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? 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? 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).

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. 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.” The only thing you need to do is you need to wait two weeks from your first treatment.” She said to think of it like a “mild facial peel,” except on your feet, and, I guess, except for that fact that your friends feel the need to aggressively warn you about it beforehand. “The beauty of it is, the formula targets only the dead skin cells. It doesn’t go any further than it’s supposed to go. We don’t recommend you leave it on past an hour, you know — that’s the recommended time — but even if you do it’s not going to go any further than where it’s supposed to go.” 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. 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.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?

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.And when they do start to detach, boy, do they ever! Why does Baby Foot cause such dramatic peeling? 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? 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.

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. 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. 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. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

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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. 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. 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. 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.”