A horrified mum has told how her three-year-old daughter caked her head, hands and even her teeth in make-up after being given a tube of lipstick to play with by her hapless dad.
Flabbergasted Nayane Zani Silva, 33, shared images online of the end result, which showed young Alice alarmingly caked in bright red lipstick all over her face, hands, and arms.
Her post on X, formerly Twitter, has clocked up more than 5.3 million views as users heard how it took more than 10 hours to get Alice clean again.
Nayane, from Vila Velha, in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, told how it all went wrong when her husband asked if she had an old lipstick on 19th May.
She explained: “Ismael said he was going to give Alice lipstick, and I said it wouldn’t work.
“She said she would apply it properly, and this is what she looked like five minutes later with the lipstick on.”
Nananye revealed that it took hours of scrubbing, four baths, several showers, hair washing and even tooth cleaning to get rid of the caked-on lippy.
She told local media the next day (20th May): “Alice always liked to put lipstick on her dolls, playing beauty salon.
“Then, my husband asked me if she could have one of my old lipsticks.
“We were in the kitchen, we gave Alice the lipstick and she ran to the bedroom.
“It took about five minutes and she came out of the room all purple, with an appearance that was scary.”
She said that the more they tried to remove it under the shower, it just changed colour and became bright red.
Nayane says they were only saved when social media users volunteered advice on how best to get it off.
She said: “I gave her about four baths and when I saw that it wasn’t coming off, I started to get worried.
“So, I posted to try to get some advice on what could work. They came up with the idea of oil.
“I applied grape oil and just like that little by little, and using cotton lightly, the product started to come off.”
The cleaning work began at 4pm on Sunday, 19th May, and only ended around 1am the next day on 20th May.
Exhausted Alice had already fallen asleep on her parents’ laps while they carried on the cleanup until the early hours of the morning.
Nayane said: “While we were desperate, Alice couldn’t stop laughing. Our eldest son, 11 years old, was also finding it funny.
“We had to put the oil on her legs, back, everything.
“She had even put on lipstick in her mouth and I managed to get it out. We had to brush her teeth a lot to get it out.”
She added: “She has lipsticks designed for children because she loves playing with makeup on her dolls, but we always take it off later.
“Alice uses it on the sofa, on the walls, but this time it was scarier because it was very difficult to remove.”
Dermatologist Diego Soeiro told local media that it is important to be careful when giving lipstick to children because of its composition.
Many contain lead or other toxic ingredients that give them a longer lip-life making them hard to shift.
He said: “There are lipsticks that have better fixatives than others, hence the difficulty in removing them.
“But most conventional lipsticks contain lead and/or other heavy metals in their composition.
“These metals are considered toxic and harm the central nervous system, hormonal functions and the respiratory system.
“This means that substance abuse is not recommended in a child. However, as this is an isolated case, it will probably not result in damage of this nature.”
Alice’s mum said: “She was sad when she woke up and saw that she was clean. Alice said she wanted to go to school looking beautiful and made up like a princess, but I explained that the way she was, she was far from that.”
