How far would you go for beauty?
Phenol peels are known as the strongest peel on the market. Yielding results that far surpass any other at-home or in-office peel, they can give you the skin of your dreams, wiping away wrinkles, blemishes, UV damage and scars. There’s just one catch: you could die.
First used in the 1920s, phenol peel before-and-afters have recently gained traction online thanks to jaw-dropping results. In one clip, a woman’s face is crisp and crusted over. Then, her necrotised tissue is pulled back like a Halloween mask revealing fresh, pink skin. She’s almost unrecognisable; decades of deep-set lines, marks and discolouration are all gone. But what makes phenol peels so effective is also what makes them precarious. During the procedure, a doctor applies phenol, otherwise known as carbolic acid to the skin. While carbolic acid is the secret sauce for deep exfoliation and collagen production, it’s also highly poisonous and rapidly absorbed by the skin. This can lead to kidney and liver damage, arrhythmias, cardiac arrest, coma and even death.
In June 2024, 27-year-old Henrique Silva Chagas died after a phenol peel in Brazil. He underwent the procedure at a clinic for roughly £720 with a beautician who had allegedly taken a free class on phenol peels six months prior. “Patients who undergo phenol peels should be hooked up to a cardiac monitor and an MD should be present at all times in case something happens,” Dr Forum Patel, a dermatologist against phenol peels tells Dazed. Chagas wasn’t monitored nor was the beautician a doctor. A similarly tragic event happened in 1999, when a New Zealand patient died from a cardiac reaction to a phenol peel.
Levi, 31 got a phenol peel in Brazil almost a year ago. He knew the risks, they just didn’t bother him. “When I first saw videos of phenol peels, I didn’t have skin problems, but as life got stressful, my teenage acne issues returned and I became more open to it.” He was left with pitted scars that didn’t budge despite using devices, microneedling and at-home TCA peels. So, he searched for a local doctor in Budapest who offered phenol peels. However, what was offered wasn’t the extreme peel he saw online. Phenol peels are available in Hungary as well as the UK and US, but most practices are risk-averse, using concentrations much lower than those in Brazil. Light peels contain a concentration of 27.5 per cent phenol with water, which is used around the eyes and neck. Medium peels use a 33-55 per cent concentration, while deep peels in Brazil reportedly use a 88-90 per cent concentration.
Levi wanted something “much deeper”, so off to Brazil he went. It wasn’t a hasty decision, but admittedly a “reckless” one. “I learned about the risks and saw it could cause heart problems. I just didn’t care, to be honest.” Not only did Levi think his body was healthy enough to withstand the peel, but after spending years of “linking an unsuccessful social and romantic life with my negative view of myself that started when my skin got worse”, he wanted to do something drastic.
He found a doctor in Sao Paulo, and chatted with the clinic on WhatsApp, who quoted him €2,400 for a medium peel. On the day of the procedure, Levi was numbed with local anaesthesia. His heart wasn’t monitored, but he thought it wasn’t necessary. During the peel, he “felt a sharp burning pain”. “It was tolerable though,” he remembers. “I didn’t suffer but I might have cried a bit.” When it was time to go home, he was afraid of going through airport security. “I looked like a monster.” It only got worse from there. During the first week of recovery, “it felt like my skin was melting. All my subtle expressions caused pain and the scabs began itching.” Over four months his skin welted, peeled and became bright red, until finally, he began to look “normal”.
While he’s happy with his results, Levi wonders if he should’ve tried a deeper peel. “My skin looks better but the deepest scars didn’t improve as much as I wanted. I still think it was very much worth it, though.”
When Kassandra, 42, was recommended a phenol peel for her undereye area in the US, she “jumped in head first”. (Although, it was a much milder concentration – and experience – than Levi’s.) She spent years treating her ageing under eyes with everything from Botox to threads. “When my injector told me I should do a phenol peel, I had no idea it was even a thing.” They referred her to a doctor who had serendipitously undergone an undereye phenol peel just four months prior. “I trusted her and didn’t care about the pain or looking nasty.” When it comes to beauty, Kassandra has a ‘no pain, no gain’ perspective.
For centuries, people have surrendered their health and comfort for beauty, from X-ray hair removal and tapeworm diets to enduring organ damage from corsets. It’s easy to write these off as ye olde experiments conducted by clueless practitioners. We’ve come so far thanks to technology and hindsight, right? Yet, things aren’t all that different today. BBLs are acknowledged as one of the most dangerous aesthetic procedures, and despite a constant stream of headlines about women dying from embolisms and internal bleeding, people are mostly undeterred. More complications keep being revealed about popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. And recent studies have linked chemical straighteners and permanent hair dyes to increased breast and ovarian cancer risks. On a less extreme scale, how many of us have damaged our skin barrier and health in an attempt to achieve “flawless” looking complexions? Injected poison into our faces to paralyse our muscles and wrinkles, or undergone painful laser hair removal sessions to be smooth and bare?
What we’re willing to gamble to avoid ageing and comply with beauty ideals can seem absurd. How can people risk their health – and their lives – for such vain desires? The answer is simple: beauty is currency. It’s plainly exchanged for better treatment, jobs, salaries, relationships. The pressure to devote ourselves to perfection has always felt suffocating, and yet the proliferation of extreme beauty treatments keeps upping the ante. And the further you are from Eurocentric beauty standards the more you may feel the urge to conform. We may judge those who push the limits, but many of us aren’t that far from impulsively booking flights to Brazil.
Erika, a 29-year-old US skin consultant at Sephora, hasn’t had a phenol peel (yet). She’s tried microneeding with PRP, Botox and filler, but can’t afford the monthly maintenance costs of these procedures. “So, I looked into peels. They feel like a one-and-done kind of thing – and phenol peels are the one-and-done of a lifetime.” For her, the risks aren’t a concern but rather a motivator to get one early. “A lot of people getting these peels are older and potentially have underlying conditions. I wouldn’t want to wait until I was in my 60s to put myself through that. Then again, I wonder if it’s worth doing something so extreme when you’re young?”
Erika says her mother, who’s in her late 50s, might also be interested in a phenol peel. “[My mom] has never done anything to take care of her skin besides sunscreen and skincare. She’s at that age where she’s super down on herself and wishes she would’ve done something. She sees results from these procedures and is like, ‘Wow, this could be me one day.’ I tell her, yeah it could be.” Kassandra also mentions her mother in our conversation. “She’s the reason why I got so paranoid about my skin. Her skin aged so quickly and she has such deep wrinkles.”
No one should feel ashamed about how their bodies naturally age, but it’s becoming harder to accept, especially as more people intervene in that progression. The result is overwhelming pressure to do everything we can to look 20 in our thirties, 30 in our forties and fifties, and pray by the time we’re 60 that an anti-ageing-obsessed billionaire is delivering the fountain of youth via Amazon Prime. Extreme expectations foster extreme undertakings. But when we’re willing to gamble with our own lives, it’s time to forgo the question of whether beauty is pain. The bigger question now is: would we really rather die than be imperfect?