Nara Smith Isn’t the Only Influencer Making Her Own Sunscreen
Getty Images
If there's one thing model and TikTok sensation Nara Smith loves to do, it's DIY. Smith grew a major following on the platform thanks to her soothing voice and occasionally confounding made-from-scratch versions of household staples such as cereal, toothpaste, and even chewing gum. I can count myself as one of her followers; I unironically love watching her whip up a full steak dinner while wearing a feathered cape and wishing I was as enterprising in the “feeding my family” realm as she is. Nara is clearly a pro in the kitchen, but her and her husband’s latest recipe for homemade sunscreen is far less amusing.
In a new video, Nara and her husband, model Lucky Blue Smith, share their recipe for DIY sunscreen with her 8 million TikTok followers. “We've been spending a lot of time outside by the pool, and I realized we ran out of sunscreen,” Nara narrates. This time, it's Lucky behind the kitchen counter; according to Nara, he's a baker, so he makes sure everything is "very precise." Lucky mixes up coconut oil, beeswax, shea butter, cocoa butter, and jojoba oil in a bowl then liquifies it on the stove. Once the ingredients are melted, he adds zinc oxide powder from an unknown source to the bowl and mixes it with a whisk before transferring it to a jar to solidify in the fridge.
“We all burn pretty easily, so we went with something with a little bit more SPF,” Nara says at one point in the video. But wait … where is the SPF in this recipe, exactly? Sure, there's zinc in store-bought sunscreens, but does adding some zinc powder from crushed-up supplements or a powder you bought online actually do anything to protect your skin from the sun? Can you actually DIY your own sunscreen effectively?
Um, no. “Yes, you can make your own sunscreen, but no, you should not do it,” says cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski. “You can make your own car, too, but sometimes there are things you just shouldn’t do. Making your own sunscreen is a terrible idea.”
According to Romanowski, the Smiths are essentially making a body butter with some zinc in it, a far cry from real sunscreen. “It's perfectly fine for people to make their own moisturizers because if you make it wrong, that's not dangerous,” he says. “But if you make sunscreen wrong, you're going to get burned.” The couple’s DIY sunscreen wouldn’t provide any defense against burns, skin cancer, premature aging, or any of the other risks that come with unprotected sun exposure. And there are a few key reasons why.
The first is the way their ingredients are combined. Zinc does provide sun protection (it is, after all, the key ingredient in many sunscreens), however, Romanowski says that their whisking method doesn’t properly distribute it. That causes an uneven spread of zinc, which would lead to “pockets” or “spots” of sunburn later on. “When it's professionally done, the zinc oxide is spread out into an even film,” he explains. “Additionally, formulators put polymers in [sunscreen] so when it's spread on skin, it's spread evenly.” According to cosmetic chemist Kelly Dobos, chemists and formulators work hard to ensure sunscreen provides an even layer of active ingredients on the skin by using specialized equipment like homogenizers, ensuring that each formulation has an even particle size. “The particles want to stick together, so we want to break them and make sure they're the right size to protect you,” she explains.
And while the Smiths’ sprinkle of zinc may look generous, it probably isn't doing much to protect against the sun’s rays anyway. “Generally speaking, for every percentage of zinc oxide, you might get one or maybe two SPF," Dobos says. (Dermatologists generally recommend a minimum of SPF 30 for daily sun protection.)
Stability is also a factor, says Mona Gohara, MD, a board-certified dermatologist and associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale. “[These homemade ingredients] may be stable together, but may not be stable when they hit the light,” she explains. “The preservatives and stabilizers that go into [professionally formulated sunscreens] that make them efficacious aren't being considered.”
So, yeah. Turns out your kitchen is not the best spot to whip up a batch of sunscreen, nor is any place that’s not a bonafide cosmetic lab. “It's challenging enough for us chemists in laboratories to make a very good sunscreen,” Dobos says. What’s more: A sunscreen’s SPF number and amount of UVA protection is determined by testing, she explains, and “without testing, you really have no idea how well that sunscreen made at home performs.”
This whole lecture might sound obvious to many, but DIY sunscreens are fairly popular on TikTok, typically with the “all natural everything” community; some popular DIY sunscreen videos on the platform have more than a million views. But there's no such thing as a “natural” sunscreen, Dobos says. “You can have ingredients that are natural oils and things like that, but there is not a natural sunscreen active ingredient that is approved [by the FDA] for use in the US.” Despite what the name may suggest, even store-bought mineral sunscreen formulas are not “natural.” Their active ingredients—zinc oxide and titanium dioxide—are technically naturally occurring minerals, but synthetic versions are used in sunscreen formulations. “It is illegal to use mined versions of zinc and titanium dioxide since they are contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals," Romanowski has told Allure.
If you're looking for sun protection options with shorter ingredient lists, Dr. Gohara recommends using sun protective clothing with UPF to minimize the amount of sunscreen you have to use on your body. (You should still be wearing sunscreen on exposed areas, of course.) She also recommends mineral formulas from La Roche-Posay and Avène. Romanowski likes Burt's Bees and Aveeno. Any sunscreen sold in the United States is regulated by the FDA and has been since the 1970s—and that’s how it should be.
It's one thing to replicate a pasta recipe or blush technique you saw on TikTok, but it's another thing to try and recreate a federally regulated product that helps protect your skin from the sun's rays, not to mention the risk of skin cancer. “I’m all about DIY, but we know that 90 percent of skin cancers come from unprotected exposure to UV light,” says Dr. Gohara. “All it takes is one bad sunburn to double your risk of melanoma. This is not a place to joke around.”
More beauty news you can use:
Those "Tanning Pills" All Over TikTok Could, Indeed, Change Your Skin Tone
Here's Exactly What Causes Mold to Grow in Skin-Care Products—and How to Avoid It
Now, watch Benito Skinner react to TikTok trends:
Follow Allure on Instagram and TikTok, or subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on all things beauty.
Originally Appeared on Allure
