December 10, 2024 • 20 mins
Is Drunk Elephant the new Barbie? Skincare is at the top of the holiday wish list for tweens, even though there’s no need for it. And social media might be part of the reason why.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Toad and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
So now that it's the holiday season, we know that
means gift giving. And I had kind of a big
shock when I was talking to the tween girl in
my life, my little cousin, and I asked her what
(00:27):
are some things that she might want for the holidays
as a gift. She's rattling off all of these normal
age appropriate things, and then she said one of the
things that she wanted was a seventy dollars thing of
drunk elephant peptide face cream. It's not just the price,
although seventy dollars for a face cream for an eleven
year old.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Is a bit much.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It's also that it's a peptide face cream. If you
don't know, peptides are meant to give your skin more elasticity,
but your skin loses as you age. It's not really
the kind of thing an eleven year old wouldever need
for their skin.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
They're for skin like mine.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So this left me thinking, when did tweens and very
young people start feeling what they needed or wanted, you know,
complicated multi step skincare design to combat things like wrinkles.
This is absolutely a thing now and social media is
to blame, but if you ask me, maybe not on
the way that you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Let's get into it. So this trend actually has a name.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Young people who have been influenced by platforms like TikTok
and Instagram to be obsessed with skincare are known as
Sephora kids. And there are a lot of Sephora kids
out there because younger folks are into skincare right now.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Here are some stats.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Households with tweens aged six to twelve spent almost two
point five billion dollars on facial skincare last year, an
annual spending increase of twenty seven percent, more than double
the average. Writer Alexandra Damar wrote about this for The
New York Times and a piece called Toxic Beauty Standards
can be passed down. She writes about how one of
her friends, who is in the fashion industry, told her
(02:01):
that in her local mother's group chat, nearly every single
mom had skincare skincare skincare as the top thing on
the holiday list they were given by their fifth graders.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Her ten year old.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Daughter does not even have access to social media, but
she says that she's exposed to the skincare obsession through
friends who are copying TikTok beauty influencers and whose parents
are buying these products for them, things like acids, peels,
and toners, even though many of these products are just
not meant for their skin. They're meant for aging skin
or acne prone skin, not the kind of perfect skin
(02:32):
that somebody who was ten or eleven probably has. There
was even this entire thing a couple of months ago
where adults were filming kids going into sephoras and Alta
beauty stores and sort of running wild, stocking up on
expensive products. I felt like that entire trend had a
little bit of a darker undercurrent to this discourse. First
of all, just in general, adults should not be out
(02:54):
there filming kids on their phone, just full stop, end
of sentence. But I also picked up this kind of
undercurrent of I don't know, this feeling of being a
bit territorial, like, hey, why are these youth muscling in
on the sephora, which should be territory for grown women?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But where do you think these kids.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Are learning about how to obsess over skincare. You know,
it's one of those things like an after school special.
I learned it from watching you. Kids are coming of
age on the Internet, the same Internet that we adults
are using, and that is where this skincare obsession is
stemming from. Now, it probably doesn't surprise you to find
out that social media is part of what is fueling
(03:32):
this youth desire for a complicated, multi step skincare routine.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But you don't have to take my word for it.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
There is a documented link between young people obsessing over
their skincare and social media use, according to Psychology Today.
A twenty eighteen study by cha j found pressure to
conform to beauty standards increases the likelihood of engaging in
skincare routines. Influencers promote products promising clear skin, driving teams
to purchase them and achieve similar results, and their use
(03:58):
of social media to fuel these concerns about their skin
and skincare does come with negative impacts. A study from
Tickerman and Slater found that exposure to idealized images on
social media can negatively affect body image, particularly for young
women and girls. Clear glowing skin has become a symbol
of beauty and confidence. But when teens don't meet those
idealized standards, especially when it comes to acne, they may
(04:20):
feel inadequate, which can lower self worth. Skincare routines often
marketed as confidence boosting, can have the opposite effect when
teens don't see immediate results or experience breakouts, The pressure
to achieve perfect skin can actually worsen insecurities. And lastly,
you know how easy it is to conflate skincare with
self care more generally, where you feel like, if you
(04:41):
spend a bunch of money on skincare products, you can
actually convince yourself that you're taking good care of yourself
if you're me anyway. Yeah, so that dynamic definitely got me,
even at my big age and youth are not immune
to it either, because a survey from twenty twenty one
found that fifty eight percent of teens see skincare as
an important form of s self care, and many are
turning to it to manage stress or boost their mood.
(05:03):
In the earlier days of the pandemic, many teens use
skincare to feel more in control and reduce their anxiety,
which now that is not inherently a bad thing, But
skincare is just not the same thing as self care
or control. And buying a bunch of pricey products to
do a ten step skincare routine to get glowing glass
skin is not really the same thing as self care.
(05:26):
And I do think this is something that youth are
really getting from us adults, like we're passing down some
not great attitudes and ideas about what self care really
is and what it looks like. I agree that some
of this really took root in those early pandemic days
when we are all just trying to do whatever to cope.
The New Yorker's Gia Tolentino really breaks it down well.
(05:47):
She writes the Sephora tweens, for their part, seem to
be borrowing some of the self care language that was
dominant in the adult beauty world two presidential election cycles ago.
According to this line of thinking, taking care of your
face is a way to luxuriate in personal pleasure and
exert control over your life. But adults have largely moved
on from all that. No one is fooling anyone by
(06:07):
quoting Audrey Lord in blog posts about lip balm anymore,
The earnest language of corporate approved wellness disappeared from the
mainstream somewhere around twenty twenty, along with the figure of
the girl boss, who often relied on that language. The
mood regarding beauty and also culture, politics and whatever it
is we're all doing is raw, pragmatic, aggressive. The deference
to root material reality comes a lot faster these days,
(06:30):
so I absolutely agree with this. You know, most adults
are not talking about skin care as wellness or self
care anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
By now, most of us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Can pretty clearly see the ways that that was pretty
obviously and quickly co opted by brands on corporations to
just get us to buy more crap and keep feeling bad.
So I think we kind of moved on from that
around the same time that people decided to move on
from the pandemic, but it still has this lasting, lingering
cultural impact for youth, and I just think it's important
to ask, what are the dynamics that we have been
(07:01):
fostering in our youth and are they actually serving our
youth or just setting them up for more unhealthy, toxic
standards mass tess care because they deserve so much better
we all do.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So all these studies about youth and skincare are kind
of just telling us what we already know, because all
you need to do is scroll TikTok or physically go
into an altar or a Sephora to see what I'm
talking about. But we can't talk about Sephora Kids without
talking about the brand Drunk Elephant. The pricey butt worth
it lux brand Drunk Elephant is one of the top
(07:53):
brands tweens say they want. Ariana yap Tenko at Glamour
Magazines at a poll around their offices and found that
the staffers who had daughters, nieces and younger cousins were
basically obsessed with this brand. Parents flooded Instagram with questions
about the safety of ingredients like peptides, acids, and retinols
on youthful skin. On TikTok, the hashtag kids at Sephora
(08:15):
has more than five million views featuring videos of Drunk
Elephant kids wreaking havoc on test you products in the stores.
So social media is definitely a big part of what's
going on here. But some of this isn't new, right
because when I was between decades ago, I also loved skincare.
I mean I almost feel like care is not the
(08:35):
right word here. It was more like skin punishment. If
you live through that era, you know exactly what I'm
talking about. My routine was that I would wash my
face with that facial cleanser that had those little scrubbing
microbeads in them, remember those, to like exfoliate your skin.
Not only did it completely rip up your skin and
tear it apart, I can only assume I'm still carrying
(08:56):
those microplastic beads in my blood as we speak decades later.
Then I would use sea breeze as like a stringent
or a toner, which if you use sea breeze, I
feel like you can probably smell how it smelled as
we speak. So I would soak a cotton ball in
sea breeze and just rub this burning acid all over
(09:17):
my face. Maybe I would finish it off with one
of those stride x or oxypads across my face too,
just to.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Make sure it was nice and dried out.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You know, you really want to just like dry out
your skin by putting a bunch of alcohol just right
on there. For some reason, I think I also used
to put toothpaste on my pimples.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I don't know where I heard that.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I think somebody in my school said that you were
supposed to do that, so that's what I did. Anyway,
what I'm saying is that it was a rough time
for bridget skin.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
But here was the thing.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I was just picking these things up at the drug
store or the grocery store or my parents would take me.
They were not seventy dollars a pop. And as rough
as this routine was on my skin, I wasn't doing
any real lasting damage. Because there is a reason why
skincare that is designed for more mature skin is different
than the skincare an eleven year old should be using.
The kind of active chemical ingredients in skincare design for
(10:06):
mature skin. Things like acids and retinol and glycolic acid
can be very bad for the sensitive.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Skin of a young person.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
But even beyond the fact that these products are not
designed for children, an eleven year old does not have wrinkles,
or crow's feet or smile lines. So when a product
aimed at preventing these kinds of things is on the
very top of an eleven year old's holiday gift wish list,
what is really going on. So there is a ton
of criticism of brands like drunk Elephant that they might
(10:34):
be intentionally marketing their products to kids when these products
are not met for kids, and they are not even
really safe for kids to be using. Tiffany Masterson, the
founder of drunk Elephant, has even addressed this directly. She
told The New York Times, I designed drunk Elephant for
all skin, including that of my own children, and the
majority of our skin, hair and body products are appropriate
for and combatible with skin of all ages. This is
(10:56):
backed by clinical data. Based on the number of questions
we've received on this topic, I created an Instagram post
with recommendations of what is safe for prepubescent skin under thirteen.
We do not recommend children under thirteen use acids like
retinol or vitamin C. The detractors are referring to products
that contain acids, and rightly so kids and tweens don't
need acids. If you have concerns, we recommend consulting a
(11:18):
pediatrician or pediatric dermatologist before introducing new products into your
child's routine. So they also addressed criticism that they intentionally
market their products to kids she says, I've been reading
that I chose the colors and packaging to target children.
This couldn't be further from the truth, and the truth
is never quite as interesting. But I chose the colors
(11:39):
and packaging because it happened to be my aesthetic. I
actually never even considered targeting any demographic, and that's what
made my brand so different from the start. So on
that point, I don't know if I fully agree. I
actually think, if anybody, she was trying to target millennials,
because her packaging is these pastel pinks and turquoises and
blues that really speak to the sort.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Of millennial aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I also just don't know that she is that bent
out of shape about the fact that her products are
very popular with children and they're like hot pink colored, right.
I don't know that it was an intentional choice, but
I don't think that they're crying any tears over the
fact that it's what made their brand so popular is
this youth demographic. So I kind of have to push
(12:22):
back a little bit on what she's saying here. But
if she's taken at her word and these are not
products that she's intentionally marketing to kids, why do kids
end up with luck skincare like drunk elephant on their
holiday wish list? So I actually think there's a kind
of cultural collapse happening online that is responsible for this.
Here's my theory on what I think is going on. So, yes,
(12:45):
I do think this is just standard social media causing
kids to want things that really are not for them,
and you know, youth just generally wanting to feel older
than they are, which is a totally normal young person
thing that we all went through. I went through that
you went through. That is a thing that young people do.
But I also think something else is going on here too.
I think it's the lack of digital third spaces for
(13:05):
use online. The same TikTok that I go to when
I want advice on how to use retinol without causing
irritation on my skin is the exact same TikTok that
my eleven year old cousin is using.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So if you're an eleven year old who's into beauty.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And skincare as a hobby, which there's something wrong with that,
there's not really an age appropriate space for you to
go to explore what skincare should look like for somebody
your own age, let alone a place where you're not
being constantly sold a product. When you consider how ubiquitous
things like TikTok shop have become, and I think it
really comes down to kids needing their own corners of
(13:38):
the Internet for exploration, because when they don't get that,
they end up being shaped by the same Internet experience
as me, a grown adult woman. But the thing is,
I'm an adult, so I have the ability to understand
and see that like TikTok skincare influencers might be using
filters or lighting to make their skin look glassy and
perfect to get me to buy skincare that they then
(13:59):
might get a finance cut off, Like, I'm old enough
to understand and see all the machinations at play, even
though it doesn't always save me from buying skincare i'll
ever use. And for youth, it's like that insecurity is
being further monetized and cashed in on. So that's what
I think is actually going on here. But what happens
when your kid gives you their holiday wish list and
(14:19):
it has these expensive skincare items that they don't really
need on it, Like, what are you meant to do
as a parent? Well one, I think education is a
huge part of it, and so for a stores now
say they're doing a much bigger push around in store
education of young consumers and what their skin actually needs. Now,
maybe kids are not going to be swayed by this.
If the cool girls at school are all using seventy
(14:42):
dollars peptide cream for their not existent wrinkles, they're probably
still going to want it. But helping them understand that
at a young age, what their skin really only needs
is like a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer on a sunscreen,
and that anything else might actually be making their skin worse.
But if your kid wants fancy skin care because they
have an actual skin issue, you should be talking to
(15:03):
a professional dermatologist or doctor. That's another thing about the
skincare hobby experience on the Internet. I am on subreddits
like skincare addict on Reddit, where everybody is diagnosing other
people's skin.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
People will send in pictures of a skin issue and
ask what they should be buying or what they should
be doing to fix it. Now, generally it's pretty humdrum
stuff like dry skin, but sometimes people will have a
picture of like a pretty gnarly looking skin infection and
the only answer should be talk to a doctor. So
you have adults asking another non doctor adults to address
(15:39):
what sometimes is like a medical issue. That's not a
dynamic that is always great for adults, you know, we
navigate it. However, it's certainly not a dynamic that kids
should be mixed up in online. And I also think
it's more of a media literacy conversation. You know, we
should be talking to the youth in our lives about
how influencers, maybe you are not always being honest about
the impact different products have had on their skin, and
(16:01):
how they might also be making money off of us
clicking by. More generally, I think it's about having conversations
about who you should trust on the Internet and the
importance of independently verifying health information from the random people
that they see online. This is especially true for youth
because research is very clear that more and more youth
see influencers as their friends, and so if they have
(16:23):
a parasocial relationship with a skincare influencer on TikTok, they're
not going to see this as somebody who gets a
cut if you hit by. They're going to see this
as my friend is recommended I use the skincare product.
So that level of media literacy I think is very important, especially.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
For youth online.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
But beyond all that, I also think there is this
need for a deeper examination of what it is we
are all passing down to our youth, what attitudes, what concerns,
what cultures we are passing down, because I worry that
we might be passing down some toxic attitudes without even
really realizing that our youth youth is being impacted by this,
(17:02):
Like are we as adults obsessing about our skin and
our wrinkles and our age in these ways that signal
to youth that the normal process of aging is something
to be afraid of, to be concerned about, rather than
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
There was this video where I think a twenty eight
year old woman posted a video of.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Her face and she was like, this is my face
without botox or filter or makeup, Like, this is what
somebody in their late twenties look like. She looked completely
normal and regular and fine, just a regular person's face,
nothing weird about it. So either the comment, it was
like a couple of sets of comments. One was like,
oh my god, so brave, so brave to like have
(17:43):
a human face and show it on this Internet in
twenty twenty four, which you know, definitely I think that's
well meaning, but I don't like living in a world
where it's just brave to exist on the Internet with
a human face without a filter on it or without
botox in it.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
So didn't love that. But also you had younger people
being like, this is.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Why I use retinol even though I'm fifteen, Like, I
don't want to look like this. This is so said, YadA, YadA, YadA,
And it just made me wonder if kids and young
people have been so tricked by social media filters that
they no longer know what a human person's face looks like.
I do think that social media makes it harder to
(18:27):
have a good sense of what people look like as
they age, and listen, take it from me. Aging is
a gift. Not everybody gets to get to the age
where they get to have wrinkles and smile lines, and
if you get to get there, it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It's something to be celebrated.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
There's no shame in wanting to have smooth, clear skin,
but we shouldn't be demonizing the normal process of aging
in the process either, And so maybe it's not surprising
that the holiday season, you know, this time of sky
high expectations and unreasonable demands, it is also a time
when harmful beauty ideals can really thrive and spread through
(19:03):
the heads of young people, like the whispers of sugar plumberries.
All that to say, however, the bottom bottom line is
that you should not spend seventy dollars on skincare for
an eleven year old. I will not be spending seventy
dollars on skincare for an eleven year old. If you
are my cousin listening to this, I love you dearly.
(19:24):
You know you're my girl, but you're not getting that
skincare kick another gift, got a story about an interesting
thing in tech. I just want to say Hi. You
can reach us at Hello at tegody dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
(19:44):
me Bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed.
Creative Jonathan Stricklet is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Todd. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review us on Apple podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
There are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Toad and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
So now that it's the holiday season, we know that
means gift giving. And I had kind of a big
shock when I was talking to the tween girl in
my life, my little cousin, and I asked her what
(00:27):
are some things that she might want for the holidays
as a gift. She's rattling off all of these normal
age appropriate things, and then she said one of the
things that she wanted was a seventy dollars thing of
drunk elephant peptide face cream. It's not just the price,
although seventy dollars for a face cream for an eleven
year old.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Is a bit much.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It's also that it's a peptide face cream. If you
don't know, peptides are meant to give your skin more elasticity,
but your skin loses as you age. It's not really
the kind of thing an eleven year old wouldever need
for their skin.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
They're for skin like mine.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So this left me thinking, when did tweens and very
young people start feeling what they needed or wanted, you know,
complicated multi step skincare design to combat things like wrinkles.
This is absolutely a thing now and social media is
to blame, but if you ask me, maybe not on
the way that you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Let's get into it. So this trend actually has a name.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Young people who have been influenced by platforms like TikTok
and Instagram to be obsessed with skincare are known as
Sephora kids. And there are a lot of Sephora kids
out there because younger folks are into skincare right now.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Here are some stats.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Households with tweens aged six to twelve spent almost two
point five billion dollars on facial skincare last year, an
annual spending increase of twenty seven percent, more than double
the average. Writer Alexandra Damar wrote about this for The
New York Times and a piece called Toxic Beauty Standards
can be passed down. She writes about how one of
her friends, who is in the fashion industry, told her
(02:01):
that in her local mother's group chat, nearly every single
mom had skincare skincare skincare as the top thing on
the holiday list they were given by their fifth graders.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Her ten year old.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Daughter does not even have access to social media, but
she says that she's exposed to the skincare obsession through
friends who are copying TikTok beauty influencers and whose parents
are buying these products for them, things like acids, peels,
and toners, even though many of these products are just
not meant for their skin. They're meant for aging skin
or acne prone skin, not the kind of perfect skin
(02:32):
that somebody who was ten or eleven probably has. There
was even this entire thing a couple of months ago
where adults were filming kids going into sephoras and Alta
beauty stores and sort of running wild, stocking up on
expensive products. I felt like that entire trend had a
little bit of a darker undercurrent to this discourse. First
of all, just in general, adults should not be out
(02:54):
there filming kids on their phone, just full stop, end
of sentence. But I also picked up this kind of
undercurrent of I don't know, this feeling of being a
bit territorial, like, hey, why are these youth muscling in
on the sephora, which should be territory for grown women?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But where do you think these kids.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Are learning about how to obsess over skincare. You know,
it's one of those things like an after school special.
I learned it from watching you. Kids are coming of
age on the Internet, the same Internet that we adults
are using, and that is where this skincare obsession is
stemming from. Now, it probably doesn't surprise you to find
out that social media is part of what is fueling
(03:32):
this youth desire for a complicated, multi step skincare routine.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
But you don't have to take my word for it.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
There is a documented link between young people obsessing over
their skincare and social media use, according to Psychology Today.
A twenty eighteen study by cha j found pressure to
conform to beauty standards increases the likelihood of engaging in
skincare routines. Influencers promote products promising clear skin, driving teams
to purchase them and achieve similar results, and their use
(03:58):
of social media to fuel these concerns about their skin
and skincare does come with negative impacts. A study from
Tickerman and Slater found that exposure to idealized images on
social media can negatively affect body image, particularly for young
women and girls. Clear glowing skin has become a symbol
of beauty and confidence. But when teens don't meet those
idealized standards, especially when it comes to acne, they may
(04:20):
feel inadequate, which can lower self worth. Skincare routines often
marketed as confidence boosting, can have the opposite effect when
teens don't see immediate results or experience breakouts, The pressure
to achieve perfect skin can actually worsen insecurities. And lastly,
you know how easy it is to conflate skincare with
self care more generally, where you feel like, if you
(04:41):
spend a bunch of money on skincare products, you can
actually convince yourself that you're taking good care of yourself
if you're me anyway. Yeah, so that dynamic definitely got me,
even at my big age and youth are not immune
to it either, because a survey from twenty twenty one
found that fifty eight percent of teens see skincare as
an important form of s self care, and many are
turning to it to manage stress or boost their mood.
(05:03):
In the earlier days of the pandemic, many teens use
skincare to feel more in control and reduce their anxiety,
which now that is not inherently a bad thing, But
skincare is just not the same thing as self care
or control. And buying a bunch of pricey products to
do a ten step skincare routine to get glowing glass
skin is not really the same thing as self care.
(05:26):
And I do think this is something that youth are
really getting from us adults, like we're passing down some
not great attitudes and ideas about what self care really
is and what it looks like. I agree that some
of this really took root in those early pandemic days
when we are all just trying to do whatever to cope.
The New Yorker's Gia Tolentino really breaks it down well.
(05:47):
She writes the Sephora tweens, for their part, seem to
be borrowing some of the self care language that was
dominant in the adult beauty world two presidential election cycles ago.
According to this line of thinking, taking care of your
face is a way to luxuriate in personal pleasure and
exert control over your life. But adults have largely moved
on from all that. No one is fooling anyone by
(06:07):
quoting Audrey Lord in blog posts about lip balm anymore,
The earnest language of corporate approved wellness disappeared from the
mainstream somewhere around twenty twenty, along with the figure of
the girl boss, who often relied on that language. The
mood regarding beauty and also culture, politics and whatever it
is we're all doing is raw, pragmatic, aggressive. The deference
to root material reality comes a lot faster these days,
(06:30):
so I absolutely agree with this. You know, most adults
are not talking about skin care as wellness or self
care anymore.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
By now, most of us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Can pretty clearly see the ways that that was pretty
obviously and quickly co opted by brands on corporations to
just get us to buy more crap and keep feeling bad.
So I think we kind of moved on from that
around the same time that people decided to move on
from the pandemic, but it still has this lasting, lingering
cultural impact for youth, and I just think it's important
to ask, what are the dynamics that we have been
(07:01):
fostering in our youth and are they actually serving our
youth or just setting them up for more unhealthy, toxic
standards mass tess care because they deserve so much better
we all do.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So all these studies about youth and skincare are kind
of just telling us what we already know, because all
you need to do is scroll TikTok or physically go
into an altar or a Sephora to see what I'm
talking about. But we can't talk about Sephora Kids without
talking about the brand Drunk Elephant. The pricey butt worth
it lux brand Drunk Elephant is one of the top
(07:53):
brands tweens say they want. Ariana yap Tenko at Glamour
Magazines at a poll around their offices and found that
the staffers who had daughters, nieces and younger cousins were
basically obsessed with this brand. Parents flooded Instagram with questions
about the safety of ingredients like peptides, acids, and retinols
on youthful skin. On TikTok, the hashtag kids at Sephora
(08:15):
has more than five million views featuring videos of Drunk
Elephant kids wreaking havoc on test you products in the stores.
So social media is definitely a big part of what's
going on here. But some of this isn't new, right
because when I was between decades ago, I also loved skincare.
I mean I almost feel like care is not the
(08:35):
right word here. It was more like skin punishment. If
you live through that era, you know exactly what I'm
talking about. My routine was that I would wash my
face with that facial cleanser that had those little scrubbing
microbeads in them, remember those, to like exfoliate your skin.
Not only did it completely rip up your skin and
tear it apart, I can only assume I'm still carrying
(08:56):
those microplastic beads in my blood as we speak decades later.
Then I would use sea breeze as like a stringent
or a toner, which if you use sea breeze, I
feel like you can probably smell how it smelled as
we speak. So I would soak a cotton ball in
sea breeze and just rub this burning acid all over
(09:17):
my face. Maybe I would finish it off with one
of those stride x or oxypads across my face too,
just to.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Make sure it was nice and dried out.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You know, you really want to just like dry out
your skin by putting a bunch of alcohol just right
on there. For some reason, I think I also used
to put toothpaste on my pimples.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I don't know where I heard that.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I think somebody in my school said that you were
supposed to do that, so that's what I did. Anyway,
what I'm saying is that it was a rough time
for bridget skin.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
But here was the thing.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I was just picking these things up at the drug
store or the grocery store or my parents would take me.
They were not seventy dollars a pop. And as rough
as this routine was on my skin, I wasn't doing
any real lasting damage. Because there is a reason why
skincare that is designed for more mature skin is different
than the skincare an eleven year old should be using.
The kind of active chemical ingredients in skincare design for
(10:06):
mature skin. Things like acids and retinol and glycolic acid
can be very bad for the sensitive.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Skin of a young person.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
But even beyond the fact that these products are not
designed for children, an eleven year old does not have wrinkles,
or crow's feet or smile lines. So when a product
aimed at preventing these kinds of things is on the
very top of an eleven year old's holiday gift wish list,
what is really going on. So there is a ton
of criticism of brands like drunk Elephant that they might
(10:34):
be intentionally marketing their products to kids when these products
are not met for kids, and they are not even
really safe for kids to be using. Tiffany Masterson, the
founder of drunk Elephant, has even addressed this directly. She
told The New York Times, I designed drunk Elephant for
all skin, including that of my own children, and the
majority of our skin, hair and body products are appropriate
for and combatible with skin of all ages. This is
(10:56):
backed by clinical data. Based on the number of questions
we've received on this topic, I created an Instagram post
with recommendations of what is safe for prepubescent skin under thirteen.
We do not recommend children under thirteen use acids like
retinol or vitamin C. The detractors are referring to products
that contain acids, and rightly so kids and tweens don't
need acids. If you have concerns, we recommend consulting a
(11:18):
pediatrician or pediatric dermatologist before introducing new products into your
child's routine. So they also addressed criticism that they intentionally
market their products to kids she says, I've been reading
that I chose the colors and packaging to target children.
This couldn't be further from the truth, and the truth
is never quite as interesting. But I chose the colors
(11:39):
and packaging because it happened to be my aesthetic. I
actually never even considered targeting any demographic, and that's what
made my brand so different from the start. So on
that point, I don't know if I fully agree. I
actually think, if anybody, she was trying to target millennials,
because her packaging is these pastel pinks and turquoises and
blues that really speak to the sort.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Of millennial aesthetic.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I also just don't know that she is that bent
out of shape about the fact that her products are
very popular with children and they're like hot pink colored, right.
I don't know that it was an intentional choice, but
I don't think that they're crying any tears over the
fact that it's what made their brand so popular is
this youth demographic. So I kind of have to push
(12:22):
back a little bit on what she's saying here. But
if she's taken at her word and these are not
products that she's intentionally marketing to kids, why do kids
end up with luck skincare like drunk elephant on their
holiday wish list? So I actually think there's a kind
of cultural collapse happening online that is responsible for this.
Here's my theory on what I think is going on. So, yes,
(12:45):
I do think this is just standard social media causing
kids to want things that really are not for them,
and you know, youth just generally wanting to feel older
than they are, which is a totally normal young person
thing that we all went through. I went through that
you went through. That is a thing that young people do.
But I also think something else is going on here too.
I think it's the lack of digital third spaces for
(13:05):
use online. The same TikTok that I go to when
I want advice on how to use retinol without causing
irritation on my skin is the exact same TikTok that
my eleven year old cousin is using.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
So if you're an eleven year old who's into beauty.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And skincare as a hobby, which there's something wrong with that,
there's not really an age appropriate space for you to
go to explore what skincare should look like for somebody
your own age, let alone a place where you're not
being constantly sold a product. When you consider how ubiquitous
things like TikTok shop have become, and I think it
really comes down to kids needing their own corners of
(13:38):
the Internet for exploration, because when they don't get that,
they end up being shaped by the same Internet experience
as me, a grown adult woman. But the thing is,
I'm an adult, so I have the ability to understand
and see that like TikTok skincare influencers might be using
filters or lighting to make their skin look glassy and
perfect to get me to buy skincare that they then
(13:59):
might get a finance cut off, Like, I'm old enough
to understand and see all the machinations at play, even
though it doesn't always save me from buying skincare i'll
ever use. And for youth, it's like that insecurity is
being further monetized and cashed in on. So that's what
I think is actually going on here. But what happens
when your kid gives you their holiday wish list and
(14:19):
it has these expensive skincare items that they don't really
need on it, Like, what are you meant to do
as a parent? Well one, I think education is a
huge part of it, and so for a stores now
say they're doing a much bigger push around in store
education of young consumers and what their skin actually needs. Now,
maybe kids are not going to be swayed by this.
If the cool girls at school are all using seventy
(14:42):
dollars peptide cream for their not existent wrinkles, they're probably
still going to want it. But helping them understand that
at a young age, what their skin really only needs
is like a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer on a sunscreen,
and that anything else might actually be making their skin worse.
But if your kid wants fancy skin care because they
have an actual skin issue, you should be talking to
(15:03):
a professional dermatologist or doctor. That's another thing about the
skincare hobby experience on the Internet. I am on subreddits
like skincare addict on Reddit, where everybody is diagnosing other
people's skin.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
People will send in pictures of a skin issue and
ask what they should be buying or what they should
be doing to fix it. Now, generally it's pretty humdrum
stuff like dry skin, but sometimes people will have a
picture of like a pretty gnarly looking skin infection and
the only answer should be talk to a doctor. So
you have adults asking another non doctor adults to address
(15:39):
what sometimes is like a medical issue. That's not a
dynamic that is always great for adults, you know, we
navigate it. However, it's certainly not a dynamic that kids
should be mixed up in online. And I also think
it's more of a media literacy conversation. You know, we
should be talking to the youth in our lives about
how influencers, maybe you are not always being honest about
the impact different products have had on their skin, and
(16:01):
how they might also be making money off of us
clicking by. More generally, I think it's about having conversations
about who you should trust on the Internet and the
importance of independently verifying health information from the random people
that they see online. This is especially true for youth
because research is very clear that more and more youth
see influencers as their friends, and so if they have
(16:23):
a parasocial relationship with a skincare influencer on TikTok, they're
not going to see this as somebody who gets a
cut if you hit by. They're going to see this
as my friend is recommended I use the skincare product.
So that level of media literacy I think is very important, especially.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
For youth online.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
But beyond all that, I also think there is this
need for a deeper examination of what it is we
are all passing down to our youth, what attitudes, what concerns,
what cultures we are passing down, because I worry that
we might be passing down some toxic attitudes without even
really realizing that our youth youth is being impacted by this,
(17:02):
Like are we as adults obsessing about our skin and
our wrinkles and our age in these ways that signal
to youth that the normal process of aging is something
to be afraid of, to be concerned about, rather than
to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
There was this video where I think a twenty eight
year old woman posted a video of.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Her face and she was like, this is my face
without botox or filter or makeup, Like, this is what
somebody in their late twenties look like. She looked completely
normal and regular and fine, just a regular person's face,
nothing weird about it. So either the comment, it was
like a couple of sets of comments. One was like,
oh my god, so brave, so brave to like have
(17:43):
a human face and show it on this Internet in
twenty twenty four, which you know, definitely I think that's
well meaning, but I don't like living in a world
where it's just brave to exist on the Internet with
a human face without a filter on it or without
botox in it.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
So didn't love that. But also you had younger people
being like, this is.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Why I use retinol even though I'm fifteen, Like, I
don't want to look like this. This is so said, YadA, YadA, YadA,
And it just made me wonder if kids and young
people have been so tricked by social media filters that
they no longer know what a human person's face looks like.
I do think that social media makes it harder to
(18:27):
have a good sense of what people look like as
they age, and listen, take it from me. Aging is
a gift. Not everybody gets to get to the age
where they get to have wrinkles and smile lines, and
if you get to get there, it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It's something to be celebrated.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
There's no shame in wanting to have smooth, clear skin,
but we shouldn't be demonizing the normal process of aging
in the process either, And so maybe it's not surprising
that the holiday season, you know, this time of sky
high expectations and unreasonable demands, it is also a time
when harmful beauty ideals can really thrive and spread through
(19:03):
the heads of young people, like the whispers of sugar plumberries.
All that to say, however, the bottom bottom line is
that you should not spend seventy dollars on skincare for
an eleven year old. I will not be spending seventy
dollars on skincare for an eleven year old. If you
are my cousin listening to this, I love you dearly.
(19:24):
You know you're my girl, but you're not getting that
skincare kick another gift, got a story about an interesting
thing in tech. I just want to say Hi. You
can reach us at Hello at tegody dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
(19:44):
me Bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed.
Creative Jonathan Stricklet is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Todd. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review us on Apple podcasts. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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