A woman from Iowa, United States, recently shared that her 17-year-old daughter suffered severe burns and blisters after trying “sugar waxing”, a popular do-it-yourself trend that is gaining prominence on social media. She said that her daughter’s blister was “bigger than her thumb” and was around three inches tall. “Then it popped overnight,” Natalie Renken, the 46-year-old mother of Allison Boles said, as per a report in the New York Post.
She said she came home in February and saw her 17-year-old, “in the kitchen cooking something” when the incident occurred. “She is always crafty and making things in the kitchen, so I didn’t think anything of it when I saw her at the stove. About an hour and a half later, Allison said she had burnt herself. She showed me it and at first I thought it was a paper towel but it was her skin that had peeled back,” she added.
Her daughter had been preparing the materials for an all-natural hair removal procedure called sugaring or sugar wax, which uses a solution of sugar, honey, and water instead of standard wax. The resulting material is meant to be applied to any region of the body, from the armpits to the legs.
Although this method was initially created by the Egyptians, Ms Boles found it on TikTok, where it has become extremely popular. “The original video just came up on her TikTok ‘for you’ page. She hadn’t been searching for it but after seeing the first video she searched for more on TikTok and then did some further research online,” the mother explained.
However, tragedy struck when Ms Boles followed the directions in the video, which instructed her to put the glop in the refrigerator and reheat it in the microwave for a few hours. The hot wax allegedly splattered her thumb as she was stirring the mixture causing the sugar wax to pop. The wax was so hot that it ended up peeling her skin off when she ran to rinse it off.
Once they reached the emergency room at a hospital, doctors stated that she was the second patient who came in with the same issue. “Once Allison told the doctor what happened he said he had watched the TikTok videos and explained that by putting the hot wax into the fridge you are essentially flash cooling it. When the wax is in the fridge for only an hour or two it doesn’t cool evenly which leaves hot pockets in the wax,” the 46-year-old explained.
She continued, “When you put it in the microwave these pockets are then going to get even hotter, but the other bits of the wax will only get warm which causes a combustion reaction which pops the hot pockets.”
She was then diagnosed by a doctor with a serious second-degree burn, which would take four weeks to recover. Ms Boles’ mother worries that her half-baked effort at mane removal would leave her with a “permanent scar,” even though her skin has now grown back.
Ms Renken is urging TikTok to include disclaimers in its DIY cosmetics videos in light of the traumatic experience. “I think with every DIY project video (on TikTok) there should be some parental consent or age recommendations on the video just like there are on toys. Allison was very upset and she feels that even though she did all her research, she has now heard other people getting burned (by sugar wax) why aren’t they telling us, that you can get hurt. She feels deceived by all the videos and research she did (into sugar wax) as they all told her the same thing,” she said.
However, representatives from TikTok asserted that because of the inherent danger of the activities shown, access to the content is limited to those above the age of 18. They also stated that they included cautionary labels informing users of the potentially hazardous nature of these activities and that TikTok isn’t the only site where videos of sugaring and other do-it-yourself beauty tips are shared.
