“Little egg-shaped treasures”: Why teens online are obsessed with a lip balm brand

EOS lip balms have conquered the internet, thanks to their smooth spherical shape and the passion and imagination of teenagers.

By Barbara Speed

(Photo By eos.obsessed_ , lol_eos, eos_lip_balm_fans_ ,eos_bbw_and_more, eoscollector )

The video opens on a vista of multicoloured orbs. The little plastic balls are lined up in rows, according to their colour: pale blue gives way to dark blue, pink, dark pink, green, magenta, yellow. In a voiceover, the video’s creator, “99Choca”, explains that this will be an “update on my EOS lip balm collection”. The video is four and a half minutes long and has, at time of writing, almost 5m views.

99Choca, a US highschooler who also posts on Instagram as @eos_bbw_and_more and has a combined following of 67,000, is at the forefront of an internet subculture dedicated to the worship of lip balm. And not just any old lip balm: while other brands pop up on the Instagram feeds and Pinterest boards of fans from time to time, the vast majority of posts focus on EOS, a brand of organic lip balm sold in distinctive spherical packaging.

EOS was founded in 2009 in New York, and is now making its way to the UK via retailers like Urban Outfitters and Topshop. At first glance, EOS’s branding doesn’t seem tailored to teenagers at all: the balm is made with 95 per cent organic ingredients and the range has an emphasis on pastel colours and simple packaging. Even the high price point (anywhere from $5-$8 for a single balm in the US) seems geared more towards beauty-obsessed twenty-somethings, not high schoolers.

But the teens have bent the balms to their creative wills: their photos feature complex designs made up from scores of lip balms, or balms wearing handmade outfits and decorations. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/8D94JaoKrw/?
tagged=eoshalloween”>One picture features three little egg-shaped balms dressed up as a witch, a butterfly and a princess, complete with a tiara-shaped ring on the latter’s “head”:

<p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0
4px;”>
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/8D94JaoKrw/" style="
color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px;
font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;
text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>Go check my Halloween video! I made my eos look like they had costumes on hahaha It’s just a short video for you to get some inspiration and make your own Halloween themed eos! #Halloween #blackcat #chococat #princess #angel #eoscostumes #eoshalloween #halloweeneos

<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-
family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;
margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden;
padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-
overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>
A photo posted by eos collector (@eoscollector) on <time datetime="2015-09-
25T17:29:05+00:00″ style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; line-height:17px;”>Sep 25, 2015 at 10:29am PDT

If the brand’s explosion among teens surprised the company, it has caught up fast, perhaps recognising the huge opportunity its small army of free marketing agents represents. EOS’s official YouTube channel collects the best DIY videos made by customers, and the brand recently launched a range of decorative jewelled stickers, sold as part of <a href="https://www.biggreensmile.com/products/eos-limited-
edition-3-pack-lip-balm-with-diy-decorative-jeweled-
stickers/eosholiday3pack.aspx?productid=eosholiday3pack”>a holiday gift set, which would allow customers to jazz up their balms even more easily.

Angelique H, a representative from the company, tells me: “We are continually inspired by the creativity of our fans . . . the decorative jewelled art was in part inspired by our fans but also by consumer desire for more personalisation and self-expression.”

In fact, their plainness may be precisely what makes EOS balms so ripe for customisation: they’re a blank slate. Their strange shape (which, incidentally, is rather wasteful – half the orb isn’t even filled with balm) is oddly compelling. Many Instagrammers don’t dress up or modify their balms, but simply photograph them in groups. The user below went through a phase of floating them in the bath so they appear suspended, like little spaceships, and you can see the full shape:

<p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0
4px;”>
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/0lqabtIKuT/" style="
color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px;
font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;
text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>Regular flavors, not counting the visibly softer lips, comment if you want a review on any of them #eos #eoslipbalm

<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-
family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;
margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden;
padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-
overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>
A photo posted by eos collector (@eoscollector) on <time datetime="2015-03-
23T23:22:02+00:00″ style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; line-height:17px;”>Mar 23, 2015 at 4:22pm PDT

And it works: once you start looking at the little orbs, it’s hard to stop. Reviews repeatedly reference the balm’s shape: The Little Scottish Corner blog described them as “little eggs of heaven”, while one <a href="“Little%20egg-shaped%20treasures”:%20Why%20teens
%20on%20the%20internet%20are%20obsessed%20with%20a%20lip
%20balm%20brand”>Tumblr user describes her growing addiction to the “little egg shaped treasures”: “I’ve now spent about $60 on eos lip balms and i have no regrets at all”.

Sherry Jhawar, EOS’s Marketing Vice President, <a href="https://www.racked.com/2014/10/31/7571165/eos-lip-
balm”>told Racked magazine that the idea of a round lipbalm came from customer research:

“[We heard] women talk about how they could never find their lip balms in their bags or complaining about lip balm tubes rolling off a dresser. So we decided to make something that was easier to find and the roundness naturally flowed from thinking about shapes that women appreciate instinctively.”

She also makes a jibe against competitors, which in the US include Burt’s Bees and Kiehl’s: “We’ve always believed that most mass companies didn’t work as hard on packaging as they did on formulations.”

Kiehl’s’ <a href="https://www.johnlewis.com/kiehl%27s-
lip-balm-1/p1751238?
sku=234105620&kpid=234105620&s_kenid=f9f342c7-
16ed-47d5-86ec-
b9f874a3844c&s_kwcid=403×673408&tmad=c&tmcampi
d=73″>famed #1 lip balm may be a great project, but you couldn’t describe it as an “egg of heaven”.

It’s also convenient that the shape is instantly recognisable when whipped out of handbags by the <a href="https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/32425321303
1280640″>likes of Kim Kardashian. Perhaps thanks to its iconic image, Teen Vogue and Goldman Sachs put the brand at number four on its “<a href="https://uk.businessinsider.com/goldman-and-vogue-
brands-for-millennials-2014-2014-10?op=1?
r=US&IRas”>Love List”, after surveying “It Girls” about their preferred brands. It beat brands including Nike, Mac, Vans and Ugg.

A tableful of lipbalms made an appearance in the music video for “We Can’t Stop” – Miley Cyrus’ marketing team clearly decided that, like a skull made out of French fries, the balms represented the millennial party aesthetic:

Tween and teen obsessions are always fast-moving and bewildering to adults. When I was 12, everyone was briefly obsessed with diabolos, to the point where they were banned from playgrounds. But this particular one seems partly down to the liminal space occupied by lip balms: not quite a health product, not quite makeup. They’re sold in pharmacies and chain supermarkets; prime spots to trap parents into spending an extra $7 on an apparently harmless organic lip product. They also allow the teens to experiment creatively, according to their age and interests. You can pretend it’s lipstick, or dress it up like a little cat.

But EOS also carries the sheen of an adult beauty product used by celebrities and partied with by Miley. The tropes of the EOS Instagram posts are recognisable from older beauty and lifestyle bloggers: sunsets, symmetry, and the implication of a serene, yet privileged lifestyle. (One user even made a succulent-filled <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/6At7_2IKif/?taken-
by=eoscollector”>terrarium – a mainstay of lifestyle bloggers’ repertoire – out of an EOS cap.)

Hundreds of EOS balms gathered together look hypnotising, but are also an expression of how generous your parents are, or how much pocket money you’re given. To fuel the myth, it’s possible that EOS gifts balms to the more successful EOS Instagrammers, or sends them new products early.

With fame, of course, comes backlash. EOS resolved a class action lawsuit this week from customers who had an allergic reaction to the balm (the company agreed to include a warning on packaging from now on).

And with the rise of lipbalms as a desirable, luxury item have come accompanying fears of lip balm addiction, which is, apparently, a thing. The Lip Balm Anonymous forum carries first person accounts of lips peeling from too much product and compulsive application – though, as Refinery29 <a href="https://www.refinery29.uk/lip-balm-
addiction”>notes, “Lip Balm Anonymous lists EOS as one of the lesser villains of the lip balm industry.”

Perhaps its fans are too busy scattering them attractively on beaches or making their own Minion-shaped balm to get addicted to the product itself.