.jpg)
If you’ve scrolled through TikTok recently, you’ve likely seen baby-faced kids and tweens explaining their skin-care routines. They’ll show you their cleanser, their retinol (an ingredient meant to combat aging and acne), their daytime and nighttime moisturizers, and famously, their Drunk Elephant bronzing drops. These mini creators take their skin care seriously, making video “hauls” of products they’re obsessed with, sometimes racking up millions of views in the meantime.
But if that's one side of the story, the other is made up of people like Ellie, 16, who tells Teen Vogue that she saw a bunch of kids running around her local makeup store and causing a scene. Ellie saw what she guessed to be an 11-year-old girl pumping moisturizer out of a testing bottle and leaving it on the counter. “She didn’t even try the product," Ellie recalls, "she just made a mess for no reason. And I was like, Why are there so many kids here?”
In the comments for a video Ellie posted about the experience, people chimed in with their opinions, which range from comments such as “I only used chapstick and water to wash my face at her age” to people reminiscing about their own interests as 10-year-olds, including a commenter who remembered being into “Rugrats and how many hot Cheetos I could fit in my mouth.” And some commenters questioned Ellie’s decision to record the young kids in the first place.
The latest TikTok drama centers on “10-year-olds at Sephora.” Search the #sephora hashtag and you’ll see videos, viewed millions of times, that ask the same questions Ellie did: What are 10-year-olds doing in Sephora? Why are they so obsessed with skin-care routines when they’re literally children (and many of us older viewers didn’t even start using moisturizer until our mid-twenties)? And why do they leave such a mess?
Adults on TikTok have been rapt by these particular questions, but the subject may also beg deeper inquiries: Is this whole phenomenon just a harmless example of young girls mimicking the habits of older ones they idolize, and is it being too harshly judged by adults? Or is this an example of how social media has forced kids to grow up much too quickly?
Gina, a 32-year-old mother, thinks it’s the former. She posted a TikTok of her four-year-old in Sephora with text over the video reading, “Little girls just want to be like their moms, it’s cute and fun, stop being mean about younger girls.”
In a conversation with Teen Vogue, Gina says she finds the criticism of kids in Sephora “harsh. They’re just idolizing [older girls]. I don’t think they’re trying to be grown up. They just think that’s what’s cool,” she adds. “Be cool to the young ones. Just let them have their interests. Live and let live.”
Like most young girls, I can remember wanting to emulate older ones. I wanted to shave my legs and wear makeup well before some considered it necessary or appropriate; my mom told me that one day I would want to be that young again, that I’d have the rest of my life to do those things. I certainly didn’t believe her at the time. I also remember the dreams I had about being grown up, wanting to be like Britney Spears. In that way, the outrage over 10-year-olds at Sephora seems like just another way we judge and shame young girls, putting limits on their girlhood, casting their desires as silly or superfluous.
At the same time, I am worried. The only step I took toward my unlikely dream of being Britney Spears was memorizing her discography. I didn’t have access to her skin-care routine or what makeup she wore or how, exactly, she applied it. I didn’t have access to videos of cool older girls telling me how to do my makeup so my face looked slimmer, nor to a variety of “wellness” routines designed to bust bloat or flush out the “toxins.” As much as I know wanting to be older is a feature of being young, I’m concerned that young girls are now exposed to pressures and standards through social media that other generations weren’t — pressures that introduce them to the desire to change how they look, to conform at a much younger age.
If part of the problem is adults scrutinizing the interests of young girls, it only makes sense to usher into the conversation an actual 10-year-old at Sephora. Enter Emma*, who loves Sephora, and was saddened by the number of videos she saw on her TikTok For You Page that disparage kids just like her.
First of all, she wants to clarify, she would never behave badly in a retail store; she is conscientious, she says, and cleans up after herself. More important, though, she doesn’t get what the big deal is. It’s annoying to hear adults talk about how when they were 10, they only cared about Barbies and unicorns. “I’m just saying, we’re a new generation and more people have shown us all this stuff,” Emma points out.
I ask her whether the obsession with skin care is a result of a desire to be an influencer. That’s part of it, she says. She would love to get PR packages and share her daily routine online. When she takes part in skin care, it’s kind of like she gets to dip a toe into that world.
But also, Emma adds, it’s just fun. She has both a daily and weekly skin-care routine with varying products, and when she gets new products from Sephora, she makes videos on her private TikTok channel for her friends to view. “It’s just a thing we do,” she says with a shrug. “I get it, Bratz dolls were probably popular when you were 10 years old. But I’m a kid [now], and this is what’s popular. This is the new toy that we have. This is a new generation, we’re Generation Alpha. And I’m proud of that.”
*Emma's real name is being withheld for privacy.
