The other night during my usual ritual, I scrolled through Instagram. I liked the latest summer post of a best friend at the beach, a middle school classmate destined to be the next lawyer doing body shots in Vegas, and sadly not a picture or video of Beyoncé and her twins. While scrolling, I saw an ad. A woman was smiling, her skin was freckled with a brown substance. The caption was witty and talked about how good it is to be dirty. Intrigued, I clicked the page to discover she was covered in a coffee scrub. There were comments underneath the photo, some were praising the product, others were expressing how badly they wanted to try it.
After switching from Instagram to Twitter to see the latest Migos memes, I noticed a woman with her legs also covered in a speckled brown substance. Similarly, to the Instagram post, there was a flirty caption and the hashtag #letsbefrank. After clicking the page, I saw it was the same coffee scrub from Instagram. Now fully curious, I googled coffee scrubs. Suddenly there were coffee scrubs everywhere with prices ranging from $9.99 to $98! No, seriously, NINETY-EIGHT DOLLARS! There were articles from magazines praising the growing trend of coffee scrubs and how you can make your own at home. As I searched more, I discovered coffee scrubs are nothing new. Have I been living under a rock?!
As I passed articles and DIYs, I remembered an article I saw over a month ago warning the dangers of coffee scrubs. Another google search later, and my desire to create my own coffee scrub, dissipated. According to Allure, not only are they terrible for your drains (household chemicals can’t get through and coffee doesn’t decompose), they can cause micro tears on skin if they aren’t ground finely.
Where does this leave other scrub craftsmen? Should they stick to their tried and true natural scrubs? Or would introducing coffee scrubs be wise? In my opinion, if you are great at creating your craft, stick to it. Ingredients like sugar and salt dissolve and depending on the ingredients of the microbeads, they will dissolve as well. Fads die. There is a lack of conversation about the damage coffee grounds cause drains and it will eventually come to light when the wrong person must replace them. Until then, stay strong scrub artisans!
