If there’s one thing model and TikTok sensation Nara Smith loves to do, it’s DIY. Smith grew a major following on the platform thanks to her soothing voice and occasionally confounding made-from-scratch versions of household staples such as cereal, toothpaste, and even chewing gum. I can count myself as one of her followers; I unironically love watching her whip up a full steak dinner while wearing a feathered cape and wishing I was as enterprising in the “feeding my family” realm as she is. Nara is clearly a pro in the kitchen, but her and her husband’s latest recipe for homemade sunscreen is far less amusing.
In a new video, Nara and her husband, model Lucky Blue Smith, share their recipe for DIY sunscreen with her 8 million TikTok followers. “We’ve been spending a lot of time outside by the pool, and I realized we ran out of sunscreen,” Nara narrates. This time, it’s Lucky behind the kitchen counter; according to Nara, he’s a baker, so he makes sure everything is “very precise.” Lucky mixes up coconut oil, beeswax, shea butter, cocoa butter, and jojoba oil in a bowl then liquifies it on the stove. Once the ingredients are melted, he adds zinc oxide powder from an unknown source to the bowl and mixes it with a whisk before transferring it to a jar to solidify in the fridge.
“We all burn pretty easily, so we went with something with a little bit more SPF,” Nara says at one point in the video. But wait … where is the SPF in this recipe, exactly? Sure, there’s zinc in store-bought sunscreens, but does adding some zinc powder from crushed-up supplements or a powder you bought online actually do anything to protect your skin from the sun? Can you actually DIY your own sunscreen effectively?
Um, no. “Yes, you can make your own sunscreen, but no, you should not do it,” says cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski. “You can make your own car, too, but sometimes there are things you just shouldn’t do. Making your own sunscreen is a terrible idea.”
According to Romanowski, the Smiths are essentially making a body butter with some zinc in it, a far cry from real sunscreen. “It’s perfectly fine for people to make their own moisturizers because if you make it wrong, that’s not dangerous,” he says. “But if you make sunscreen wrong, you’re going to get burned.” The couple’s DIY sunscreen wouldn’t provide any defense against burns, skin cancer, premature aging, or any of the other risks that come with unprotected sun exposure. And there are a few key reasons why.