I used to love shopping in Sephora. Something about the cool black-and-white aesthetic, with all the grown-up fancy makeup and perfume would always be my favorite part of mall trips. Recently, however, walking into Sephora has started to feel less like a fun shopping experience and more like a battlefield. Elbowing my way through the aisles, surrounded by destroyed testers and empty shelves one can only wonder how this ended up this way and I have an answer.
There has been an epidemic of children taking over Sephora. Elementary to middle school-aged children run amuck with their parents’ credit cards, grabbing anything trendy they can get their hands on. This trend of younger kids infiltrating makeup stores has been largely fueled by social media, specifically TikTok, which markets these expensive products through various “get ready with me” type videos.
The main problem with these kids is that they have little manners/social awareness. They are too young to know how to properly behave in an environment that is not meant for them. If you have ever walked by the Drunk Elephant section in a Sephora, I’m sure you’ve seen the byproducts of this. Huge messes all over the shelves, makeup and skincare smeared over the tops of other products in order to make “skincare smoothies.”
This isn’t just messy, it also causes many stores to take these products off the shelves, effectively ruining the experience for other shoppers. This isn’t the only issue with these kids though, many of them are very rude, and entitled. Any time I try to shop in Sephora I often have to wait for ten, maybe fifteen minutes to get in front of any ”trendy” makeup stand. These kids refuse to move away from the stands until they’ve tried every single product there, which normally is fine, but they refuse to let anybody else to even pick up a product.
This isn’t the kid’s fault, most of the blame should be on the parents who enable this behavior by buying these kids anything they want. It also just isn’t healthy for their skin or self-esteem. Many of these trendy products contain harmful ingredients like retinol, which can cause flaky skin and a sensitivity to the sun and in the long run, will only serve to harm these kids in the future. It can also be bad for their self-esteem because they are being exposed to the expectation of wearing makeup daily at a much earlier age than most people.
I think there could be some benefit to kids learning to take care of their skin early on, as opposed to dealing with it a bit too late, but there is a line where skincare and makeup aren’t really necessary. Most ten-year-olds don’t need to be applying twenty different products every morning and I think that there should be more of an effort on the part of influencers and parents to prevent this from happening.
