When does a preference for homemade beauty products turn into science scepticism?<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Words by Emily Cronin<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/03\/GettyImages-1183215687.jpg” alt=”Homemade face mask” title_text=”Young woman applying face mask at home. Natural Skin Care Routine For Glowing Skin.” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”] What\u2019s good for your roasties is good for your face, so the saying doesn\u2019t go. Yet a growing segment of skincare fans is swapping retinols and hyaluronic serums for \u2018natural\u2019 alternatives. Think beef tallow face balm, cocoa powder dry shampoo, coconut oil makeup remover, and so on.<\/p>\n That\u2019s right: the latest it-ingredients in beauty owe less to the lab than to the kitchen. Take it from TikTok, where devotees testify to the life changing effects of adding pantry staples into their beauty routines. Search \u2018apricot kernel oil\u2019 and you\u2019ll find women slathering it onto their legs in lieu of shaving cream or running it through their hair as a deep-conditioning treatment. Coconut oil shows up in makeup-removal videos.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s beef tallow, the more neutral\/less ick name for rendered beef fat. In clip after clip, women smear the creamy balm \u2013 made by melting beef fat, straining it to remove impurities and whipping it with essential oils \u2013 onto their cheeks while lauding its benefits. Benefits like vitamins A, D, E and K, and fatty acids that make it a rich moisturiser for non-oily skin. Plus, it\u2019s \u2018natural\u2019. \u2018If you can\u2019t eat your skin care,\u2019 one woman advises as she swipes a dollop from her tallow jar, then pops it into her mouth, \u2018you should not be putting on your face.\u2019 Never mind that many of the products come with a distinct whiff of roast dinner. As one fan told the New York Times, \u2018smelling a little beefy might just be the cost of having a glowing face.\u2019<\/p>\n What\u2019s happening here? Certainly coconut and apricot oils feature in countless skincare products from established brands, and plenty of people have sworn by beef tallow soaps and balms for years. But seeing such widespread adoption of the homemade approach in 2025 points to broader social trends.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] And to TikTok, of course. Nara Smith, the Mormon influencer and tradwife known for her from-scratch breakfast cereals and other such laborious cooking videos, makes her own coconut-oil and brown-sugar lip scrub. When she shared a clip of model husband Lucky whipping up a batch of beef-tallow face cream, it looked wholesome. To some, even convincing (if it\u2019s good enough for those cheekbones\u2026).<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s videos reach a population primed to be receptive to her \u2018homemade is best\u2019 message by similar content from other tradwives and homesteaders. But watch enough videos about coconut oil and beef tallow, and you\u2019ll begin to notice something else: influencers in \u2018Make America Healthy Again\u2019 (MAHA) hats talking about the importance of eliminating industrial chemicals from your routines.<\/p>\n The tradwife\/homesteader\/wellness-girlie to pro-Trump content pipeline is real. MAHA, an offshoot of the MAGA movement, is anti-fluoride, anti-big-pharma, vaccine-sceptical, pro-raw milk and (especially) pro-Trump. Making swaps from conventional products to identifiably \u2018natural\u2019 ones plays into MAHA followers\u2019 suspicion of institutions and anything made in a lab. Considered in that context, beef tallow looks less like a wonder product, more like a gateway to a xenophobic, science-sceptical worldview. Now with a beefy glow. Yum?<\/p>\n There\u2019s an evangelical, even puritannical undercurrent to the trend \u2013 an obsession with purity and all things \u2018natural\u2019 over modernity, innovation and convenience. After all, there are plenty of shelf-stable, efficacy-tested products available for under a tenner at Boots. Which lends the whole enterprise a whiff of anti-feminism. It\u2019s hard to argue that many of the people patiently stirring saucepans of rendered beef suet and cheerfully DIYing their skincare value women\u2019s leisure time.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}”] Not that there\u2019s always a political ideology behind product choices. For some, there\u2019s a novelty factor at play. For others, swapping standard skincare products for choices like coconut oil and beef tallow could be a reaction to years of 12-step skincare routines, as they’re drawn to the straightforward ease of single-ingredient solutions. \u2018Maybe this is a boomerang moment,\u2019 says Brittany Luse, host of NPR\u2019s It\u2019s Been a Minute podcast, \u2018where people have reached a saturation point with doing these intense multi-step skincare routines, and now want something simple\u2019.<\/p>\n Is any of it effective, though? In the case of beef tallow, the answer is a solid\u2026 maybe. Depending on your skin. Tallow is comedogenic, meaning it\u2019s likely to block pores. \u2018Certainly a lot of our clients prefer ingredients to be vegan and suitable for congested, blemish-prone skin which beef tallow wouldn\u2019t be,\u2019 says Eilidh Smith, founder of London-based facial and skincare clinic Skinwork.<\/p>\n \u2018We like to see proven and tested ingredients, formulations and technology \u2013 no fads or unproven trends. Of course there are lots of ingredients which originate from nature but are then developed, tested and formulated to be more efficacious for the skin and safe.\u2019<\/p>\n All of which reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad years ago. He was an eye surgeon and glaucoma specialist, and medical marijuana was in the news as a balm for all kinds of issues, including glaucoma. Is it actually therapeutic, I asked him. He thought for a moment before answering. \u2018You know, it probably does have some positive effects,\u2019 he said before pausing to finish. \u2018But not as many as prescription eyedrops.\u2019<\/p>\n I\u2019ll stick with the best skincare science can offer, thanks. And save beef drippings for my next batch of roast potatoes.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] Photo: <\/b>Getty<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When does a preference for homemade beauty become science scepticism?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8012"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8037,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012\/revisions\/8037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
‘Smelling a little beefy might just be the cost of having a glowing face.’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]