Why Is Everyone on TikTok Using Lube as Makeup Primer?
Image-Illustration: The Slice Photographs: Getty Photographs, Retailer 1 of the newest trends producing the rounds…

Image-Illustration: The Slice Photographs: Getty Photographs, Retailer
1 of the newest trends producing the rounds on TikTok requires squirting a significant serving of sexual lubricant straight onto your deal with. Why? Due to the fact we’re still aspiring to have skin that appears to be perpetually wet, and turns out, lube is really superior at making points, like pores and skin, very soaked. So great in reality, that the makeup artists and attractiveness-material creators of TikTok are expressing lube outperforms quite a few of the make-up primers on the sector by not only extending the lifespan of their make-up seems to be, but creating them look exceptionally dewy and smooth in the procedure. Let us dig in.
In which did this come from?
The hashtag #lubeprimer truly picked up steam last month and at present has 8.7 million views, but the trend seems to have started with TikToker Lukáš Kohutek (@lukeketuhok), who has been putting up makeup time lapses that start with a everyday squirt of Durex to the encounter considering that July of this year. Kohutek tells the Lower that he basically initially began utilizing lube as a skin-treatment item soon after his best friend’s mom encouraged it as a treatment “for healing up scars following breakouts.” “After a couple of weeks working with it as the closing action of my pores and skin-care routine, I reported to myself, this can be excellent as a primer. I attempted it and liked it, and now use it just about each individual time I place on makeup,” suggests Kohutek, who enjoys lube’s skin-smoothing and hydrating characteristics.
When lube ongoing to be a staple in Kohutek’s video clips, it was TikToker Sean Anthony (@seananthonyv) who explicitly highlighted the “life-altering hack,” and prompted the development to spread significantly and wide. In the online video that went viral, he demonstrates how mixing lube into liquid foundation makes a smoother glide, and offers your base a “fresh” end. Nevertheless most who try out the craze and movie it opt for Kohutek’s method of making use of it straight to bare pores and skin to build a dewy however grippy canvas for what’s to arrive.
Is this new?
Back again in 2016, vlogger Huda Kuttan, founder of the Huda Attractiveness empire, tried out both of those KY Jelly and Vagisil to primary her experience because they have ingredients like glycerin and dimethicone in prevalent with pores and skin-care goods. KY Jelly designed her makeup pill (womp-womp), but she informed Cosmopolitan that she ongoing to key her cheeks with Vagisil mainly because it labored so very well. Thanks to all the sexual-wellness models that now exist in 2021, there are a bunch of individual lubricants out there that are practically indistinguishable from pores and skin-care products and solutions, with their aloe vera and hyaluronic acid–filled formulation. The urge to try a lube better up on the body was sure to take place.
Should I consider this?
We would not recommend it. “Using particular lubricant as a makeup primer can direct to facial pores and skin sensitivities and allergies to some of the elements usually discovered in lube, like castor oil, chlorhexidine, and spermicide,” suggests Alexis Stephens, board-accredited dermatologist and founder of Parkland Dermatology.
Dr. Stephens also warns that lube’s stickiness can clog pores, lure microbes and dust on the skin, and trigger things we especially attempt to protect against, like acne breakouts, papules, whiteheads, and blackheads. Durex itself commented on Anthony’s viral online video complimenting the remaining seem, but reiterating that they really do not propose using their product or service as a make-up primer.
But there are worse issues you could do to your confront. And if you’re presently brushing bar cleaning soap on to your brows, or slathering a bunch of Vaseline onto your encounter, squirting lube on your visage won’t really feel like that a great deal of a extend, primarily if you want to get interest on the world-wide-web.
In addition, lubes are always declaring that their formulas are safe and sound to take in and use all more than the body, and a single could argue your confront is portion of your system. As TikTok’s favourite skinfluencer Hyram Yarbro place it in his evaluate of the development, “If it’s likely to be shoved up where the solar doesn’t shine, the components most likely are not also shabby,” and the ones in the water-based mostly, fragrance-free of charge, and flavor-no cost blue Durex Perform —the only lube Kohutek utilizes as primer—are not. Yarbro lists propylene glycol, sodium hydroxide, benzoic acid, and hydroxyethyl cellulose, “ingredients you uncover in most skin-care solutions.”
However, unlike makeup primer, lube (with any luck ,) isn’t hanging out on your private components all day extended, with foundation, concealer, bronzer, and blush caked on top for hrs. In other words and phrases, “Your experience is not the exact same as your genitals,” as Forbes pointed out, and dermatologists concur. They would choose that you abstain from covering the former in lube, since there is a opportunity your pores and skin will despise it.
What can I do as a substitute?
Stephens endorses “avoiding the probable headache altogether” by just applying … an precise makeup primer. Kohutek is sticking with lube mainly because his skin hasn’t expert any adverse aspect outcomes, and he finds it to be the most hydrating foundation, but he claims Milk Makeup’s Hydrogrip is pretty darn shut to remaining on lube’s stage mainly because “the texture is quite similar.” Huda Kattan, former Vagisil stan, also tends to make a Drinking water Jelly Hydrating Primer that seems a great deal like lube if want equally the Durex expertise, and the inexperienced light-weight from dermatologists.
You can also skip primer entirely and consider mixing a serum that’s nice and moist into your basis to get a dewy complete, but you likely will not go viral for it or nearly anything like that.