---
title: The Real Cost — "Your Skin"
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/real-cost-your-skin-2014/
description: A teen actor's face is shown with skin visibly peeling away in a televised anti-smoking PSA, dramatizing a real, longer-term harm (premature skin aging…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

**Content note:** Graphic body-horror imagery. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![The Real Cost — "Your Skin"](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/real-cost-your-skin-2014.png)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/real-cost-your-skin-2014.png)

# The Real Cost — "Your Skin"

A teen actor's face is shown with skin visibly peeling away in a televised anti-smoking PSA, dramatizing a real, longer-term harm (premature skin aging from smoking) as immediate bodily horror to deter teenage cigarette use.

- **Date:** February 4, 2014
- **Period:** [Contemporary](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=contemporary)
- **Made by:** U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Tobacco Products
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Advertisement](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=advertisement)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Obama Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=obama-administration)
- **Leader:** [Barack Obama](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=barack-obama)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Theme:** [Health](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=health)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [U.S. Food and Drug Administration (via Wikimedia Commons, capped from a YouTube upload)](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_Lore,_The_Real_Cost_PSA,_%22Your_Skin%22.png), retrieved September 25, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Food and Drug Administration, The Real Cost campaign, "Your Skin" (2014). Actor: Anna Lore.

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
[illegible]
```

This is a shallow-depth-of-field video still: the actor is in sharp focus, and the convenience-store background (shelving, pennant bunting and what appears to be a poster or price board) is thrown into heavy bokeh, with no letterforms resolvable even on close crop. There is no burned-in caption, lower-third or end-card text in this particular frame (the campaign's on-screen text/URL, when present, appears in other frames of the PSA, not this one).

[← 'No Way. You will not make Australia home' poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/no-way-operation-sovereign-borders-2013/) [Вместе с Россией. 16 марта – Референдум! (Together with Russia. 16 March: Referendum!): Simferopol billboards →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/vmeste-s-rossiei-simferopol-2014/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)