One of the most coveted beauty products among teenagers is a creamy, fragrant lotion that comes in a tangerine-colored plastic tub.
Called Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, it is sold for $48 by the beauty brand Sol de Janeiro. According to the company’s website, the lotion smells like pistachios and “helps visibly smooth and tighten the appearance of your skin.”
Many of its fans fall well outside the typical market for firming.
“All of my friends have it,” said Leyton Smith, a 15-year-old in Scottsdale, Ariz. He took his mother’s jug of the cream, which she had bought for cellulite. “I didn’t really realize it was for that purpose,” he said.
Despite the “Bum Bum” name, Leyton thinks most people his age are using the product as a scented hand cream. He and his 10-year-old sister now have several different lotions and sprays from the company, all of which come in a rainbow of candy-colored packaging.
“It’s just one of those products that, like, all these people were getting them, so you feel like you have to have it too,” Leyton said.
The product has been finding young customers on TikTok, where influencers show it off in videos with millions of views, and at stores like Sephora, whose website lists it among recommended gifts for teenagers. According to Sol de Janeiro, a jar of Brazilian Bum Bum Cream is sold every six seconds.
Although the company did not offer an age breakdown of Brazilian Bum Bum Cream buyers, the brand clearly resonates with teenagers. More than 500 reviews of the product on Sol de Janeiro’s website were posted by customers identifying themselves as under 18. The brand’s perfume mists have also taken off online, helping to make Sol de Janeiro the second-favorite fragrance brand among teenage girls, according to a recent survey by the investment bank Piper Sandler.
“This brand does have a chokehold on these children,” said Abby Rivera, a content creator who makes videos about cosmetics and skin care.
The Bum Bum cream has generated debate, and a bit of bafflement, among parents and dermatologists who wonder why a product with a label that claims it “visibly firms & tightens” has taken off among wrinkle-free adolescents.
“Who are you crazy people buying this for a 13 year old?” one commenter asked in a heated discussion about the product on an online message board for parents.
In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for Sol de Janeiro said the company’s products were intended for all skin types and “designed to cater to the diverse needs of all generations.” She added that Brazilian Bum Bum Cream’s “visibly firming and tightening” claims did not need to be the focus for young customers.
“While these terms describe the product’s benefits, the focus for younger users should be on the hydration and nourishing properties,” she said.
The spokeswoman said that the company took parental concerns seriously. “We encourage parents to check the ingredient lists to ensure there are no allergens or sensitivities that might affect their teens,” she said.
The product attributes its tightening properties to caffeine-rich guarana, a relatively weak ingredient that is safe for most young people’s skin, said Dr. Brooke Jeffy, a dermatologist who founded a tween-focused skin care line that features few ingredients.
Some of Sol de Janeiro’s other lotions, like its Bom Dia Bright Body Cream, contain stronger ingredients, including vitamin C and alpha hydroxy acid, that should be avoided on young skin, she added.
But even the brand’s milder body creams, including Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, could still be irritating for young customers, who have much more sensitive skin than adults, because of their fragrances, Dr. Jeffy said.
And then there is the product’s messaging. “It feeds into this cultural pressure that is starting younger and younger to be worried about aging,” Dr. Jeffy said. “Even the whole fact that this is ‘Bum Bum’ — we kind of know what that refers to.”
In the statement, Sol de Janeiro said its brand mission was to help customers celebrate themselves “no matter what shape, what size, what color, and what background they are.” “Our commitment to body celebration across all ages is authentically reflected in our campaigns and social media presence since Day 1,” the company said.
The company was founded in 2015 with the goal of developing beauty products that draw on what Heela Yang, Sol de Janeiro’s chief executive and one of its founders, has described in interviews as Brazilians’ natural sense of body confidence. (Ms. Yang’s sister, Hannah, is the chief growth and customer officer of The New York Times.)
“When it came to identifying products, we then asked ourselves what part of the body it seemed that Brazilians were preoccupied with,” Ms. Yang said in a 2017 interview with the British beauty publication Get the Gloss. “That didn’t take long. The answer was unanimous: the bum bum (pronounced ‘boom boom’ for all you Brits).”
Sol de Janeiro’s website clarifies that the product is not only for the posterior: “Use it on your bum bum, legs, tummy, arms — anywhere you need a lift for positively glowing skin,” the product description reads.
The company was acquired by the French body care retailer L’Occitane in 2021, and its sales are expected to reach $1 billion this fiscal year, according to The Business of Fashion. Several Sol de Janeiro products, including Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, are listed as best sellers on Sephora’s website.
Sol de Janeiro has built on the cream’s popularity by releasing more products with sweet scents and bright, cheerful visual profiles. It sells a dragon-fruit-scented pink tub of “Elasti-Cream” and a suite of pastel fragrance sprays. A new, limited-edition Brazilian Bum Bum Cream comes with a pack of stickers shaped like bananas, coconuts and hot-air balloons.
Rachel Azzolini, 29, who lives in Louisville, Ky., said that the bright packaging and fruity scents were what drew her 5-year-old daughter to Sol de Janeiro’s products. She said she was concerned when a Sephora employee gave her daughter a miniature sample of the Sol de Janeiro Elasti-Cream, which says it is “retinol-mimicking” on its packaging.
“I thought, I don’t want my 5-year-old using retinol,” she said.
Ms. Azzolini allowed her daughter to use the cream once she discovered that it did not actually contain retinol, a vitamin A derivative that can be irritating, especially to younger skin. She tries to avoid harsh ingredients, but otherwise said she was happy to support her daughter’s interest in skin care, despite the negative comments she sometimes sees about “Sephora kids” on social media.
“It’s not that serious,” she said. “They’re just trying to have fun.”
She recently bought her daughter a travel-size set of Sol de Janeiro creams that includes Brazilian Bum Bum Cream. She said she was not worried about her daughter engaging with the product’s language about firming and tightening. “She doesn’t even think about that stuff or comprehend that yet,” Ms. Azzolini said.
Still, the product appears to fit into a trend of young people fretting about their appearances earlier and earlier, said Charlotte H. Markey, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University and the author of a coming book on adolescents’ body image.
“It’s kind of this sneaky message about aging,” she said. “Even if the girls aren’t initially gravitating to the product for anti-aging purposes, they’re getting that message on their counter in the bathroom every day.”
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