There Are No Girls on the Internet - December 10, 2024


Your kid doesn’t need $70 face cream 

Topics
toxic beauty standards
We Ruined Travel for Instagram Likes Target drops DEI so we're boycotting everything - STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

183.96

Word count

3,949

Sentence count

221

Harmful content

Misogyny

8

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
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00:00:23.280 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeart Radio
00:00:26.140 and Unbossed Creative.
00:00:30.000 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:00:37.120 So now that it's the holiday season, we know that means gift giving.
00:00:40.500 And I had kind of a big shock when I was talking to the tween girl in my life, my little cousin,
00:00:45.840 and I asked her what are some things that she might want for the holidays as a gift.
00:00:49.680 She's rattling off all of these normal age-appropriate things.
00:00:53.440 And then she said one of the things that she wanted was a $70 thing of drunk elephant peptide
00:01:00.660 face cream. It's not just the price, although $70 for a face cream for an 11-year-old is a bit much.
00:01:07.380 It's also that it's a peptide face cream. If you don't know, peptides are meant to give your skin
00:01:12.760 more elasticity, but your skin loses as you age. It's not really the kind of thing an 11-year-old
00:01:18.300 would ever need for their skin.
00:01:20.120 They're for skin like mine.
00:01:21.560 So this left me thinking,
00:01:23.040 when did tweens and very young people
00:01:25.640 start feeling like they needed or wanted,
00:01:28.320 you know, complicated multi-step skincare
00:01:30.840 designed to combat things like wrinkles?
00:01:33.680 This is absolutely a thing now
00:01:35.320 and social media is to blame.
00:01:37.080 But if you ask me,
00:01:38.620 maybe not in the way that you're thinking.
00:01:40.260 Let's get into it.
00:01:43.020 So this trend actually has a name.
00:01:45.640 Young people who have been influenced
00:01:47.120 by platforms like TikTok and Instagram
00:01:49.120 to be obsessed with skincare are known as Sephora kids.
00:01:53.400 And there are a lot of Sephora kids out there
00:01:55.600 because younger folks are into skincare right now.
00:01:58.880 Here are some stats.
00:01:59.980 Households with tweens aged six to 12
00:02:02.280 spent almost $2.5 billion on facial skincare last year,
00:02:06.820 an annual spending increase of 27%,
00:02:09.260 more than double the average.
00:02:11.240 Writer Alexandra DeMar wrote about this
00:02:13.200 for the New York Times in a piece called 1.00
00:02:14.640 Toxic Beauty Standards Can Be Passed Down.
00:02:17.120 She writes about how one of her friends who was in the fashion industry told her 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.
00:02:29.500 Her 10-year-old 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.
00:02:40.820 Things like acids, peels, and toners, even though many of these products are just not meant for their skin.
00:02:47.460 They're meant for aging skin or acne-prone skin, not the kind of perfect skin that somebody who is 10 or 11 probably has.
00:02:53.980 There was even this entire thing a couple of months ago where adults were filming kids
00:02:59.100 going into Sephora's and Ulta beauty stores and sort of running wild, stocking up on expensive
00:03:04.840 products.
00:03:05.580 I felt like that entire trend had a little bit of a darker undercurrent to this discourse.
00:03:11.000 First of all, just in general, adults should not be out there filming kids on their phone,
00:03:15.300 just full stop, end of sentence.
00:03:17.100 But I also picked up this kind of undercurrent of, I don't know, this feeling of being a
00:03:22.640 bit territorial, like, hey, why are these youth muscling in on the Sephora, which should be
00:03:27.620 territory for grown women? But where do you think these kids are learning about how to obsess over
00:03:33.540 skincare? You know, it's one of those things like an after school special. I learned it from
00:03:38.260 watching you. Kids are coming of age on the internet, the same internet that we adults are
00:03:43.900 using. And that is where this skincare obsession is stemming from. Now, it probably doesn't
00:03:48.240 surprise you to find out that social media is part of what is fueling this youth desire for a
00:03:53.480 complicated multi-step skincare routine. But you don't have to take my word for it. There is a
00:03:58.080 documented link between young people obsessing over their skincare and social media use. According
00:04:03.180 to Psychology Today, a 2018 study by Che J found that pressure to conform to beauty standards
00:04:08.600 increases the likelihood of engaging in skincare routines. Influencers promote products promising
00:04:13.300 clear skin, driving teens to purchase them and achieve similar results. And their use of social
00:04:18.540 media to fuel these concerns about their skin and skincare does come with negative impacts.
00:04:23.660 A study from Tickerman and Slater found that exposure to idealized images on social media
00:04:28.260 can negatively affect body image, particularly for young women and girls. Clear, glowing skin
00:04:32.960 has become a symbol of beauty and confidence. But when teens don't meet those idealized standards,
00:04:37.540 especially when it comes to acne, they may feel inadequate, which can lower self-worth.
00:04:42.300 Skin care routines, often marketed as confidence boosting, can have the opposite effect when
00:04:47.060 teens don't see immediate results or experience breakouts.
00:04:50.200 The pressure to achieve perfect skin can actually worsen insecurities.
00:04:54.480 And lastly, you know how easy it is to conflate skin care with self-care more generally, where
00:04:59.920 you feel like if you spend a bunch of money on skin care products, you can actually convince
00:05:03.660 yourself that you're taking good care of yourself, if you're me anyway?
00:05:07.080 Yeah, so that dynamic definitely got me, even at my big age.
00:05:11.500 And youth are not immune to it either, because a survey from 2021 found that 58% of teens
00:05:17.240 see skincare as an important form of self-care, and many are turning to it to manage stress
00:05:21.940 or boost their mood.
00:05:22.760 In the earlier days of the pandemic, many teens use skincare to feel more in control
00:05:27.540 and reduce their anxiety, which now, that is not inherently a bad thing.
00:05:31.640 But skincare is just not the same thing as self-care or control.
00:05:36.960 And buying a bunch of pricey products to do a 10-step skincare routine to get glowing glass skin is not really the same thing as self-care.
00:05:45.620 And I do think this is something that youth are really getting from us adults.
00:05:49.480 Like we're passing down some not great attitudes and ideas about what self-care really is and what it looks like.
00:05:55.980 I agree that some of this really took root in those early pandemic days when we were all just trying to do whatever to cope.
00:06:03.200 The New Yorker's Gia Tolentino really breaks it down well.
00:06:06.620 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.
00:06:16.320 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.
00:06:23.220 But adults have largely moved on from all that.
00:06:25.200 No one is fooling anyone by quoting Audre Lorde in blog posts about lip balm anymore.
00:06:30.100 The earnest language of corporate approved wellness disappeared from the mainstream somewhere around 2020, along with the figure of the girl boss, who often relied on that language.
00:06:39.500 The mood regarding beauty and also culture, politics, and whatever it is we're all doing is raw, pragmatic, aggressive. 0.69
00:06:45.800 The deference to brute material reality comes a lot faster these days.
00:06:49.600 So I absolutely agree with this.
00:06:52.020 You know, most adults are not talking about skin care as wellness or self-care anymore.
00:06:56.980 By now, most of us can pretty clearly see the ways that that was pretty obviously and
00:07:01.520 quickly co-opted by brands and corporations to just get us to buy more crap and keep feeling 0.94
00:07:06.460 bad.
00:07:07.300 So I think we kind of moved on from that around the same time that people decided to move
00:07:11.760 on from the pandemic.
00:07:12.800 But it still has this lasting, lingering cultural impact for youth.
00:07:16.960 And I just think it's important to ask, what are the dynamics that we have been fostering
00:07:20.960 in our youth? And are they actually serving our youth or just setting them up for more unhealthy,
00:07:26.860 toxic standards masked as care? Because they deserve so much better. We all do.
00:07:37.200 Let's take a quick break.
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00:08:04.700 And we're back. So all these studies about youth and skincare are kind of just telling us what we
00:08:11.640 already know. Because all you need to do is scroll TikTok or physically go into an Ulta or a Sephora
00:08:17.640 to see what I'm talking about.
00:08:19.000 But we can't talk about Sephora kids
00:08:20.920 without talking about the brand Drunk Elephant.
00:08:23.820 The pricey-but-worth-it Luxe brand Drunk Elephant
00:08:26.640 is one of the top brands tweens say they want.
00:08:30.060 Ariana Yaptanko at Glamour Magazine 0.96
00:08:32.380 did a poll around their offices 0.95
00:08:33.720 and found that the staffers who had daughters,
00:08:36.340 nieces, and younger cousins
00:08:37.560 were basically obsessed with this brand.
00:08:40.480 Parents flooded Instagram with questions
00:08:42.200 about the safety of ingredients like peptides,
00:08:44.380 acids, and retinols on youthful skin.
00:08:47.080 On TikTok, the hashtag Kids at Sephora has more than 5 million views,
00:08:51.400 featuring videos of drunk elephant kids wreaking havoc on tester products in the stores.
00:08:55.960 So social media is definitely a big part of what's going on here.
00:08:59.060 But some of this isn't new, right?
00:09:01.440 Because when I was a tween decades ago, I also loved skincare.
00:09:07.000 I mean, I almost feel like care is not the right word here. 0.94
00:09:10.740 It was more like skin punishment. 0.99
00:09:12.800 If you live through that era, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
00:09:15.520 my routine was that I would wash my face with that facial cleanser that had those little
00:09:21.040 scrubbing microbeads in them. Remember those to like exfoliate your skin? Not only did it
00:09:26.240 completely rip up your skin and tear it apart, I can only assume I'm still carrying those
00:09:31.060 microplastic beads in my blood as we speak decades later. Then I would use Seabreeze as a like 0.93
00:09:38.060 astringent or a toner, which if you use Seabreeze, I feel like you can probably smell how it smelled
00:09:44.320 as we speak. So I would soak a cotton ball in Seabreeze and just rub this burning acid all over
00:09:51.680 my face. Maybe I would finish it off with one of those Stridex or Oxypads across my face too,
00:09:57.160 just to make sure it was nice and dried out. You know, you really want to just like dry out your
00:10:01.220 skin by putting a bunch of alcohol just right on there. For some reason, I think I also used to put
00:10:06.040 toothpaste on my pimples. I don't know where I heard that. I think somebody in my school said
00:10:09.860 that you're supposed to do that. So that's what I did. Anyway, what I'm saying is that it was a
00:10:13.940 rough time for Bridget's skin. But here was the thing. I was just picking these things up at the
00:10:18.820 drugstore or the grocery store where my parents would take me. They were not $70 a pop. And as
00:10:23.880 rough as this routine was on my skin, I wasn't doing any real lasting damage. Because there is
00:10:30.240 a reason why skincare that is designed for more mature skin is different than the skincare an
00:10:35.500 11-year-old should be using. The kind of active chemical ingredients in skincare designed for
00:10:40.800 mature skin, things like acids and retinol and glycolic acid can be very bad for the sensitive
00:10:46.480 skin of a young person. But even beyond the fact that these products are not designed for children,
00:10:52.200 an 11-year-old does not have wrinkles or crow's feet or smile lines. So when a product aimed at
00:10:58.820 preventing these kinds of things is on the very top of an 11-year-old's holiday gift wish list,
00:11:04.040 what is really going on? So there is a ton of criticism of brands like Drunk Elephant,
00:11:08.760 that they might be intentionally marketing their products to kids
00:11:11.620 when these products are not meant for kids
00:11:13.540 and they're not even really safe for kids to be using.
00:11:15.840 Tiffany Masterson, the founder of Drunk Elephant,
00:11:18.280 has even addressed this directly.
00:11:20.220 She told the New York Times,
00:11:21.480 I design Drunk Elephant for all skin,
00:11:23.340 including that of my own children,
00:11:25.000 and the majority of our skin, hair, and body products
00:11:27.220 are appropriate for and compatible with skin of all ages.
00:11:30.260 This is backed by clinical data.
00:11:32.040 Based on the number of questions we've received on this topic,
00:11:34.360 we created an Instagram post with recommendations
00:11:36.360 of what is safe for prepubescent skin under 13.
00:11:40.000 We do not recommend children under 13
00:11:41.960 use acids like retinol or vitamin C.
00:11:44.700 The detractors are referring to products
00:11:46.300 that contain acids and rightly so.
00:11:48.580 Kids and tweens don't need acids.
00:11:50.860 If you have concerns,
00:11:51.880 we recommend consulting a pediatrician
00:11:53.640 or pediatric dermatologist
00:11:54.940 before introducing new products
00:11:56.760 into your child's routine.
00:11:58.260 So they also addressed criticism
00:12:00.540 that they intentionally market their products to kids.
00:12:04.620 She says,
00:12:05.640 I've been reading that I chose the colors and packaging to target children.
00:12:09.300 This couldn't be further from the truth, and the truth is never quite as interesting.
00:12:12.900 But I chose the colors and packaging because it happened to be my aesthetic.
00:12:16.280 I actually never even considered targeting any demographic,
00:12:19.240 and that's what made my brand so different from the start.
00:12:21.700 So on that point, I don't know if I fully agree.
00:12:25.540 I actually think if anybody, she was trying to target millennials
00:12:28.600 because her packaging is these pastel pinks and turquoises and blues
00:12:33.820 that really speak to the sort of millennial aesthetic.
00:12:37.100 I also just don't know that she is that bent out of shape 0.88
00:12:40.940 about the fact that her products
00:12:42.160 are very popular with children
00:12:44.240 and they're like hot pink colored, right?
00:12:46.620 I don't know that it was an intentional choice,
00:12:48.700 but I don't think that they're crying any tears
00:12:50.880 over the fact that it's what made their brand so popular
00:12:53.620 is this youth demographic.
00:12:55.760 So I kind of have to push back a little bit
00:12:58.120 on what she's saying here.
00:12:59.380 But if she's taken at her word
00:13:01.240 and these are not products
00:13:03.000 that she's intentionally marketing to kids,
00:13:05.200 why do kids end up with luxe skincare
00:13:07.960 like drunk elephant on their holiday wishlist?
00:13:11.020 So I actually think there's a kind of cultural collapse
00:13:14.100 happening online that is responsible for this.
00:13:16.600 Here's my theory on what I think is going on.
00:13:18.620 So yes, I do think this is just standard social media
00:13:22.120 causing kids to want things that really are not for them
00:13:25.140 and youth just generally wanting to feel older than they are,
00:13:28.160 which is a totally normal young person thing
00:13:30.760 that we all went through.
00:13:31.880 I went through that.
00:13:32.560 you went through that is a thing that young people do. But I also think something else is going on
00:13:36.740 here too. I think it's the lack of digital third spaces for youth online. The same TikTok that I
00:13:42.760 go to when I want advice on how to use retinol without causing irritation on my skin is the
00:13:47.220 exact same TikTok that my 11-year-old cousin is using. So if you're an 11-year-old who's into
00:13:51.920 beauty and skincare as a hobby, which there's something wrong with that, there's not really
00:13:55.920 an age-appropriate space for you to go to explore what skincare should look like for somebody your
00:14:01.600 own age, let alone a place where you're not being constantly sold a product. When you consider how
00:14:06.120 ubiquitous things like TikTok shop have become. And I think it really comes down to kids needing
00:14:11.780 their own corners of the internet for exploration, because when they don't get that, they end up
00:14:16.240 being shaped by the same internet experience as me, a grown adult woman. But the thing is,
00:14:21.360 I'm an adult. So I have the ability to understand and see that like TikTok skincare influencers
00:14:27.140 might be using filters or lighting
00:14:29.360 to make their skin look glassy and perfect
00:14:31.280 to get me to buy skincare 0.97
00:14:32.540 that they then might get a financial cut of.
00:14:35.300 Like I'm old enough to understand
00:14:37.000 and see all the machinations at play,
00:14:39.300 even though it doesn't always save me
00:14:40.960 from buying skincare I'll never use.
00:14:43.140 And for youth, it's like that insecurity
00:14:45.100 is being further monetized and cashed in on.
00:14:48.300 So that's what I think is actually going on here.
00:14:50.600 But what happens when your kid
00:14:52.080 gives you their holiday wishlist
00:14:53.780 and it has these expensive skincare items
00:14:56.420 that they don't really need on it.
00:14:58.360 Like, what are you meant to do as a parent?
00:15:00.080 Well, one, I think education is a huge part of it.
00:15:03.600 And Sephora stores now say they're doing a much bigger push
00:15:06.580 around in-store education of young consumers
00:15:09.060 on what their skin actually needs.
00:15:11.780 Now, maybe kids are not going to be swayed by this. 1.00
00:15:14.120 If the cool girls at school are all using $70 peptide cream 1.00
00:15:17.720 for their non-existent wrinkles, 1.00
00:15:19.340 they're probably still going to want it.
00:15:20.620 But helping them understand that at a young age,
00:15:23.340 what their skin really only needs is like a gentle cleanser, a moisturizer, and a sunscreen,
00:15:28.540 and that anything else might actually be making their skin worse. But if your kid wants fancy
00:15:34.280 skincare because they have an actual skin issue, you should be talking to a professional dermatologist
00:15:39.220 or doctor. That's another thing about the skincare hobby experience on the internet.
00:15:45.700 I am on subreddits like Skincare Addict on Reddit, where everybody is diagnosing other people's skin,
00:15:51.220 right? People will send in pictures of a skin issue and ask what they should be buying or what
00:15:55.860 they should be doing to fix it. Now, generally, it's pretty humdrum stuff like dry skin. But
00:16:01.000 sometimes people will have a picture of like a pretty gnarly looking skin infection. And the
00:16:06.180 only answer should be talk to a doctor. So you have adults asking another non-doctor adults to
00:16:13.080 address what sometimes is like a medical issue. That's not a dynamic that is always great for
00:16:17.900 adults, you know, we navigate it. However, it's certainly not a dynamic that kids should be mixed 1.00
00:16:23.000 up in online. And I also think it's more of a media literacy conversation. You know, we should
00:16:28.000 be talking to the youth in our lives about how influencers maybe are not always being honest
00:16:32.900 about the impact different products have had on their skin and how they might also be making money
00:16:37.500 off of us clicking buy. More generally, I think it's about having conversations about who you
00:16:42.660 should trust on the internet and the importance of independently verifying health information
00:16:46.900 from the random people that they see online.
00:16:49.860 This is especially true for youth
00:16:51.420 because research is very clear that more and more
00:16:54.020 youth see influencers as their friends.
00:16:56.400 And so if they have a parasocial relationship
00:16:59.000 with a skincare influencer on TikTok,
00:17:01.100 they're not gonna see this as somebody
00:17:02.920 who gets a cut if you hit buy.
00:17:04.940 They're gonna see this as my friend has recommended
00:17:07.160 I use this skincare product.
00:17:08.660 So that level of media literacy,
00:17:10.620 I think is very important, especially for youth online.
00:17:14.520 But beyond all that,
00:17:15.560 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 is being impacted by this.
00:17:36.500 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?
00:17:51.700 There was this video where I think a 28-year-old woman posted a video of her face and she was like, this is my face without Botox or filter or makeup.
00:18:01.860 Like, this is what somebody in their late 20s looked like.
00:18:04.360 She looked completely normal and regular and fine, like just a regular person's face.
00:18:10.880 Nothing weird about it.
00:18:12.020 So either the comments, it was like a couple of sets of comments.
00:18:14.720 One was like, oh my God, so brave, so brave to like have a human face and show it on this
00:18:20.260 internet in 2024, which, you know, definitely I think that's well-meaning, but I don't like
00:18:26.220 living in a world where it's just brave to exist on the internet with a human face without
00:18:32.080 a filter on it or without Botox in it.
00:18:34.140 So didn't love that. But also you had younger people being like, this is why I use retinol,
00:18:41.020 even though I'm 15. Like, I don't want to look like this. This is so sad, yada, yada, yada.
00:18:46.300 And it just made me wonder if kids and young people have been so tricked by social media
00:18:52.600 filters that they no longer know what a human person's face looks like. I do think that social
00:18:59.640 media makes it harder to have a good sense of what people look like as they age. And listen,
00:19:06.820 take it from me, aging is a gift. Not everybody gets to get to the age where they get to have
00:19:11.840 wrinkles and smile lines. And if you get to get there, it's a good thing. It's something to be
00:19:16.500 celebrated. There's no shame in wanting to have smooth, clear skin, but we shouldn't be demonizing
00:19:22.240 the normal process of aging in the process either. And so maybe it's not surprising that the holiday
00:19:28.500 season, you know, this time of sky high expectations and unreasonable demands is also a time when
00:19:34.840 harmful beauty ideals can really thrive and spread to the heads of young people like the
00:19:39.800 whispers of sugar plum berries. All that to say, however, the bottom bottom line is that you should
00:19:46.320 not spend $70 on skincare for an 11 year old. I will not be spending $70 on skincare for an 11
00:19:54.640 year old. If you are my cousin listening to this, I love you dearly. You know you're my girl,
00:19:59.700 but you're not getting that skincare. Pick another gift.
00:20:08.160 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at
00:20:12.320 hello at tangody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.
00:20:17.380 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeart
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