Skin issue

Look, I don't know how Minecraft is supposed to work, but all I know is that I am incapable of seeing skins. I have uninstalled the launcher, java runtime environment and deleted the .minecraft files. I reinstalled java and the launcher, I run Minecraft after seeing that the skin I have selected is not Steve or Alex but the skin I uploaded on minecraft.net, I create a new world and my skin is the perfectly basic Steve skin. I checked in .../.minecraft/assets and there is no skins folder. Please help.