PLANO, TX — A receipt printed Wednesday at the Sephora inside Willow Bend mall measured 14 inches long, was paid for in birthday money, and belonged to a 9-year-old named Brinleigh whose teacher took home $487 last week before taxes.
Brinleigh, a fourth grader at Plano West Elementary, is part of a growing demographic known online as ‘Sephora kids’ — tween skincare obsessives whose nighttime routines include retinol products formulated for menopausal women and whose haul videos pull more views than most local news affiliates pull viewers.
‘She has a Drunk Elephant Bronzing Drops. I have a tote bag from a 2019 Scholastic conference,’ said Ms. Pettigrew, Brinleigh’s teacher, who tutors on weekends and shares a Hulu password with her sister. ‘I asked her what glass skin was. She looked at me like I had just told her Santa was real.’
Brinleigh’s evening regimen, posted to her mother’s TikTok, contains 14 steps and includes Protini Polypeptide Cream, a $58 hyaluronic serum, and the Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Bum Bum body butter. She does not have a bum bum. She is nine.
‘It used to smell like Goldfish in here,’ said Marcus, a custodian who has mopped Plano West since 1998 and now describes the third-floor girls’ bathroom as ‘a Bath & Body Works that fell into a Trader Joe’s.’ He said he found a $42 face mist behind a toilet on Tuesday and turned it in to lost-and-found, where it was claimed within nine minutes.
At Wednesday’s pickup, Brinleigh’s mother, Krista, defended the haul while holding a $68 cleanser her daughter had specifically requested by SKU number. ‘We just want her to have nice skin,’ said Krista, 38, who used St. Ives Apricot Scrub at the same age and has, by her own admission, ‘paid for it.’ She added that Brinleigh’s birthday money came from her grandmother, who ‘doesn’t really get what any of it is, but supports her.’
Pettigrew, who has been told by administration that she cannot ban skincare products from the classroom because ‘they are technically just lotion,’ said she now spends her morning prep period quietly googling what a ‘slug’ is. She has also been informed by several students that her own skin barrier is ‘compromised.’
The Sephora at Willow Bend declined to comment on a Wednesday afternoon rush its assistant manager described as ‘every Tuesday and Thursday after 3:15.’ A small sign at the register reads ‘Please No More Than 4 Tweens At The Tester Bar,’ which staff installed in August and which is openly ignored.
At press time, Ms. Pettigrew was applying a sample packet of Olay she received at a CVS in 2021, and Brinleigh was unboxing a Laneige set on Instagram Live to 1,400 viewers, none of whom were her teacher.