For those of us who move around frequently in fashion and makeup circles, a common advice you may hear is to never be a cheapskate when it comes to makeup.
In this day and age, this is not exactly the best advice, given as you can ignore luxury brands and get equally good – if not better – makeup from much cheaper brands.
The principle concept, however, still rings true – do not splurge on quality.
However, what if all you wanted to do was just buy your daughter some fun toys to play with?
Parents of young children will notice something that is very common – the store shelves are full of makeup kits for children, packaged as toys.
These simple kits usually come with some basic makeup that is designed to be as attractive to children as possible, with bright colors, plenty of glitters, and the like.
Most importantly, these kits are cheap.
As anyone who deals with children can tell you, children initially learn from watching their caretakers and eventually trying to emulate them.
Because of this, young children will eventually also want to emulate their parents dressing up and getting fancy for a night out.
That, or they learn the concept from the media they watch and the people around them.
Either way, instead of waiting for your child to eventually steal your favorite tube of lipstick to try on (and inevitably ruining that tube in the process), it is much easier to simply get them something cheap to try.
Unfortunately for Tony and Kylie Cravens, this turned out to be a horrible mistake.
After their young daughter, Lydia, began showing an interest in cosmetics and trying on makeup, they decided to purchase one of the many available children’s makeup kit from the dollar store for her.
There shouldn’t have been any problem – while the last thing you would expect from these products are high-quality ingredients, you would assume that products manufactured and advertised for children would have been produced to stringent safety and quality standards.
Sadly, this isn’t quite the case, as the Cravens would soon find out to their horror.
Shortly after swiping on the products on her face, the girl’s skin began to develop a horrific allergic reaction to the low-quality ingredients.
In fact, the reaction was so alarming that she was admitted to Carle Pediatrics in Champaign for about a week.
Blisters developed on her eyelids that would later swell, and her lips became so painfully dry and cracked that they had to wait a few days before she could eat food again.
Rashes spread all over her body, the burning sensation it created so bad they had to use cold packs to help give Lydia some relief.
As it turns out, the makeup kit that was purchased had six known allergens in it.
Unknown to the family, Lydia has an extreme reaction to one or more of these ingredients.
Thankfully, as terrifying as her reaction is, it isn’t life-threatening.
Since then, the Cravens have urged those around them to think twice before purchasing a similar kit.
