PSA: This beauty tutorial is actually raising some red flags
Remember when several beauty vloggers got some serious backlash for telling their followers to use Crayola colored pencils as eyeliner? Well, there’s another beauty trend on YouTube that’s raising some concerns.
Marie Lopez, or EnjoyPhoenix on YouTube, is an immensely popular 20-year-old French beauty vlogger with almost 2 million subscribers. And recently, she posted a video on the perfect DIY face mask — a video that has received over 1 million views.
Now, we are all for awesome face creams. Soft skin is always nice, and blemishes can be ultra annoying. Plus, a good face cream can make us feel fancy, like we’re having an indoor spa day. So we get that Marie wanted to give her followers a great way to pamper themselves with just “products we all have in our cupboard, in our fridge.” However, what she didn’t realize was that an ingredient in her face cream recipe could cause problems for certain skin types. The culprit? Cinnamon.
“[Cinnamon] is. . . an allergenic plant,” dermatologist Isabelle Oliveres-Gouthi told 20 Minutes. “The idea of saying ‘This is natural, so it is safe’ is false.”
While spices like cinnamon are very healthy to ingest, they’re to be used at your own risk, dermatologist Dr. Doris Day told CNN. “I think [cinnamon] would be irritating,” she claimed. It’s a spice. If you put pepper on your skin, you can burn your skin.”
And alas, that’s exactly what happened to some of Marie’s followers. After trying the tutorial, they started commenting on her Facebook page saying that it burned their faces. Thanks to Google Translate, we can tell you a few of the, erm, criticisms of the mask:
Marie isn’t exactly responding favorably to these comments, according to Gawker. She reportedly took to Facebook to share the following reactions:
While popular YouTubers should certainly do research before posting videos and often have a lot of experience and know-how, it’s important to note that most of them are not experts. Don’t take videos like Marie’s at face value (pun not intended): Test them out first, and be cautious when trying out new routines. And please, don’t put Crayola pencils or cinnamon on your face.
(Featured image via iStock.)
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