“Homemade Sunscreen Is Also Homemade Melanoma” — Nara Smith Blasted for DIY Sunblock

It's no secret that TikTokers have uploaded some objectively stupid content to the platform — like people seemingly blindfolding themselves while driving for the Bird Box challenge. Also, remember when everyone was rocking tie-dye sweatsuits and performing half-a--ed dance routines with mirthless smiles as they stared vacantly into a camera?

Now, Nara Smith's latest TikTok controversy is leaving throngs of folks wondering just what the heck she is doing with her homemade sunscreen.

Nara recently went viral showing off some homemade sunscreen in a viral video that ended up making the rounds on social media and stirring up quite the visceral reaction.

She narrates in the video: "We've been spending a lot of time outside by the pool and I realized that we ran out of sunscreen, but I asked Lucky to make me some. We all burn pretty easily so we went with something with a little bit more SPF. He started by adding some coconut into his bowl. He's a baker so he makes sure that everything is very precise before moving onto adding some beeswax."

She continued listing ingredients, then said, "Once all of that was combined in the bowl he added some ... oil as well. He then filled a pot with some water before placing it on the stove, letting it come to a boil, and placing the glass bowl on top of that."

Nara kept speaking in a low register into the microphone: "He continuously stirred until everything was melted and combined. Once it was taken off the heat, he added some zinc oxide powder to that before whisking it all together for about a minute just making sure that's all coming together." Lucky can be seen constantly whipping together the boiled ingredients into the DIY sunscreen Nara requested that he make.

"Once everything was combined he transferred it over to a glass jar before closing that and popping that in the fridge to solidify. About an hour later it was all solid and ready to apply," she said.

According to the content creator, the concoction was great.

"This went on so smooth and didn't leave a white cast," she says before the video cuts off as she shows off her husband's arm, which shows no white streaks.

Throngs of viewers who saw the video expressed their shock, with some swearing that the model must be trolling to make "homemade sunscreen." A verified TikTok dermatologist wrote, "NARA PLEASE" along with a crying emoji.

Some have jokingly asked Nara to make Ozempic from scratch, but it seems that the source of the controversy has to do with the fact that there are a lot of folks calling her out for encouraging people to make their own sunscreen.

Content creator and esthetician Alicia Lartey said playing around with sunscreen could lead to issues with people's skin, and the Daily Mail posted a TikTok of its own quoting dermatologists who said that Nara's advice is a "terrible idea" who "say the ingredients Nara used may be an SPF 2 or 3 but not SPF 30."

The New York Times even posted an article stating that Nara's sunscreen video was giving "experts pause" and that many expressed concern over her post.

Glamour also spoke with dermatologists to see what they had to say about Nara's homemade sunscreen, and they all unanimously advised against it.

"DIY sunscreen should be avoided as there is no way to know how effective the formulation is and how much protection it will actually provide. It may provide a false sense of security and leave someone susceptible to sunburn or potential for irritation," Marisa Garshick, MD, a New York City board-certified dermatologist said.

Adarsh Vijay Mudgil, MD who is a board-certified dermatologist in NYC flat out called Nara's homemade sunscreen a "terrible idea," adding, "Many things applied to the skin have some degree of SPF, including some of the ingredients Nara used. But these may be an SPF 2 or 3, not SPF 30, which is what I recommend my patients use — and ideally one with a mineral component like titanium or zinc."