Tell Sephora: Stop profiting off of young girls’ insecurities!

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Tell Sephora: Stop profiting off of young girls’ insecurities!

The petition to Sephora CEO Guillaume Motte and Sephora North America President and CEO Artemis Patrick reads:

Stop enabling your brands to advertise and sell skincare products to children and young teens. Implement consequences for engaging in these harmful practices and rewards for refusing them. Specifically, develop an “Age-Appropriate” seal akin to your “Clean at Sephora” and “Clean + Planet Aware” seals to indicate brands that do not advertise to minors and that put clear recommended age use labels on their products.

Today, girls as young as 6 are starting (sometimes very involved) skincare routines in response to extreme pressures to be "perfect" stemming from social media, unregulated advertising, & feminist backlash.

The results can be harmful--mentally, but also physically given that many of these products are not suitable for young skin. Pediatric dermatologists are seeing young patients come in with rashes, painful peeling, and even permanent scarring.

The trend is known as “Sephora kids,” and it’s high time that Sephora take meaningful action to squash it and stop profiting off of children’s pain.

Sephora says that neither they nor the brands that sell in Sephora stores are marketing to children, but the receipts tell a different story. CBS News found that Sephora sale promotions on Instagram this year featured Barbie, cartoons, and stickers. Sephora brand Drunk Elephant advertises “skincare smoothies” that have gone viral with Gen Alpha (kids under 12) on TikTok. And Glow Recipe--another of Sephora’s brands--sells a skin kit in a box that looks like a pink locker labeled “back to school.” Notably, that set contains products with beta hydroxy acid and hyaluronic acid, ingredients dermatologists say kids and tweens should avoid.

Aside from the immediate physical and emotional risks, it’s impossible to predict how this trend might affect the mental health of today’s girls long-term.

Sephora must do its part to end this harmful trend by implementing consequences for brands engaging in these harmful practices and rewards for abstaining from them.