The expanding world of child skincare

“Maybe in 20 years, every one-year-old will have a beauty routine,” said Ally Nelson, host of the “UnTrivial” wellness podcast. She was “joking, mostly”, said The New York Times. But, in the same week, social media went into meltdown when “Pretty Little Liars” actor Shay Mitchell launched Rini, a new skincare line for children aged three and up.

‘Pernicious’ strategy

The Rini website features “pictures of poreless children” who looked 10 years old or younger, “beaming from behind jelly-like face masks”, said the NYT. Skincare lines for “pre-teens” and younger “have become a robust product category” – and “a battlefield for parents and critics”.

A “growing list” of companies sell skin products for pre-teens that are packaged to “look like candy dispensers” and are marketed with “soothing assurances about gentle, dermatologist-approved ingredients”. The advertising works: in the US, households with children between the ages of seven and 12 spent almost $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) on skincare last year, according to Nielsen IQ consumer research.

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The brands say their tween-orientated wares are “safer alternatives to adult products that can damage sensitive, prepubescent skin”. But some critics see “something more pernicious”: a strategy to “hook children on unnecessary products, laying the groundwork for ever-earlier anxieties about their appearance”.

Children’s growing interest in beauty products already has a “catch-all” name: “Sephora kids”, after the beauty store chain, said The Guardian. Shop-floor employees say young children are “filling shopping baskets to the brim with testers” while their parents are “elsewhere in the store”.

‘Overblown’ reaction

“In the rage-bait frenzy” that followed the Rini launch, the line’s “mission statement” was “missed”, said Ariana Yaptangco in Glamour. It’s “play skincare”. The products are “similar to the play make-up I used as a child”, and probably an improvement on “Claire’s palettes made with god-knows-what ingredients that I happily smeared onto my entire face and body”.

The “uproar” against Rini is “misplaced at best and overblown at worst”. It’s not about whether a skincare routine for tweens is “necessary” or not, but rather about children being “able to experiment with products responsibly and safely”. There are “many things to be upset over in this world” but kids using a £4.50 “panda-shaped face mask is not one of them”.

That said, the day after Nelson’s quip about one-year-olds, the podcast host said she came across a Fisher-Price teething set that included a toy face mask and a rattle shaped like a wrinkle-smoothing jade roller.