The Sephora Teen Freakout

Culture Study Podcast

Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 789 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sephora teens are teens who hang out at Sephora — and they’re a point of cultural anxiety because 1) they’re buying a lot of makeup and skincare products and 2) we have complex and contradictory feelings about when we should start caring about makeup and skincare products, even though absolutely everything in our culture tells young people they should’ve started caring about these things yesterday. Do Sephora Teens just want a public place to hang out without their parents? Didn’t we also play around with makeup at their age? But wait where are they getting all of this money? I I was so thrilled when Elise Hu — author of a whole book on the contemporary skin care industry and mother of three teen/tween girls — agreed to come on as co-host for this episode… and I can’t wait for your thoughts.Show Notes:Follow Elise Hu on Instagram and read her interview with Culture Study re: her book FlawlessDirect link to Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital (code CULTURE gets you 10% off)Elise’s piece in The Atlantic re: Sephora TeensElise’s installment of NPR’s Life Kit on how to create a skin care routineWe’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:Sydney Sweeney (and Gen-Z Stardom)Learning to craft / make things / hobby-around-the-houseTrad wives, featuring a co-host who used to be oneFor our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORESArtificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)Contemporary ideas of self-careBuy Nothing groups and/or the current state of the secondhand marketAnything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segmentYou can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)For today’s discussion: What did you spend your money on as a teen, and where did you get it? What still feels weird about Sephora t(w)eens, and how would you talk to your own Sephora t(w)een about beauty culture?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, guess what? This Friday is Melody's 35th birthday. I know, ancient or also a tiny little baby. Either one. She's
0:10.3	both. She's amazing. She makes this show happen. And the best birthday present we can get her is a bunch of paid
0:17.8	subscribers. Maybe 35? I don't know. That'd be amazing. She does so much
0:22.9	incredible work on this podcast. And you know what? She is also the producer of strict scrutiny,
0:28.5	which is an amazing podcast about the Supreme Court. And June is Hell Month. So in order to
0:34.3	give her a slight gift amidst all of these episodes about horrible decisions
0:40.1	from the Supreme Court, again, it would be amazing if you could go subscribe.
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1:14.5	Okay. It is a phenomenon that's getting a lot of attention that started getting a lot of
1:18.9	attention at the end of 2023 around holiday season. When folks were noticing elementary aged
1:26.1	girls going to Sephora, using up all the just try
1:30.1	mes, and those are the little tester products, and then kind of running free without their
1:35.6	parents and having a lot of knowledge about the products in the stores. So they knew the brand names,
	...

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