Sephora Kids Trend Inevitably Sparks a Parenting Feud

CORAL GABLES, Florida—Even under her fur-lined hood and bejeweled sunglasses, Bethenny Frankel’s annoyance is obvious as she talks to the camera about the latest trend to outrage the chronically online: the “Sephora Kid.”

The former Real Housewife and Skinnygirl founder is fired up about tweens and young teens running around beauty emporiums, sampling products, and splashing out on skin-care solutions and makeup meant for, well, actual women. Social media is full of videos in which employees and customers vent about these “aggressive” youngsters and clips of the kids showing off their pricey hauls. They’ve racked up 226.3 million views on TikTok alone and parody videos are popping up about the rage trend.

And Frankel is fed up.

“Now, girls that are my daughter’s age, that are her peers, talk to me like I am their peer. ‘So what do you think of the Dior? Do you have the Drunk Elephant? Do you have the Charlotte Tilbury?’” the former Bravolebrity and podcaster said in a TikTok.

“I’m like, ‘Bitch, you’re 14. We’re not on the same level.’”

“I am sure they are a bunch of spoiled brats. I am not looking to raise a spoiled brat,” she added, before putting her finger on what she and other critics think is the real problem behind shopping sprees by these great-smelling, dewy-skinned, perfectly contoured schoolgirls.

“Whether they are 10 years old or 14 years old, it’s on the parenting.”

Yes, as has happened time and again, the internet has been gripped by a trend, then a backlash, and finally, a feud. A fierce, you could even say ugly, debate has sprung up between adults who want to browse Rare Beauty’s pigmented blush offerings without being jostled by a 12-year-old stocking up on Retinol and parents who bemoan the lack of options for their precocious progeny.

“The 10-year-olds have nowhere to go! All their parks are being fucking bulldozed down to make developments. There is nowhere for kids to hang out anymore,” one TikTok user said in a video that got 787,200 views. “Your lack of empathy for children is just—it stuns me at every corner.”

Stefanie Ann Eadie, a mother of four in Florida, got roasted when she posted a video last week of a Sephora trip with her 10-year-old daughter and a friend. “They love Sephora and they are always begging me to go. So I was like, ‘All right, I’ll just take you, but you have to spend your own money,’” Eadie, who has 1.3 million followers on TikTok, told The Daily Beast.

On its face, the video seems utterly banal. The girls are first seen in the car, where Eadie’s suggested limit of one Sephora item each gets shut down before they head into the beauty store. Eadie writes that they spent hours looking around. Eventually, they are seen holding up their matching black-and-white shopping bags inside Sephora.

The post got 2.6 million views—and a slew of negative comments questioning, among other things, whether the girls should be playing with dolls instead of getting dolled up.

One viewer, @fashionnoodle, screenshotted Eadie’s video and then launched into a rebuke of parents of “10- and 12-year-olds acting like literal wild animals in a Sephora.”

“In what world are these parents allowing their children to take products from adults, say the most incredibly rude and heinous things to the adults that they are encountering, and allow their child—their 10-year-old child—to spend hundreds of dollars on makeup they absolutely do not need?” @fashionnoodle fumed.

Eadie said she was surprised by the anger since she hovered over the girls during their Sephora shop and they were well-behaved. She posted a second video that showed more footage in an effort to debunk the narrative and a third video where her daughter revealed her Sephora haul. (@fashionnoodle has since apologized to Eadie in a second video, noting that she should not have used the screenshot because Eadie and the girls were doing “everything right.” She later told The Daily Beast that her use of Eadie’s video was a “very poor choice on my part because I did not actually watch the video.”)

“Kids are stuck between Claire’s and Sephora now. Their influences come from approved YouTube channels that do ‘Get Ready With Me’ and ‘Haul’ videos. It’s just trendy now,” Eadie told The Daily Beast. “At the end of the day, they are just having fun and being respectful.”

That is not the view of many Sephora customers and TikTok lurkers—and it’s mom and dad who are getting the blame.

“Kids at sephora tik toks are wild. how is a 9 year old tryna spend hundreds of dollars on beauty products? parents are not parenting,” one user, @cosmicvnt, said on X, formally known as Twitter.

“Parents to do [sic] better about teaching their children manners because the Sephora kids are your problem,” another user wrote.

Even former and current employees are posting about their run-ins with underage customers with attitude.

“10-year-old girls at Sephora are crazy,” Natalia, a Sephora employee who goes by @natsodrizzy, said in a TikTok that has amassed 33.5 million views. “But what’s crazier are the parents who aren’t parenting.”

Natalia said that while she was ringing up almost $900 in product for a younger customer, the girl called over her mother, who had just finished paying for a $500 purchase for her elder daughter.

“The mom literally freaked out. Freaked out,” Natalia said, adding that the mom demanded her daughter remove some items.

To the employee’s surprise, the girl began arguing with her mom about removing items from her vast cart. She said the girl ultimately put back a few items to bring her total to $500, “and the mom was ok with that.”

“I’m sorry, who’s the mom there?” Natalia said. “These little girls have never heard the word no.”

Abby Rivera, known to her 279,300 TikTok followers as “abbythebadassmom,” recounted how, while shopping for lip balm, a 10-year-old “swooped in” and grabbed the product right out of her hands for themselves. During the incident, she said, she overheard another girl arguing with her father about buying her another product.

Rivera told The Daily Beast that she doesn’t feel like “young kids need to get anything from Sephora, especially all this expensive skin care,” and that parents need to do their research “before allowing their kids to purchase, especially when they are wanting them from seeing them on social media.”

“If you are allowing your kids in Sephora, you should be with them the entire time, they should be respectful to the other customers, employees and not destroy testers and unopened product,” she added. “If this does continue with the younger customers perhaps the retailers may put in an age policy to be in their stores.”

Even Gen-Zers are appalled. Chloe Van Berkel, a 20-year-old student at James Madison University, told The Daily Beast she was stunned on a recent trip to Ulta when she saw a “little girl yelling at her mom because she couldn’t get a concealer.”

“She didn’t even need concealer. She had nothing to conceal,” Van Berkel said. “And that was just one time I’ve seen something like that. And not once have I seen a parent push back.”

Van Berkel took to TikTok to vent about the “Sephora Kid” phenomenon and got 4.7 million views. She said it sparked a conversation in her friend group about parenting techniques and the conclusion that they will limit their future children’s use of technology and access to beauty products.

Sephora did not respond to a request for comment and has yet to issue a public statement about the controversy. But their website seems to suggest they are aware of their younger consumer demographic.

It includes curated pages, specifically for kids, that recommend everything from lip glosses to hair products to skin care. In the “Moisturizers for Kids” section—which promotes lotions to keep “their skin hydrated, healthy, and free of irritation”—Sephora suggests a $570 La Mer product and a $130 Dior firming and wrinkle-correcting cream.

“The tween years are a time of great transition. Kids are no longer kids, but they’re not yet teens, either. They’re still growing, and their skin is still changing,” the “Skincare Products for Tweens” page advises. “That means that parents have to keep up with their skincare needs as well.”

Dr. Brooke Jeffy, an Arizona dermatologist and founder of the youth skin-care brand BTWN, has some concerns about kids being set free in Sephora with a credit card and no guidance on what is safe for young skin.

“It is inappropriate for children to be using products that address adult skin issues like wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, and dullness, which kids do not have,” she said. “The actives used in these products can be irritating, especially to young more sensitive skin, and cause damage to the skin barrier. This damage affects skin function, leading to damage, rashes, infections, and breakouts.”

The kids don’t seem too bothered by the controversy. On Friday afternoon, groups of teenagers slowly migrated around a Miami-area Sephora, trying out viral products.

Two friends, still wearing their school uniforms, pored over a basket filled with makeup, trying to eliminate some items to meet one girl’s $300 budget limit. “You have to get the MERIT one. It’s so good—and doesn’t break me out,” her friend said of a $30 bronzer.

Next to them, two younger girls stood in front of the Drunk Elephant section, one of them looking for the $24 Summer Fridays Lip Butter Balm. Unable to immediately find it on display, the girls opened the employee-only compartment.

“It’s OK, they let us,” one of them explained to a reporter, adding that they shop weekly.

“Ah, they don’t have it anyway,” she said of the lip balm before scurrying off to the Sol de Janeiro section—no parents immediately in sight.