Buying Fake Kylie Jenner Lip Kits Can Literally Glue Your Mouth Shut

Kylie Jenner tweeted last Wednesday about problems with knockoff Kylie Lip Kits. However, these problems were far from trivial, and they actually weren’t her fault. She was actually stepping up to warn her customers against buying fake Kylie Lip Kits, saying that although they looked like her products, they certainly weren’t her products. Fake makeup might not sound like a life or death issue or even a health issue, and you might look at Kylie Jenner warning against buying knockoff lip kits as a conniving business move to protect her bottom line. That actually isn’t the case. Knockoff makeup like the fake Kylie Lip Kits floating around the Internet can actually hurt people.Different people have reported buying discounted makeup over the Internet through various sellers and found that the packaging is faulty and they’re experiencing side effects that can go from acne and rashes to infections. One girl on Twitter actually reported that her fake lip kit literally glued her mouth shut. It’s kind of the stuff of nightmares, but it’s nothing new. The beauty black market is a real place that makes knock off makeup that can be really bad for you. Here’s everything you need to know before you decided to buy knockoff makeup.

The people buying the knockoff lip kits don’t seem to know that they’re fake when they’re buying them. From what we can tell, people seem to be buying them and finding out that they’re fake because some detail is off, like the sketchy packaging and the bottles with slight chips in them.

Some customers found that they were experiencing scary side effects. One customer told Kylie Jenner that the fake lip kit she purchased contained gasoline. Another girl found that the kit she’d bought had glue in it and she took video of her struggling to get her mouth open. Still others said that their lip kit made their lips swollen.

While this might be the first you hear of this, this is not a new thing. The knockoff beauty black market is a real issue. Right now, women are buying makeup that’s laced with things as harmful as arsenic and paint thinner.

One 21-year-old woman found that she had an adverse reaction to some mascara. Autumn saw a tube of Laura Geller GlamLash for half price on eBay and jumped on it, only seeing the halved price tag. When the tube of mascara came in, she noticed that some things were a bit off. For one thing, the brand’s lips logo was nowhere to be found, and the brush bristles didn’t look quite right.

That didn’t stop her from applying the mascara anyway. Immediately, Autumn’s eyes started burning and they stayed irritated for the next five days. When she went to the doctor, she was told that she reacted that way thanks to an adverse reaction to a product. She assumed the mascara was fake and filed a complaint with eBay.

Greg Marrazzo is the senior vice president of Estée Lauder Companies. He believes that the beauty black market is a “global epidemic.” He leads the company’s group that focuses entirely on anti-counterfeiting. It’s not just a real thing for women buying Kylie Jenner Lip Kits, it’s real across a lot of different companies, and they’re taking action to stop it.

Some of this comes from concern about knockoffs, but that’s not their only concern. While knockoff makeup hurts their brand and their image, the consequences of fake makeup for the makeup companies are nothing compared to the consequences consumers like us experience. That’s why we need to be aware that this is happening.

Bob Barchiesi is the president of the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, which is based in DC. According to him: ”About 90 percent of these counterfeit items come from China, where manufacturing is cheaper and there's a copycat culture.” The global president of MAC Cosmetics, Karen Buglisi Weiler, called the entire situation “horrifying.”

MAC is one of the few brands that’s actually speaking out about the issue. This makes sense, considering most makeup brands aren’t trying to go out of their way to publicize their counterfeiters. They also wouldn’t want to admit that their brand can be or has been taken over by makers of knockoffs. However, MAC, along with Kylie Jenner and a few other brands are speaking out to protect consumers from the harmful things that are put into the knockoff makeup.