and “a reduction in skin health” are two parallel nouns, so we’re all good.

The other bit of parallelism, “... masks, cosmetics, and lotions”, looks fine, too.

So here aren’t any grammar issues here, but the meaning looks shaky: “... facial pores, if [x occurs], can cause both acne and a reduction in skin health.” Wait a minute: facial pores CAUSE acne under certain circumstances? And facial pores CAUSE a reduction in skin health?!?

That’s nonsense. (A) is out.


I don’t see any glaring grammatical errors here. That’s nice.

Let’s hold on to (B), at least for now.


We definitely have some meaning issues here. I don’t love the use of passive voice (“health can be reduced” and “acne can be caused”) here, because it makes the sentence unclear.

What, exactly, causes acne and a reduction in skin health? It's really hard to figure it out when you first read the sentence. I guess the answer is “in covering our facial pores… with masks, cosmetics, and lotions”, but that’s a mess. Imagine the following conversation:

Dermatologist: “You’re experiencing acne and a reduction in skin health.”
Patient: “Oh, crap! What caused those things?”
Dermatologist: “In covering your facial pores much of the time with masks, cosmetics, and lotions.”
Patient: “I’m confused. I need a beer. Or at least a cookie.”

That’s a long-winded way of saying that (C) is hard to understand. We have better options, so let’s remove (C).


Hm, this looks better. What reduces skin health and causes acne? Not the masks, cosmetics, and lotions themselves -- it’s the act of “covering our facial pores” with those things.

Keep (D).


Um, facial pores cause acne? And facial pores cause a reduction in skin health? That’s nonsense. (E) is gone.


We didn’t eliminate (B) right away, so let’s line it up side-by-side with (D) to understand what’s happening here:

Which one of these makes more sense? Again, I don’t think that (B) is WRONG, exactly, but which one is clearer?

In (B), the message is muddier: masks, cosmetics and lotions CAN -- under certain circumstances -- cause bad things to happen to your skin. But why not just cut to the chase, and say that it’s the act of covering the pores that causes skin problems?

(D) is clearer, so it’s our winner.