Five to seven days after using a foot peel, the outer layer of your skin—usually the dead, desiccated stuff that's causing rough and dry patches, starts coming off in satisfying sheets, allowing smoother, softer feet to reveal themselves. Are foot peels safe?

If you haven't heard of foot peels, seen the results on TikTok, or tried one yourself, allow me: A foot peel is a baggie of exfoliants—usually glycolic, alpha hydroxy or lactic acids—that you slip onto your foot. After allowing it to absorb, you remove, cleanse and...nothing happens. At first. It’s essentially exfoliation on steroids,” says dermatologist Mona Gohara, M.D. Which is why, she tells me, people with eczema, psoriasis, or even just sensitive skin, should be wary of the product since it can cause major irritation. Ditto people who have any cuts or open wounds on their feet. The next few days weren’t as dramatic. The magic moved up to the tops of my foot, and even my toes peeled. There were a few patches on my heels that didn’t want to come off on their own, but they scrubbed off easily with a washcloth in the tub.

Jessica Cruel, senior editor, beauty & style

That snake-like shedding is what caused Baby Foot to go viral: large swaths of dead skin hanging from users's feet, revealing fresh, soft skin beneath. The brand claims that "after peeling, your feet are reborn just like a baby’s foot, giving you healthy, beautiful feet.” Customers rave the product is "revolutionary" and its results are "remarkable." [facebook ]https://www.facebook.com/BabyFootUSA/photos/pb.284497644940522.-2207520000.1461792510./1080615795328699/?type=3&theater[/facebook] For clarification, I reached out to Baby Foot and was put in touch with Kim Webb, a member of the Baby Foot communications team. “Generally speaking, it’s very rare that it doesn’t work on everybody,” she said. Interesting. According to Frey, foot peels are entirely safe, unless your feet have any active wounds and sores. But because of the strength of the acidic blends you're dealing with, it's also important to diligently follow instructions. Don't leave foot peels on longer than indicated, or apply to other areas of your body. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ I’ll tell you this: I didn’t get no peeling. They did peel a little in the shower when I would rub-force the peeling with my fingers, sorry to explain, and once I looked down at my feet and they looked a little peel-y and I got excited and took a photo to send to a friend that I ultimately decided against sending.

The summer months are upon us, presently it is “July,” and you know what that means — the bottoms of our feet have to look nice in case someone sees them on the beach, or in case our sandal falls off in public. There are two main routes to achieving podiatric perfection: the sloughing off of dead skin through physical means, like exfoliating with a pumice stone or a Ped Egg or the Amopé Pedi Perfect, or through chemical means, like the increasingly popular Baby Foot foot peel. Unlike the rough scrubs and files you’re probably accustomed to, foot peels can be done at home with minimal effort. Many are chemical peels, which often use hydroxy acids (like AHAs and BHAs) to dissolve dead skin in the outer layers until it literally sheds or sloughs off your soles, explains Joshua Zeichner, MD, director of cosmetic and clinical research at Mount Sinai Hospital’s dermatology department in New York City. He recommends looking for formulas that contain ingredients like glycolic, lactic, or salicylic acid, which are popular chemical exfoliators. The process is simple enough: you simply secure the mask around your feet for an hour (the perfect amount of time to catch up on a show or finally start reading that book on your nightstand!), and then wait a few days for the first signs of peeling to show. And when they do start to detach, boy, do they ever! Why does Baby Foot cause such dramatic peeling? After a week, nothing happened. Usually it takes about a week for the peeling to begin, according to Baby Foot, so that was fine. After about a week and a half I began to worry. Two and a half weeks later, I was sure — goddamn Baby Foot didn’t work.Webb — my friend now, as we’ve been talking about feet for so long — cited herself as proof that frequent use of Baby Foot will not dissolve your flesh. “I do it quite often because I do a lot of trade shows with my boss, so we always want to make sure we’re peeling for the show. I’ve done it two weeks apart, six weeks apart.” And does she have to, like, walk around in ill-fitting shoes for miles beforehand, to build up dead skin? “No, no! Because everybody has a certain amount of dead skin cells.” At the end of it, though, no large skin sheets. No horrific nightmare. My feet felt and looked a bit better, like after you take a long barefoot walk on the beach, but the areas of concern around my heel and big toe were not “baby” enough for my liking. Not only could you tell I hadn’t just been born, but you could even tell I knew how to walk. Disgusting. Had my feet been too gross for Baby Foot, or were they not gross enough? Could I do Baby Foot again, or would that dissolve my flesh to the bone? Should I have left the foot bags on longer, or would that have dissolved my flesh to the bone?

As with the other three or four other times I’d used it, I started by soaking my feet for about 15 minutes in a hot bath. After drying off, I cut the top off the gel-filled plastic booties and slipped my feet inside, securing the top with the enclosed tape strips. Then I put my feet up for an hour and spent some QT with my Netflix queue. After 60 minutes, I rinsed the gel off my feet. When it comes to the products Marie Claire recommends, we take your faith in us seriously. Every product that we feature comes recommended by a MC writer or editor, or by an expert we've spoken to. Learn more about how we review products. The expectations: My beauty editor friend told me about it. She said you let your feet soak in these booties for an hour, and within a few days, your dead skin comes off in sheets. I'm looking forward to a really satisfying, postpedicure result. I'm hoping it will leave my feet smooth, soft, and less beaten for a longer period of time than if I had just used a foot cream. The results: Before the peeling started, my feet were dry and rough. They started to slightly peel on day three but with a lot of help on my end (I was pulling at the skin a bit—OK, a lot). It didn't hurt, and I could hardly notice anything was happening unless I looked down and saw the pieces of skin everywhere. It wasn't as visible and drastic as I was expecting, but it was very satisfying when big sheets of skin came off. It kind of felt like I let a lot of Elmer's glue dry on my feet and then I peeled it off.Sometimes people’s feet are in really good condition and they honestly don’t have a lot of dead skin buildup. Some people, they’ll peel like a snake. And for other people it’ll be this powdery, flaky-type peel. If you have a lot of calluses on your feet, generally we don’t say it will take care of those calluses.” She cited her father as an example; he’d used Baby Foot once and, though it helped, many of his tough calluses remained. After the second time he used it, he saw an improvement. The next morning (day six, if you’re counting), even more skin was fleeing my foot. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, after an hour-long run in 98 degree sun, that I hit the motherlode. The sweat and friction from the run had the skin separating from the rest of my body like a molting snake. Now that I was in full-peel mode I could help things along, tugging inches-long pieces of skin off my sole in a vaguely hypnotic trance. Afterwards, I needed to vacuum the floor around me (don’t judge).

The only other reason that it may not work,” she said, “is if by chance it was just, I don’t know, a bad Baby Foot.” Hm. Well. I guess I’ll try one more time. Shirazi agrees, explaining that the outcome could be even worse than just some redness. "If you put this same formula on the face skin, which has a thinner, more delicate outer layer, it can cause significant damage to the skin barrier, resulting in a chemical burn," she says. Your feet, however, can take it like a champ. What if Baby Foot doesn't make your skin peel as promised? Well what the hell is wrong with me, then? Webb said one’s results could also vary with the climate (drier climates work best) and time of year. “Some people get a really great peel like after the summer months, and summer sandal weather, is over with. You’ve got certain points on your feet or your toes that your sandals are rubbing on that cause a lot of friction, and that friction causes a lot of buildup. So generally you’ll get a better peel after spring and summer sandal season is over with.” I was looking forward to seeing my soles start to shed their mortal coil, and after about three days, there was a hint of flakiness — barely enough detachment for me to get a good two-finger grip on the dead skin to peel it off. And it didn't get much wispier than that. I felt dejected, knowing I'd done everything right and still didn't achieve the desquamatory delight so many Baby Foot users "enjoy." What's the deal? I first learned about the Baby Foot peel when two editors came up to me on completely separate occasions to explain their crazy experience with this supposedly amazing foot exfoliant. They said watching their feet peel into what felt and looked like completely new feet was insane and fascinating. So I had to explore for myself. Does it really work like they say? And if so, is it safe?Once it does, you must brace yourself for a lot what I can best describe as an oddly satisfying amount of dead skin peeling off your foot as if it’s grated cheese. Yes, it’s gross... but also oh-so-satisfying. It took about 3-4 days for my feet to stop molting after the first signs of dead skin, but when they did, my feet felt and looked better than they had in a very long time. Then came the hard part—the waiting. The instructions say your feet will start to peel in five to seven days, which is pretty much an eternity. If you’re impatient, like me, it’s during this time that you’ll worry that the whole thing is a con, and that the photos you see online, where skin is falling, zombie-like off feet, are doctored.