Guys, tween girls are ‘invading’ Sephora and scaring everyone with ‘ruthless’ behaviour

Sephora has long been the golden gates of beauty products. The stores – humungous, and recently introduced to the UK – offer every product to reduce pores, cover blemishes, turn back time on aging and, for some reason, this mothership of makeup is now appealing to tweens. More specifically, ten-year-olds.

“Has anyone else noticed that every time you go into Sephora now it’s just all little girls?” TikTok user Chloe asked her 12,000 followers just before Christmas, in a video which has now been vieweed more than three million times. “I don’t know if this is everywhere lately, but I swear every time I go into these expensive makeup stores it’s just all really young little girls, which is really upsetting to see.”

Seemingly, the tweens (like us watching Zoella’s makeup tutorials in the ’00s) are after the products, which have gone viral online – particularly on TikTok – and subsequently sold out: Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, Rare Beauty, and Sol De Janeiro. The scarcity of the products has made them a cult purchase. Like the latest toy everybody wants.

After Chloe’s post, many other users started posting their experiences of the tween phenomenon in Sephora: “I was in Sephora just before New Year’s and was buying some bits for myself,” recalled a user called Elina Boudin. “This group of girls walk in, they can’t be older than 10, and they walk up to this poor woman who’s working there – trying to do her job – and they say ‘where are the [Drunk Elephant] bronzing drops?’. No ‘please’. No ‘thank you’. Just ‘WHERE ARE THEY?'”

“The woman takes them over despite being with another customer,” Elina continues. “She opens the drawers, shows them that they’re out of stock and they just say to her ‘check the back’…They just kept badgering her…I just want to know: Where are these kids parents? Allowing them to have such bad attitudes and behave this way towards other people” she asks. “These kids are disrespectful, rude, and literally damaging their skin with the products.”

After more accounts of customers overhearing tweens in Sephora went viral on TikTok, a woman, Sav, who works in Sephora in the US made a video of her own, with a theory of what is actually going on: “I want to talk about ten-year-olds at Sephora because yes, they are there,” she said.

“You think it’s bad for you as a customer? Imagine how bad it is for an employee. Last time I was in for a shift, I cleaned up three skincare smoothies [piles of squeezed out products] from Drunk Elephant. It’s always when the groups of kids come into the store that we then find all of the empty Summer Fridays boxes.”

“Worst is when they just go into the drawers,” she continued. “I walk up and I’m like ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be in there. Are you looking for something?’ And they don’t move. Or react.”

Guessing why this might be happening, Sav said: “I’m going to be brave and draw a parallel: the kids not being able to read, and the kids wanting Drunk Elephant— Millennial parenting.  We are now seeing after effects of what it does to a child when you give them an iPad to shut them up instead of yelling at them to shut up. Cause at the end of the day, let’s be real, it’s not the kid’s fault they’re annoying.”

The tween appetite for Drunk Elephant products has gotten so huge the brand has been criticised for “marketing to 12-year-olds” and has even posted an Instagram outlining which products are actually suitable for children: “I would say stay away from our more potent products that include acids and retinols,” it read. “Their skin does not need these ingredients quite yet.”

To which, the response from actual adults was one of rage: “I used to buy Drunk Elephant but will never purchase again,” wrote one user. “Encouraging children to use your products! Children should be protected from social media and the pressures to look perfect and all the things you need to do to look ‘perfect’ and Drunk Elephant is using this insecurity being drilled into children/tweens to sell products. Children’s skin is perfect the way it is!! And children definitely don’t need to be worrying about anti-aging.”

The Tab has contacted Sephora for comment.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Erm, there’s a pretty dark side to Tik Tok’s new When We Were Young trend

• Shock, rich people are using Saltburn to show off their humungous houses on TikTok 

• The grad who went viral for crying about working a nine to five has just lost her job

Featured image credit via TikTok