Has the world of beauty trends finally gone to shit? Well, pardon my English, but the latest hack to go viral would certainly suggest so. While TikTok has thus far given us many noteworthy trends – K-beauty, strawberry girl make-upor skin slugging – it seems that in 2024 some of us are willing to take our knack for experimentalism to new (very grotesque) lengths. In rather alarming news, an influencer has gone viral after applying faeces to her face, all in the name of good skin. Meet the poop face mask – the antithesis of the clean girl aesthetic that literally nobody asked for.
We've heard of people injecting salmon sperm into their faces, while others have been known to slather snail mucin over their skin. Heck, Kim Kardashian even popularised the terrifying-looking vampire facial, which sees blood plasma pumped back into the skin. But for Brazilian influencer Debora Peixoto, skincare apparently involves smearing a sample of her own poo over her face to 'hydrate it,' she said in an Instagram post that has now amassed almost 350K views.
Extreme beauty is no stranger to Peixoto, who previously made the rounds for putting menstrual blood on her skin (!) to allegedly make it 'glow'. The, er, niche trend caught on and at one point had 6.4 billion views on TikTok under the hashtag #periodfacemask. Peixoto's latest poop face mask, though, which she tried after seeing 'research' on the benefits, is one she admits is the 'craziest thing I’ve done in my life'. Crazier still is the fact that Peixoto is determined to convince us all that she saw benefits: 'it worked for me, my skin stopped peeling/flaking!'
Unsurprisingly, the experts (or anyone else for that matter) are categorically unconvinced. NHS GP doctor and medical educator, Dr RajArora, says, 'There is absolutely no evidence for the benefits of smearing faeces on your face, it's actually a highly dangerous thing to do.
'Faeces contains a whole host of different fungi, bacteria and parasites, smearing that on your face can lead to an increase in the risk of those pathogens crossing the skin barrier through cuts or a dysfunctional skin barrier and entering the skin. This leads to really severe and dangerous skin infections and, more importantly, if those pathogens were to reach the blood stream, it could lead to extreme systemic illness from the bacteria present in faeces.'
Dr. Arora also points out the fact that your faeces contains waste products and toxins that the body has expelled for a reason, so applying this to your face makes your skin (the largest organ on your body) more susceptible to redness, irritation, and inflammation.
She adds: 'trending skin hacks on platforms like TikTok can be very dangerous, not least because of the younger cohort of users watching who may be influenced. This kind of misinformation can lead to illness and I'd strongly advise against it. There are many face masks on the market which are formulated safely to be used on the face and we should be focusing on those while working with evidence-based skincare that is advised through a professional or skin expert only, that means moving away from skin-fluencers who are coming up with more and more bizarre tips.'
Please, we beg you, heed the expert advice and don't try this at home.
Main image: TikTok/ Debora Peixoto
Sameeha Shaikh is Grazia's beauty writer, working across all categories to bring you insights on the latest trends, industry news and the products you need to know about, viral or not (most probably viral).