Shay Mitchell’s new brand Rini promises “healthy habits” and “confidence” for children as young as three, but in a world already obsessed with self-optimisation and beauty, do kids really need skincare routines before they can read?
Long-time friends Shay Mitchell and Esther Song have released a new range of skincare for children. Yes, that’s right, the demographic least in need of a collagen infusion or barrier repair cream is getting their very own skincare line.
In a post to Instagram, Mitchell celebrated her excitement at finally being able to talk about the launch. The K-beauty-inspired range is named Rini, inspired by the word eorini, the Korean word for children.
But something about the whole launch just feels a little…out of touch.
In an economy where parents just want to make sure their children are fed, and in a world where everyone seems to be living in crisis mode, children’s skincare – reportedly suitable for infants as young as three – seems to be the gift absolutely no one asked for.
In the initial caption shared by Mitchell, she recalls that the inspiration for Rini came to her when her daughters saw her using skincare and wanting themselves to “do as mommy does”, but is this not an occasion where what mummy does, does not always mean what daughter can do too. Does Mummy share her wine, or the wheel of the car, too? Maybe there are just things in life not for children… and hydrating recovery masks should be on that list.
In another life, I used to work in the beauty hall of a prominent high street department store. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of the beauty industry. So much so that I left it behind.
You can smell the marketing on a beauty product a mile away. The same old buzzwords are used time and time again in an effort to offer some ambiguous promise of youth and clarity without ever being able to definitively say “this is what this product will do for you”. You know whether a product is aimed at a tween or a teen, or the woman in her early twenties maxing out a credit card for the latest launch, the woman in her thirties or forties who’s wondering where those lines came from, all the way to the woman in her eighties who got the bus into town and wants to replace the blue eyeshadow she bought decades ago but she’s worn every day ever since.
When I look at Rini, the packaging and products are most definitely not aimed at children. There is so little joy, whimsy, or even colour to the products. In 2020, we had the rise of “sad beige baby”, a trend which saw babies, toddlers and nurseries clad in beige, browns and minimalist neutral tones as parents extracted colour from their babies’ lives in the name of “aesthetic”. Now, we have sad beige skincare. There is no young child reaching for the brown packet to play with.
Personally, I think it speaks of a wider trend of babies being used as extensions to the parents’ ego or for content creation. The Rini line is aesthetically driven, feeling like it’s marketed more to mums and dads who want to perform wellness with their children rather than thinking of children’s wellness in the first place. When you encourage children to become self-aware of something like their skin, especially when this goes hand-in-hand with a product to “fix” it or “help” it, you run the risk of them absorbing the negative message that something is wrong with them in the first place. The beauty industry can be a beautiful thing, supportive and championing self-expression and liberating confidence. But…it can also be a place where seeds of self-doubt are left to grow wild.
Skincare is so often marketed as a solution to a problem…when most of the time the problem isn’t even a problem in the first place. Breakouts, here’s salicylic acid, dry skin, then hyaluronic acid is your new bestie. Wrinkles? Then take your pick of the hundreds of retinol products on the market. Oh…but if you’re taking retinol, you’ll definitely need SPF. If you’re wearing SPF, then you’ll need a good cleanser to remove it. Oh, you’re using cleanser, then a toner must come next…on and on until you have no idea what your skin is doing versus what the products are doing.
We idealise these skincare routines with very little self-reflection as to how we ended up with a 10-step night-time routine. It makes me sad to think that young children will have to hop onto that train a lot sooner than they should have to.
Let’s let children live in ignorance of social pressures and unattainable beauty standards before the weight of self-awareness falls on their shoulders. Because when you become self-aware, you become self-conscious, and it hits you like a juggernaut. As the stereotypical awkward tween/teen with breakouts and oily skin, I would have given anything for more time without the crippling sense of self-awareness.
Allow children to be carefree a little bit longer without giving them products which can cause a fixation on skincare problems they don’t have.
If you know that children don’t need harsh chemicals and bad ingredients, then don’t give them to them. Children don’t need a whole range of products made just for them with all of the same psychological impact.
According to a statement on Rini’s website:
“Our mission is simple.”
“To nurture healthy habits, spark confidence, and make thoughtfully crafted daily care essentials and play products accessible to every family.”
“The first products, launched yesterday, include a hydrogel facial mask, an after-sun hydrogel facial mask, and an everyday facial sheet mask.”
Do we really need to challenge a company as to why children need an everyday sheet mask? Are the self-esteem issues associated with toxic-wellness not enough? While we are there, do we also need to challenge the excessive consumerism and wastage of single-use beauty products?
One user on Instagram wrote: “It’s not even only about the skin products, it’s also about pushing the idea on little kids that they should be doing something to be prettier → change themselves → fit the stereotype. What kids need to learn today in this accelerated society is to live in their present. Not do adult stuff because they see adults doing it. This is not ‘fun’. It’s societal pressure disguised as fun.”
This skincare line reinforces the idea from an early age that children need to fix themselves and change their bodies. There is enough of that already in the world; we don’t need to be introducing younger children to that kind of rhetoric.
The launch has sparked debate online. Some users argue that children are being exposed to the beauty industry on social media platforms, so using a “clean” and “consciously crafted” range specially for children is a great way to introduce conversations around wellness and societal expectations. While simultaneously allowing children to feel involved in a hobby they want to engage with.
But others are worried about the potentially negative effects of allowing younger children, particularly girls, who could suffer from over-exposure to a toxic-wellness industry.
Neither Mitchell nor Song have responded to the significant backlash or debate surrounding the new brand. But as more products are released publicly, audiences will continue to try to understand the motive behind creating skincare for children. Was it an opportunity to exploit an untapped skincare demographic, or, more innocently, a teaching tool for young children to learn the ways of wellness?
