Over the weekend TikToker @temiojoraa allegedly caught and filmed a group of white teenage girls walking around Sephora in full blackface at the Boston Prudential Mall, and in the video their mothers seemed to idly stand by and do nothing.
In the first part of the video, one of the girls is waiting for her mom to take a photo of her face caked in brown makeup, and a Sephora employee can be heard confronting them.
“I walked over here and you were about to send a picture of that. You want to document this? Go ahead,” the employee said. “This is the stuff that ruins jobs, college acceptances, let alone how incredibly offensive this is.”
In the clip, another Sephora employee can also be heard apologizing to other customers in the background who witness the behavior.
Another part of the video then cut to the girls continuing to giggle and smear the makeup on their faces while TikToker @temiojoraa added, “This is so shameful.” In the original video caption, she added a few more details about the situation:
The Sephora worker (lady in black) confronted them and the mother dismissed her and walked off. After I stopped filming, both mothers came to press me to delete the video of the blatant racism because “they didn’t consent.”
According to @temiojoraa, the social app removed her original video. “Omgg did the Sephora video get taken down???!” someone commented on one of her post, to which she responded: “Yep. Ridiculous.”
However the internet is forever, and screen-recorded versions of the video have been circulating with people adding their own commentary on the situation.
Retail employees have also waded into the conversation with videos about young customers coming in, using up all the samples and not understanding how much money they are spending on products unnecessary for their young skin.
Others have called the mothers’ parenting into question, believing that girls’ behavior is a reflection of how they behave at home.
The Sephora account responded under one of the reposts of the incident on X, “Sephora’s top priority is to create a welcoming and inclusive shopping experience for all. We are extremely disappointed by the behavior of these shoppers at our Prudential Center location, and as such, they were asked to leave our premises.”