Source : the age
When my nine-year-old niece fell off the monkey bars and hurt herself recently, I tried to cheer her up with what I know all pre-teen girls want: I opened the Sephora app and told her to choose something she’d like. Immediately, her little bruised face lit up at the chance.
I’m not the first person to worry about the obsession Gen Alpha (those born after 2010) has with premium skincare.
Does using adult skincare too early come with risks?Credit: Nathan Perri
Recently, one friend reported their 11-year-old niece was working on repairing her skin barrier, while a teacher pal confessed to feeling intimidated when her students asked whether she was using the correct vitamin C serum for her skin type.
One mother I spoke to admitted to initially being disturbed by her daughter’s encyclopedic knowledge of Korean beauty brands. But recalling her own memories of experimenting with skincare, she concluded it’s innocent fun. Another said they got on board with their child taking 40 minutes of “me time” in the bathroom each night because their multi-step skincare routine had reduced fights about wearing sunscreen.
But this new clutch of prepubescent aestheticians are as complex as the potions they smooth on their baby-soft cheeks.
Initially, I thought of myself at my niece’s age. Swap my Body Shop body butter for some Sol de Janeiro, and we are basically the same, I thought. At least, I did until I saw the price of having impeccable skin in today’s world. In my day, LipSmackers topped out around $6, while today, a lip oil from Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty (a must-have according to TikTok tweens) will set you back $39.
In 2021, the global children’s personal care market (a nightmare phrase) was already valued at $US7.5 billion, and continues to grow steadily. And a 2023 survey of US teenagers from investment bank Piper Sandler found that while spending on apparel had declined, purchases in cosmetics, skincare and fragrances had grown by 23 per cent in just one year.
Traditionally, skincare was sold on results: use this to look younger, fresher, better. But most child-friendly products now specify what they don’t contain, promising anxious parents their wares are free of active ingredients such as retinol and acids, and will essentially do nothing. But if that’s the case, why use them?
As one aforementioned parent suspected, this fixation largely appears to be about play. Kids are observing guardians, siblings and countless social media stars weighed down by their own beauty habits and are mirroring what they see. By wringing our hands over young people’s relationship with personal care, we’re really just facing off with our own.
With the growth of influencer culture in particular, we’ve shifted from “cleanse, tone, moisturise” to 10-plus step routines. And children have not only witnessed this increase in labour, but our growing emotional connection to it.
Brands have also adopted a new language of therapy speak (seemingly understanding they aren’t supposed to transparently make money by making us feel bad about our appearances), and kids are listening. Once Neutrogena sold teens firming body lotions. Now, the skincare line offers a seven step “anti burnout ritual” kit. Meanwhile, my niece’s favourite brand, Bubble, teamed up with Pixar’s Inside Out 2 on a “fearless” hydrating moisturiser that “soothes your face and your mind”. It’s enough to make you miss the days when brands told you your pores were volcanic and the boy you liked was going to drown in your oily T-zone.
Companies now also offer a murky message that to use their products is to somehow love ourselves. When Audre Lorde wrote in her 1988 essay collection A Burst of Light, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”, she was surely talking about spending 40 minutes washing your face after a 12-hour workday, and seeing someone who’s yet to get their first pimple desperate to copy you.
I don’t mind kids playing with skincare as an extension of arts and crafts, but I worry when it’s marketed as self-care. While my generation was taught that no one would love you with pimples, today’s kids are learning that to love yourself is an unavoidably expensive consumer exercise.
When my niece’s overpriced treat from Sephora arrived, I didn’t pair it with a lecture. If she is playing an adult, what’s more true to life than attempting to shop and slather her way out of a bad day or existential crisis? Besides, why shouldn’t she be allowed to apply a lip gloss without being subjected to a lecture about patriarchy or capitalism? No one is giving her brothers a TED talk when they reach for the Lynx.
Wendy Syfret is an author and a freelance writer based in Melbourne.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
