Why you should worry about the ‘Sephora Girl’ skincare trend

The other day while browsing Sephora, I overheard a girl about my sixth grade age — around 11 or 12 — asking a store clerk where she could get a chemical peel. Chemical peeling. Her beautiful, smooth skin, her angelic little face. A woman, presumably her mother, stood there holding a basket of sweets that were not meant for her, but mainly for her daughter.

Now, I’m not saying a little exfoliation is bad. After all, I used to exfoliate copiously with that gritty St. Ives walnut scrub everyone used to use all throughout the ’90s. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having an (age-appropriate) skin care routine. Skin is the largest and most sensitive organ in the human body, and it needs to be taken care of. But if you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ve probably heard about the growing skin care craze. Pre-teens and teens are unpacking their Sephora shopping sprees on TikTok, spending hundreds of dollars on products that aren’t actually meant for skin care. have Wrinkles — 20 years is not a wrinkle-free age for these people. They worry about fine lines at an age when they should only be worried about being a kid.

The trend has gotten so out of hand that even summer camps are banning the use of luxury skincare products. Business InsiderAccording to the magazine, a letter to parents from Camp Canadensis in the Poconos this year read, “While a limited amount of nail polish and sheet masks can be fun activities to sprinkle into free time at camp, we don’t want ‘playing with skincare and cosmetics’ to become an activity.” Similarly, Somerset Camp for Girls in Maine instructed campers to “no perfume, six-step daily skincare routines, or excessive makeup.” The director of Tyler Hill Camp in Pennsylvania stipulated that kids “are welcome to get covered in mud, not spend time slathering on face cream.” And the list goes on. One mother quoted in the article noted that the skincare craze among her 9-year-old daughter’s friend group was “out of control,” with “retinol serums, masks, hyaluronic acid, eye creams, everything.” She’s seen them arrive with beauty bags filled with pricey products she could never buy for herself, like $40 blushes and Dior lip oils. ”

When I see young girls resisting giving up luxury items and complicated habits for a few weeks of being a kid at summer camp, I know that’s bad. But I worry that this problem will have long-term effects long after the summer is over. These girls may one day face bigger problems than a few wrinkles. And I say that as someone who knows.

As an early teenager in the ’90s, I may not have had the same access to social media as girls today, but I loved teen magazines with their glossy pages idealizing the stick-thin, “skinny” body type. A-la Kate Moss. They called it “heroin chic.” And my mother, well-intentioned but steeped in diet culture, actively encouraged thinness. she My mom. We did the Richard Simmons “Deal-a-Meal” diet together when I was 7 or 8. We bonded over training (where I proudly wore a leotard and leg warmers) and she taught me how to read labels, calculate fat grams, portion control, make low-fat/low-calorie versions of dinner, etc. These days, we even have the term “Almond Mama.”

But I can’t put the blame entirely on her shoulders. It wasn’t one thing that ruined me, it was my almond-like mother, magazines, fat is the enemy, There are Being fat is unacceptable — and so is a young, impressionable mind. So I’ve spent most of my life hating my body, struggling with my dimples and “extra” weight. This body has served me well so far — it’s given me four children and I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, even in middle age. But instead of feeling proud of it, I struggle to see beyond the number on the scale. I live in a world where my self-worth is directly tied to my weight. I know it shouldn’t be — logically, rationally, I know that. know — But no matter how hard I tried over the years, I couldn’t separate the two.

The last time I didn’t feel bad about my body was when I was 8 years old, and I’m turning 44 this year.

My mom is a great mom and she loves me, and I want to point out that she would never have allowed these things into my life if she had known how damaging it would ultimately be. Ironically, it was probably so that I could develop “good” eating habits and grow up thin, thereby escaping the looming fear of fat that plagued me. she She was that way her whole life, but that’s easy to see in retrospect. And now, as our generation, raised by Almond Moms, is entrusted with raising our own daughters, are we making the same mistakes in other areas, with regards to “preventive” measures and the way we talk about aging? We’re prone to blame social media for our obsession with skin care that’s not meant for our age group, but we have to consider how much we’re encouraging it.

If you feel bad about looking old, you might encourage your daughters to take an active role in managing their own physical aging to prevent the process from happening in the first place, so they don’t have to feel self-conscious about “looking old.” Corpse We go with the flow, trying to protect our eyes from the physical problems we’ve struggled with… but then we approach the mirror with a disgruntled frown and pull up a sagging eyelid with one finger, or study the lines at the crow’s feet in despondency.

“[C]”Given the speed with which social media is forcing increasingly unattainable standards of beauty on children, it is time for us to reflect on our moral obligation to minimise the damage to future generations,” writes Alexandra D’Amour. The New York Times.

There’s one important thing to keep in mind, and it should be clearly communicated to your kids, psychologist Kelsey Latimer, PhD, an expert on eating disorders and body image, tells SheKnows.

“We must remember that the diet and beauty industry is very powerful and is making a lot of money off the perception that there is something wrong with us, and that they have a solution!” she points out. “I think the ‘answer’ to what we do is similar to how we’ve been trying to move a little bit away from extremely thin bodies, which are the only acceptable body type in this country. It didn’t happen by accident; it happened because our culture didn’t expect anything less and forced the industry to be inclusive.” The same thing needs to happen with aging, she says. “We as a culture need to show that age is something to be grateful for, that aging is not something to be afraid of. Until that happens, it’s going to be very hard to see change.” This means celebrating things other than appearances, recognizing the beauty of aging, and being honest about how our culture is affecting us.

Being a woman is hard enough. Why is there always something that keeps us from shining as bright as we should? Why is it that when we make progress in one problem area, another suddenly pops up and makes us feel terrible about ourselves? Is it “they” – social media, the patriarchy, a multi-billion dollar industry – that make us do this? Or is it us that do this by perpetuating it? And, by extension, are our daughters doomed to spend their whole lives thinking they’re not good enough because their bodies or faces aren’t good enough? (Ahhhh!) What are they biologically supposed to do as they get older?

Moms, please don’t let the beauty industry prey on your daughters’ self-loathing the way the diet industry has preyed on ours. We need to teach our daughters that aging is a beautiful and natural privilege. But to do that, we have to start believing it ourselves.

Before you go, check out this list of women Hollywood has tried to tell us they’re “fat.”