There is something deeply disturbing in what he said in the May 19, 2026 episode “Guess who’s coming to dinner“, the Rai 3 program hosted by Sabrina Giannini. On the one hand, 8-10 year old girls getting semi-permanent nails done in beauty centers transformed into locations for birthday parties. On the other, twelve year olds applying retinol anti-wrinkle creams, inspired by TikTok influencers, burning their skin and discovering too late what was really in those colored jars.
Two different phenomena, one root: a cosmetics industry that has found an unexplored and profitable market in children, and which has no intention of regulating itself. We have already talked about these issues on GreenMe several times but we continue to be shocked as if it were the first.
Let’s see what emerged in the services of “Guess who’s coming to dinner.”
Manicure party
They are called manicure parties and they came from the United States. The idea is simple: instead of organizing your daughter’s birthday party at home or in the park, you take her to a beauty center. The girls are welcomed, placed in chairs, and receive the complete treatment: hand massage, face massage, make-up and, of course, nails.
The owner of one of the centers interviewed by the program explained without embarrassment how the manicure parties were born:
Stealing the idea a bit from within social media. However, we tried to recreate these parties in our home, in a slightly simpler way and for the girls a little more in the family.
Cost of the operation: around three hundred euros for an average of ten girls. A business, in short.
The problem, however, is what is actually used on the nails. To the journalist who asked if water-based nail polishes were used – those without the most aggressive chemicals and specifically designed for children – the answer was:
No, unfortunately today from the sixth year onwards they begin to know what semi-permanent nail polishes and reconstructions are, all this again thanks to social media.
So no: no harmless water-based nail polish. Directly the semi-permanent. The same one used on adult nails.
Dermatologist Marcella Ribuffo, interviewed in the report while visiting an adult patient whose nails have been permanently damaged by the use of the gel, explains what it really means and what the risks are. His words leave no room for interpretation:
These are devastating fads. They absolutely do not take into account the damage of age, because we have seven, eight year old girls who do this type of manicure, which is a murderous practice towards the nails.
The technical question is this: to apply semi-permanent, the nails are normally milled and filed, that is, thinned. In some centers this step is omitted – as in the case filmed by the program – but the problem does not disappear: even without milling, the chemical substances contained in semi-permanent nail polishes still partially penetrate through the nail plate. As Dr. Ribuffo explains:
When these gels, these semi-permanent, are applied, the operators thin the plate and therefore these substances penetrate the microcirculation which exists because the nail lives with us.
And the substances in question are not trivial. In semi-permanent nail polishes there are acrylates, small and very mobile molecules that manage to cross the nail barrier and reach the bloodstream. Among these, some belong to the category of endocrine disruptors, i.e. chemical compounds that imitate our hormones, deceiving the most important glands in the body. The potential consequences? “Metabolic factors, diabetes, infertility“, lists the dermatologist.
These are not idle alarms. The European Union, eight months ago, banned the sale and use of nail polishes containing two substances – classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic for reproduction – known by the acronyms TPO and DMTA. But as the specialist points out, this is not enough:
It’s not that they are one — TPO is one — but there is a whole similar family that can be present in our nail polishes as in our cosmetics.
At the moment the law does not prohibit anything. Neither the use of semi-permanent on minors, nor the trimming of their nails. As long as there is no specific European regulation, all this is perfectly legal.
Skincare
The other side of this story concerns skincare – a term that even elementary school girls now know – and in particular retinol creams, which have become the object of desire of ever younger girls thanks to social networks.
The mechanism is always the same: influencers on TikTok and Instagram show elaborate beauty routines, advertise anti-aging products, and their followers – some seven, ten, twelve years old – imitate them. They buy the creams with their pocket money, ask for them as a birthday present, use them at random, without knowing what they contain and without anyone telling them.
The most emblematic case recounted in the report is that of Scarlett, a twelve-year-old girl from Sacramento, California:
I started getting interested in beauty products by looking at social media when I got my first smartphone. I started to think that influencers were much more beautiful than me.
Scarlett started buying the products she saw in the videos. Her skin burned every time she used them, but she interpreted the burning as a sign that the product wasn’t effective enough. “I thought: maybe they don’t work and I need to use more of them.”
One evening her mother saw her enter the room crying, with bright red cheeks, screaming in pain. The American dermatologist Oma Abai, to whom the program brought one of the creams used by Scarlett, explained the mechanism: retinol, present in almost all anti-wrinkle creams because it stimulates cell renewal and collagen production in adults, can cause serious reactions on the thin and delicate skin of children. Red spots, abrasions, contact dermatitis.
Seven-year-old children also arrive here who follow skin care routines designed for adults and who develop contact dermatitis and allergic reactions – declared the specialist.
Scarlett’s story landed before California’s Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, thanks to state Rep. Alex Lee, who proposed a law to ban the sale of anti-wrinkle creams to minors and to make labels with clear warnings on the ingredients mandatory. The response from the cosmetics industry was immediate and united. The association representing six hundred cosmetics companies in the United States opposed the bill head-on, mobilizing its lobbyists to put pressure on other deputies. Result: after a year of stalemate, the proposal was archived. But the battle goes on.
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Who really protects our daughters?
The answer, at the moment, is almost none. Not the laws, which are still insufficient or non-existent. Not companies, busy protecting their profits. Not always shops, where staff training on risks to minors is left to individual goodwill. And not social networks, which continue to bombard girls with makeup and skincare content without any real age filter.
The voice of the girls themselves remains. Like that of Scarlett, who at the end of the service said something simple and devastating:
Companies should not use other children to entice us to buy these products. (…) I feel a little betrayed. Especially because I wouldn’t have fallen for it if I had known about the side effects.
And the answer to the initial question – uncomfortable, but the only honest one – is that it’s up to us.
