Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Do Blackface With The Samples In Sephora
Or touch the samples at all, please and thank you.
Today in parenting mistakes: A group of teenagers, accompanied by their mothers, were caught on video in a Boston Sephora using the foundation samples to give themselves blackface, while running around making monkey noises. How not okay is this? It is every conceivable level of not okay.
The girls were recorded by TikTok user Temiojoraa, who was in town for a track meet and was understandably horrified by what she saw.
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The video shows the girls being confronted by a Sephora employee who questioned the judgment of one of the mothers whom she caught taking video and pictures of the girls while they were were getting their Al Jolsons on.
“I walked over here and you were about to send a picture of that. You want to document this? Go ahead,” the worker said, according to Amira Castilla at The Root, who clearly has better hearing than I do. “This is the stuff that ruins jobs, college acceptances, let alone how incredibly offensive this is.”
In another part of the video, more girls can be seen in blackface, while someone else (not one of the mothers) can be heard apologizing for their behavior.
While most of those who saw the video were supportive of Temiojoraa, several people commented that they could have just been doing face masks. Oh, so doing face masks is illegal now??? Well, no — they couldn’t have. Sephora doesn’t put out samples of face masks. And face masks by themselves don’t make you start hooting like a monkey or a chimpanzee.
The video was initially taken down multiple times by TikTok, but was reshared by so many people that it seems they’ve finally given up. Temiojoraa also recorded a follow-up video in which she explains that she and her teammates actually confronted the mothers about what their kids were doing and were told that “It’s not [the mothers’] fault that the kids are doing what they’re doing” and that she should go speak to them, not her.
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Temiojoraa and her teammates left the store, only to later be confronted by the mothers while they were on their way to their dinner reservation. The mothers asked her to delete the video, saying that they did not consent to being filmed, and that the girls “were too little” to know that what they were doing was racist — except, as Temiojoraa explained to them, the fact that they were also making monkey sounds suggests that they knew exactly what they were doing. And they were doing it because they were raised by people who made them think that behavior was okay.
Which, obviously, it is not.
A Sephora social media manager responded to a repost of the video on Twitter by saying that they kicked the customers out of their store … which they did not actually do.
“Sephora’s top priority is to create a welcoming and inclusive shopping experience for all. We are extremely disappointed by the behavior of these shoppers at our Prudential Center location, and as such, they were asked to leave our premises,” they wrote. Except that the mothers of the girls waited in line and checked out and were not, actually, asked to leave.
Honestly, workers are not paid enough to have to kick people out of the store themselves, so it would have been understandable if they did not. But they shouldn’t have lied about it, especially when there were witnesses who taped the whole damn thing.
If you haven’t heard, there’s been an ongoing “issue” with “Sephora kids” — specifically the fact that, like, 10-year-olds are “taking over Sephora” and buying all of this expensive anti-aging skincare like Drunk Elephant (which even I do not buy, because I’m not an idiot who is going to spend $38 on freaking Marula oil when I can get twice the amount for $11 or less) and Glow Recipe, as well as going bananas at stores and making a huge mess of the testers, often for TikTok content.
That, along with behavior like this, is enough to make you swirl into an “Oh my god, these kids today! They’re so rude and out of control!” panic. Well … don’t. Because these “kids” were there when I worked in malls. Except they were spending ungodly amounts of money at Abercrombie to look like they were going camping and destroying clothing racks. There were also parents who not only thought it was adorable, but who bought them T-shirts that said “Princess” afterwards.
There were also super nice, well-behaved kids, as I’m sure there are now. No moral panic necessary!
Except for the racism. Talk to your kids about the racism, please.
Yes, Boston, like everywhere has some racist assholes. Do understand though that the Prudential is a high-end retail area where all of the tourists go to shop. I'm not saying this is necessarily NOT Bostonians being assholes, but you can't assume that it is either.
"You want to document this? Go ahead......This is the stuff that ruins jobs, college acceptances."
This. You'd think the moms would at least have heeded this advice.