This Week in Motherhood

Can we stop with the Sephora kid shaming?

Welcome back to This Week in Motherhood a series that measures time as parents in something more than years.

A popular parenting page posted a video with the caption “Hard pass on expensive skincare for people who were in diapers less than a decade ago.” The creator, Caitlin Murray has brilliant, pithy, and funny observations on parenting. Her “take-down” of Sephora kids — mostly Gen Alpha girls into Stanley cups, Lululemon and Sephora inspired beauty — hit a nerve with me. I wrote and deleted a comment at least three times. And then I remembered that I gave myself a Substack for this exact purpose, 😅.

Murray isn’t the first person to share her opinions on the phenomena of young girls getting swept up on trendy clothes and expensive make-up. The New Yorker, National Geographic, and so many others have already covered the subject in the last few years. Any news media outlet can give you better reporting on the rise in skincare use among young girls and teens, how marketing and social media is making our kids insecure, the possibly harmful environmental and health impacts of all those Sol De Janeiro body sprays; so I won’t pile on, instead I’ll tell you what Murray and others can’t: Moms of teens are tired of the discourse that Sephora kids are the worst.

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