This is on the shelves of Tractor Supply, trendAnd now bag balm, a moisturizer originally created to treat chapped cow udders, has become a trending beauty product among Gen Z “skin influencers” on TikTok.
Social media celebrity Alix Earle swears by it for its effectiveness against dry skin and lips, while others have suggested Bag Balm as an alternative to Vaseline for the “slagging” craze, where you smear it all over your face before bed to lock in moisture.
“I’ve recommended it to a lot of my friends,” said Madison Bailey, 28, a social media strategist for the beauty industry who has been posting about Bag Balm’s wonders.
Bailey’s mom introduced her to Bag Balm and she keeps an 8-ounce can in her bathroom and a 1-ounce mini can in her purse.
“You don’t need that much when you apply it on your face,” she said, adding that the price of about US$11 (RM52) for an eight-ounce size is also economical.
Bag Balm is a mixture of petrolatum and lanolin that has been made in a small town in Vermont for 125 years.
From the start, the instructions on the square green tin were clear about its intended use: “For cows with sore nipples or cows that are difficult to milk, apply balm one hour before nighttime milking and immediately after morning milking.”
The label states, “For Veterinarians Only.”
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Before long, farm families found other uses for the ointment and began using it to treat everything from cuts and burns to chapped lips, saddle sores, and pinpricks in quilters’ fingers.
Little by little, its skin-softening properties became a country beauty secret, eventually being embraced by people who had never seen the inside of a barn.
Actress Raquel Welch says that using a bag balm before bed is the secret to ageless skin.
In 1999, Shania Twain, the Canadian country music star who was then at the height of her popularity, spoke for Revlon and spoke about Bag Balm in an interview. London Telegraphhe said.
“When I fly a lot and my skin is super dry, I’ll put it on my face and hair and leave it on all day.”
After that, sales soared.
Now the Vermont-based company that developed Bag Balm is trying to figure out how to market itself in the digital world while still preserving its humble traditions.
Bed spring and dog’s paws
For over a century, Bag Balm has been made in Lyndonville, Vermont (population 1,136) in the region known as the Northeast Kingdom, where the winters are long, cold and snowy and the hides are hard work.
In 1899, dairy farmer John L. Norris purchased the rights to the formulation from a pharmacist in the nearby town of Wells River and began selling Bag Balm through his dairy association.
Other products sold by Norris included horse hoof softener, cattle teat extender, and Tackmaster, a leather cleaner and conditioner.
In the 1960s, when Norris’ son, John L. Norris Jr., was running the company, Bag Balm was advertised as “suitable for home use to treat cuts, cracks and burns.”
a The Wall Street Journal An October 23, 1969 article reported that people were discovering various uses for the ointment: Marines in Vietnam used Bag Balm to lubricate their 105mm howitzers, a dentist in Texas claimed it cured his psoriasis, and a woman in Maine said her bed springs no longer creaked.
Today, Bag Balm is used for cycling scrapes, sunburn, diaper rash, acne, bed sores, and nail and cuticle care.
Dog owners rub it on their dogs’ paws. In a recent fan letter to the company, a woman wrote that her 84-year-old father, who calls it “juice,” has been using Bag Balm for years to fix his car.
“Our brand philosophy is simplicity and versatility,” said Libby Parent, 36, president of the Vermont company now called Original Bag Balm.
Make the paste
Although the healing powers of bag balm seem mystical, making it is actually quite simple.
Production manager Mark Perkins, one of seven employees who turn out about 9,000 eight-ounce cans a day, said he started working at Bag Balm in 1997 because his family’s small dairy farm couldn’t support him and his father.
His 19-year-old son, Logan, recently joined him at the factory.
Perkins stood in front of a 55-gallon drum of lanolin, a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of sheep.
Lanolin is the soothing ingredient that sets Bag Balm apart from ordinary petrolatum and helps give the product its distinctive scent. The substance in the barrel has a caramel-like consistency and color. Workers shovel it out.
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Lanolin and four other ingredients (petrolatum, paraffin, water and the preservative hydroxyquinoline sulfate) are heated to a liquid and then mixed in a steel container.
Two filling nozzles squirt hot liquid into cans moving along a conveyor belt. As the cans snake back and forth along the production line, the liquid cools and solidifies into a thick, yellow, oily paste.
Despite its growing popularity as a facial cream for humans, about 10 percent of sales come from farmers like Mindy McGrew and her husband, Kyle, who run a holistic dairy farm near Lincoln, Nebraska.
McGrew, 45, a first-generation farmer, said she learned about Bag Balm from her mother-in-law, who grew up on a farm, and she likes that it contains no artificial colors or flavors.
“Bag Balm is a staple for many households,” says McGrew, who applies it to cows’ udders in the winter to prevent frostbite and to their tails in the summer to soothe fly bites.
“At Grandma’s House, and at Mom’s House” – The New York Times
