Social media fans of Bag Balm, a moisturiser originally made for cows’ udders, say it’s just the thing for the “slugging” beauty trend. Photo: The New York Times
It is the rare item that can be found on the shelves of Tractor Supply (retail chain store in the US) and in the pages of Vogue. And now Bag Balm, a moisturiser originally made to heal chapped cows’ udders, is a trending beauty product among the Gen Z “skinfluencers” of TikTok.
Social media personality Alix Earle swears by it as a cure for dry skin and dry lips. Others recommended Bag Balm as an alternative to Vaseline for the trend of “slugging”, or covering the entire face before going to bed to seal in moisture.
“I have turned so many friends on to it,” said Madison Bailey, 28, a social media strategist for the beauty industry who has posted about the wonders of Bag Balm.
Having learned about Bag Balm from her mother, Bailey keeps an 8-ounce tin in her bathroom and a 1-ounce mini tin in her purse.
“You don’t need a lot when you slug it on your face,” she said, adding that the cost – about US$11 (approximately RM52) for the 8-ounce size – makes it economical.
Bag Balm, a concoction composed of petroleum jelly and lanolin, has been made in a small town in Vermont for 125 years.
Early on, the instructions on the square green tin made plain its intended use: “For sore teats and hard milkers, apply the Balm one hour before the night milking and immediately after the morning milking.”
The label cautioned: “For veterinary use only.”
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In time, farm families found other applications for the salve, using it to treat everything from cuts and burns to chapped lips, saddle sores and the needle pricks on quilters’ fingers.
Little by little, its ability to soften skin made it into a rural beauty secret, one that was eventually adopted by people who had never seen the inside of a barn.
Actress Raquel Welch credited a regimen of Bag Balm before bedtime for her ageless skin.
In 1999, Canadian country music star Shania Twain, then at the height of her fame and a Revlon spokesperson, mentioned Bag Balm in an interview with The London Telegraph, saying,
“When I’ve been flying a lot and my skin is really dry, I’ll rub it over my face and on my hair and leave it there all day.”
Sales spiked after that.
Now, the Vermont-based company behind Bag Balm is figuring out how to market itself to the digital world while staying true to its folksy heritage.
Bedsprings and dogs’ paws
Bag Balm is made, as it has been for more than a century, in Lyndonville, Vermont, population 1,136. In this part of the country, known as the Northeast Kingdom, winters are long, cold and snow-swept, and a cow’s skin takes abuse.
In 1899, John L Norris, a dairy farmer, bought the rights to the formula from a druggist in a nearby town, Wells River, and began selling Bag Balm through his Dairy Association Co.
Other products marketed by Norris included horse-hoof softener, cow-teat dilator, and a leather cleaner and conditioner, Tackmaster.
By the 1960s – when Norris’ son, John L Norris Jr, was running the company – ads for Bag Balm promoted its “use also in the home for cuts, chaps and burns”.
A Wall Street Journal article from Oct 23, 1969, reported that people were finding all kinds of uses for the salve: a marine in Vietnam used Bag Balm to lubricate a 105 mm howitzer; a dentist in Texas claimed it healed his psoriasis; a woman in Maine said it silenced squeaky bedsprings.
Today, Bag Balm is used for bicycle chafe, sunburn, diaper rash, pimples, bed sores, and nail and cuticle care, among other things.
Dog owners put it on their pups’ paws. In a recent fan letter to the company, a woman wrote that her 84-year-old father has long used Bag Balm for car repairs. He calls it “the juice”.
“Our whole brand ethos is simplicity and versatility,” said Libby Parent, 36, president of Vermont’s Original Bag Balm, as the company is now called.
Making the paste
Although the healing powers of Bag Balm seem mysterious, the process of making it is quite simple.
Mark Perkins, the production manager, is one of seven employees who produce roughly 9,000 8-ounce tins a day. Perkins, 47, went to work for Bag Balm in 1997, he said, because his family’s small dairy farm couldn’t sustain his father and himself.
Now his son, Logan, 19, recently joined him in the factory.
Perkins stood before a 55-gallon drum of lanolin, a wax secreted by the sebaceous gland of sheep.
Lanolin is the soothing element that sets Bag Balm apart from plain petroleum jelly and helps to give the product its distinctive smell. Inside the barrel, the substance had the consistency and color of caramel. Workers shovel it out.
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Lanolin and four other ingredients – petrolatum, paraffin, water and hydroxyquinoline sulfate, an antiseptic – are heated into a liquid and mixed together in steel vats.
Two filler nozzles squirt the hot liquid into tins that move down a conveyor belt. As the tins snake back and forth along the production line, the liquid cools and hardens into a thick, yellow, oleaginous paste.
Despite its growing popularity as a human facial cream, about 10% of sales still comes from farmers such as Mindy McGrew and her husband, Kyle, who run a holistic dairy farm near Lincoln, Nebraska.
A first-generation farmer, McGrew, 45, said she learned about Bag Balm from her mother-in-law, who grew up on a farm. She likes that it doesn’t contain artificial dyes or fragrances.
“It really is a household staple for many families,” said McGrew, who puts Bag Balm on her cows’ udders in winter to protect from frostbite and on the tail area in summer to soothe fly bites.
“Grandma had it at her house, then mum had it at her house.” – The New York Times
