Aren’t Kids’ Faces Already Flawless?

I’ve never had a complicated skincare routine — even when I really tried. In my 20s, I invested in a Clarisonic exfoliator, but eventually couldn’t stomach the cost and environmental impact of the little brushes I threw away every few months. In my 30s, I bought a line of anti-aging products but gave up before I saw any results.

My only consistency has been using the same face wash for decades — shoutout Cetaphil — and being pretty diligent about applying SPF because of my fair skin and freckles. Nowadays, I occasionally use toner and serum, and most recently, I added a retinoid to my routine because, hello, 40!

Beautywise, it’s a pretty similar story. I’ve experimented with trends, but I generally keep things pretty simple: concealer, brow pencil, mascara and blush. A routine that many tweens and teens today would scoff at. But you know who wouldn’t? My preteen self.

That’s because in the late '90s, my beauty routine consisted entirely of watermelon-flavoured Lip Smacker. My friends and I owned very little makeup (though you can bet that what we did have was kept in a Caboodle). There was no Sephora or Ulta. Makeup was purely for fun, figure skating performances or maybe a rare special occasion. It certainly wasn’t for every day.

And my skincare routine? Non-existent. I don’t think I even knew what “skincare” was until I was in my 20s (even now, at 40, I have questions!). At some point, I learned to wash my face twice a day and use a basic daytime moisturizer with SPF. But night cream? I didn’t know her. Toner, essence and serums? I’m not convinced those existed in the '90s, and if they did, I sure as heck didn’t know about them.

Still, there were a few holy-grail products likely to be found in most teen girls’ bathrooms at the time, like stingy Oxy pads, the painful but deliciously smelling St. Ives Apricot Scrub, Nivea Creme and acne-fighting Noxzema face wash — and, for those who were a little less UV-conscious than I was, a bottle of Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil.

For the most part, though, despite plenty of toxic beauty standards in the '90s, kids were allowed to just be kids. My parents never worried that I was spending my entire middle school allowance on unnecessary beauty products or that I was feeling pressured to have a 12-step Korean skincare routine or a perfectly made-up face in the fourth grade.

Kids today are exposed to so many harmful messages. Social media trends like “Sephora Kids” and skincare lines aimed at preschoolers teach them that they need expensive products to look and feel good. The normalization of beauty treatments like Botox and other injectables suggests that natural beauty isn’t enough and that aging is something to be feared.

A friend recently told me she bought her 9-year-old daughter skincare products before camp so she wouldn’t be left out of her cabinmates’ daily rituals. Another friend mentioned her 11-year-old won’t leave the house without a full face.

I have two young sons, so I haven’t felt the impact of these trends in my home yet. But that doesn’t mean I won’t. Influencers like Clavicular are persuading boys to “looksmax” and take extreme measures to be attractive. It’s everywhere.

Except at home. There, my husband and I are focused on building our boys’ confidence and talking less about how we look and more about how we feel — about who we are as people, parents and members of our community.