Hi ugly,
My question is about the beauty culture that pops up for literal babies. My daughter is seven months old and almost since birth I have been getting ads for products to get rid of her cradle cap (a completely normal and 100% harmless thing that gives the appearance of large dandruff-like flakes on her scalp) and treat her baby acne (also an extremely normal and harmless phenomenon in newborns).
I’m curious if you’ve come across this, the market reach of these purely cosmetic products for babies, and your thoughts on transferring our beauty-obsessed culture to our babies.
Signed,
Annoyed new mom
Related: Ask Ugly: Now that I’m a mother, I mourn my old, “beautiful” self. Is this normal?
When I think of ‘cute’, I think of ‘beauty ideal’.
Lotions marketed to adults have long promised baby softness. Collagen creams claim to give plump, bouncy baby cheeks. The skin care industry has a bestseller called Babyfacial (an exfoliating treatment), a brand called Bejbi Skin (pronounced ‘baby skin’) and a column called ‘Operation Goo Goo Gah Gah’ (an ode to anti-aging, once written by Ziwe for Into The Gloss).
Interested parties can also choose between several face masks inspired by vernix, the waxy, white substance newborns come coated with: perhaps Mutha’s Rebirth Vernix Mask, $110, or Biologique Recherche’s Creme Masque Vernix, $209. And to think, your uterus makes the real thing free!
But what the industry builds is ultimately destroyed. Lately, it’s been encouraging clients to surgically suck the “baby fat” off their faces via buccal fat removal and — as you’ve noticed, Annoyed New Mom — slathering their once-idealized babies in serum.
Does this make sense? No! And you don’t have to, as long as it makes money. New entrants to the category, such as “rejuvenating” sheet masks for toddlers and a $115 Baby Dior “hydrating milk” moisturizer, have helped the baby and children’s skincare sector earn a $250 million valuation this year. That number is expected to grow to $380 million by 2028.
This is concerning, especially since babies don’t need skin care. In fact, the exact opposite is true.
To address the specific issues you mentioned, New Mom: The St Louis Children’s Hospital agrees that cradle cap is “harmless” and adds that it’s “perfectly okay to leave it alone.” The Cleveland Clinic calls baby acne “a common skin condition that affects newborns… and usually clears up on its own without treatment.” As a baby’s sensitive skin develops into a fully functioning organ, it’s normal to encounter (literal) bumps in the road. No problem.
While baby skin conditions are generally harmless, the opposite can be said for baby beauty products: dermatologists agree that they can be active harmful.
“We do too much for our children,” writes Dr. Sandy Skotnicki in her 2018 book Beyond Soap. “Too much bathing. Too much scrubbing. Too much soaping.” She cites research showing that the daily application of soap and other skin care products in infancy and childhood “is now believed to have contributed to the sharp rise in cases of eczema, asthma and hay fever”.
That’s because the skin is part of the body’s immune system. It’s actually the immune system’s first line of defense, thanks to two core components: the skin microbiome, or the collection of a trillion microorganisms that live in and on the skin, and the skin barrier, or the outermost layer of the skin.
Skin care products can threaten the health of the barrier and microbiome at any age, and can ultimately make users more susceptible to a variety of problems: dryness, oiliness, dehydration, sensitization, dermatitis and inflammatory conditions such as acne, eczema, psoriasis and rosacea. If this trend continues, I predict epidemic levels of inflammatory skin disease in adolescents in ten years. (The science behind this is fascinating and complex; I recommend reading Beyond Soap and Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by Dr. James Hamblin for a more in-depth explanation.)
So if baby skin care is not advisable for babies – and I repeat: it is not recommended for babies – why is it so popular? Because these products are not for babies. They are for parents.
Adults are obsessed with beauty products. Adults have not heeded the warnings that all these products make their skin worse. Adults are conditioned to believe that skin care is self-care. Adults believe that basic human characteristics such as pimples, wrinkles and dead skin cells are not only physical flaws, but also moral flaws.
And adults project their beliefs onto their babies.
Do you know “Almond Mothers”? The term was launched on TikTok earlier this year to describe mothers who are “obsessed with food and diet culture” and promote this obsession in their children.
I believe the rise of baby skin care suggests the rise of a new type of mother: the Serum Mom. Like the Almond Mother, the Serum Mother is obsessed with meeting a certain beauty standard, and fosters the same obsession in her children.
A common defense of this offer is something along the lines of, “It’s just lotion!” But lotion is never just lotion. Skin care “also carries the burden of what we as a society consider beautiful, what we consider clean, what we consider admirable,” writes author PE Moskovitz. A product’s purpose ultimately determines the user’s goal: to brighten the complexion, shrink pores, be small and beautiful, and never grow old (or look that way).
Of course, beauty culture is everywhere and children will encounter and absorb these dictates over time anyway. But I imagine they are more powerful – harder to question, harder still not to doubt – when practiced by a parent, and from the moment of birth.
To be clear: the Serum Mom, like the Almond Mom, is not responsible for her own existence! She’s just a product of the beauty-obsessed culture around her. She probably “wants to be seen as a good parent,” as Dr. Skotnicki puts it. (This in itself – prioritizing the appearance of good parenting over good parenting – is a side effect of beauty culture.) The Serum Mom probably believes that she too to protect her child by preparing them for life in a world that will value and devalue them based on their adherence to an oppressive appearance ideal. If my baby is always beautiful, he never has to feel bad!
Unfortunately, that’s not how beauty standards work. See the already skinny people using cosmetic Ozempic, the wrinkle-free 14 year olds on anti-aging regimens, Marilyn Monroe.
Whether they are individuals or not Meet society’s beauty standard, studies show that they are psychologically affected by the pressure to do so. Beauty standards are associated with increased rates of anxiety, depression, dysmorphia, eating disorders and self-harm. Seeing a bottled-up beauty product — just the packaging, no impossibly beautiful model needed — is enough “to remind consumers of their own shortcomings” and “give them a more negative view of themselves,” the New York Times reported. Today’s teenagers are using more skin care than ever before, and they also now cite “skin” as their top source of negative body image, according to a C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health.
The best thing a parent can do for their baby’s developing skin And psyche – and it sounds like you’re already doing it, Annoyed New Mom – leave their skin alone. Visit a dermatologist if you are concerned or confused. Reevaluate your own relationship with skin care and beauty standards. If you feel like you’re entering Serum Mom territory, stop. Smell your baby’s head (famously the best scent in the world, even without Dior’s $230 pear-scented baby perfume) and repeat after me: I won’t buy the baby skin care.