Countless $200 USD "Dreamer Bbs," three creative workshops, and one hotly anticipated memoir later, Caroline Calloway is pivoting to a new business venture: skincare. In a series of Instagram Stories published on Monday, Calloway revealed that her latest product — called “Snake Oil,” also called her “elixir of youth potion” — will be restocked on Wednesday. And for just $75 USD, this mystery vial can be all yours.
“We all know that I have amazing skin. Everyone knows this. This is just historically correct. I have the skin of a viral 18-year-old TikToker, and I am turning thirty,” Calloway says in her Instagram Story, before sharing that she’s “obsessed” with creating her own “potions” for her face. “Friends are always like, ‘Oh my god, what do you put on your skin?’ and I’ve been making little gift batches for them and tiny little droppers for awhile now.”
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It was at this point that Calloway decided to combine two of her biggest passions: creating and branding her own products, and upselling them for a questionable cost. “So I’ve been making this for my friends, and my friends were like, ‘Oh my god, you should sell this,’” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Oh my god, I love money. What a great idea.’” And thus, Calloway branded her own elixir.
Although this is Calloway’s first foray into the wellness sphere, she’s adamant that she’s a pro. “Basically, I’ve become obsessed with anti-aging oils, and I’ve combined them all into the perfect mixture. And I put it on my face after all my other products,” she says. She also adds that she uses “Snake Oil” on her body, too, and would like to sell “body-size” bottles for $210 USD each. “If you’ve ever hooked up with me, there is a 100 percent chance you’ve been, like, ‘Oh my god, your skin is so soft,’ because one hundred percent of the people who have ever touched my body have said those words to me.”
Aside from grapeseed oil, which Calloway described as one of the elixir’s main ingredients, it’s unclear what, exactly, you’ll be putting onto your body. Trader Joe’s olive oil, maybe? Glitter? Who knows! It does appear that one of the concoctions being made in her Instagram video uses Glossier's Body Hero, but perhaps only as a mixing vessel. As New York Times journalist Taylor Lorenz noted, one person asked Calloway about the ingredients, and she said buyers would have to wait for her to “get professional labeling done.” (Refinery29 has reached out to Calloway for comment, and also inquired about the product’s ingredients.)
One of the projects Calloway has been mostly focused on outside of her new skincare endeavour is her memoir, Scammer, which was supposed to drop in spring 2020; she has postponed its release several times, and there is still no word on its publication date, even though people have already pre-ordered the book. In a June 23 post, she teased that she would “randomly drop Scammer one morning this summer the way Taylor Swift dropped folklore.”
Scams and Scammers aside, it should also be noted that “Snake Oil” is not FDA-approved, and we still don’t really know what it is. But, if you have $75 to spare and aren’t too concerned about what you put on your face, you can send Calloway a DM right now and get on the waiting list. If that isn’t you, you’ll just have to wait an indeterminate amount of time for Scammer. At this point, though, all I want from Caroline Calloway is an answer about the Yale plates.