Social media has been teeming lately with videos of young girls, otherwise known as “Sephora kids,” crowding the aisles of the well-known beauty retailer, loading up on expensive makeup and skincare products that many worry are not suitable for children.
Many parents believe that a lack of third spaces, along with the demographic being prime targets for online advertisement, as being the source of this phenomenon. And while those factors most certainly play a role, one story shared by an actual Sephora employee suggests that a lack of parental involvement is also to blame.
Recently, Natalia Herrera (@natsodrizzy on TikTok) went viral after sharing a recent “unhinged” reaction by a young girl she was ringing up. The girl, somewhere between the age of 9-11, Herrera guessed, approached her with a basket “literally overflowing” with beauty products. She then told Herrera to ring up two bottles of perfume that were held behind the register first. Those alone cost around $300.
Much to Herrera’s surprise, the young girl instructed her to continue ringing up the other products. At this point, Herrara began to wonder where an actual parent or guardian was.
“Like…who is this little girl with?” Herrera thought to herself as she scanned nearly $900 worth of products.
At that point, the little girl nervously looked over to another register where another employee was checking out her mother and sister. She called the sister over, who nonchalantly shared that her personal haul came out to $500.
This shocked Herrera, but not nearly as much as the little girl telling her sister “I’m probably just going to use Mom’s money” to take care of her hefty purchase.
However, when the little girl told her mom of the total, “the mom freaked out,” and when ordered her to take some things out, the little girl “lost her mind.” Even when she did finally acquiesce to taking off some items, the girl bluntly said “I’m not taking anything else out.”
Herrera, appalled that the mom tolerated that kind of behavior, stated, “I’m sorry…who’s the mom here? This is the problem…The problem is the parents because why aren’t you sitting there holding your ground?”
“These iPad kids, these little girls have never heard the word ‘no.’ They kind of just get what they want so they can shut up and the parents can go on with their day,” she said in the clip.
Herrera had no choice but to keep watching as the heated argument unfolded. Trying to be helpful and move the situationaling, she asked the little girl if she really needed three of the same lip gloss. But that proved unsuccessful, as the girl replied, “yeah I know that there’s three.”
‘I didn’t know what to do,” Herrera shared.
After minutes of more back-and-forth, the tween ended up with a $500 total instead of $900, which the mom was okay with.
The whole debacle left Herrera with one conclusion: “These 10-year-old girls at Sephora are crazy, but what’s crazier is the parents that aren’t parenting,” adding that “nothing is going to change” without more parent involvement.
@natsodrizzy these kids need to go touch some grass #sephora #fyp #sephorakids #preteens #ipadkids #ipadkidsarescary ♬ original sound – nat
In one regard, the Sephora kid craze is nothing new. Almost any adult woman can remember wanting to emulate grown-ups during their childhood—playing with makeup, wanting to shave their legs, maybe experimenting with fashion choices. As Teen Vogue contributor Fortesa Latifi eloquently points out, some of the reactions to this fairly natural phase of life could be “another way we judge and shame young girls, putting limits on their girlhood, casting their desires as silly or superfluous.”
But when it gets to the point that kids actually assume the role of a grown-up, especially in the presence of grown-ups, it’s easy to see how that can be troubling. Shaming anyone certainly isn’t the answer, but since this culture of depleted community resources and monetizing insecurities has been created by adults, it stands to reason that the onus should be on them. For parents, that might mean educating themselves and their kids about skincare, teaching them to show respect while shopping, establishing healthy boundaries and of course…prioritizing social media literacy.
Basically, parenting might have gone through some major glow-ups over the years, but some things remain the same.