A TikTok video went viral after the user accused an Atlanta esthetician of refusing to refund him the $150 he paid for a chemical peel, which the user says gave him second-degree burns.
The TikTok, which shows user Neyo (@neyoprettyboyrealness) showcasing the extent of skin damage, by Monday had 2.4 million views. It led to an ongoing dispute between Neyo and the esthetician who performed the chemical peel and says she warned him about the possible consequences.
While comments have been disabled for the TikTok video, Neyo posted a similar video on Instagram that was viewed more than 29,000 times in a week and sparked a flurry of comments.
“My life is over,” Neyo wrote in the caption of the Instagram post. “I don’t know what else to do.”
Instagram users were supportive of Neyo on his journey to be healed and receive a refund.
“Sorry this happened to you man,” one user commented. “Sending you strength and light.”
“I pray that things will get better for you my love,” said another. “I’ll definitely send up a prayer for you.”
In another Instagram video, Neyo said that he has long struggled with issues related to his skin, including receiving extensive skin grafts when he was a child after suffering severe burns that left him near death.
While many commenters were supportive of Neyo, others were concerned that he had not heeded his esthetician’s advice following the chemical peel and that it was ill-advised for him to get a chemical peel due to his skin history.
“The skin grafts… could be the reason your skin reacted the way it did to the chemical peel,” one user wrote in the comments.
One of the accounts sharing this feeling belongs to the skincare practice that performed the chemical peel, Diamond Facez Skincare Bar. In a 20-minute response video posted to Instagram, founder Shamari-Rene Cherry accused Neyo of picking at the chemical peel and said doing so caused the painful results.
In the video, Shamari-Rene Cherry said she usually tries to talk clients out of chemical peels, but if they insist, she informs them of what to expect in the days and weeks following their peel. Crucially, she tells them not to pick at their peel; otherwise, they risk results like Neyo’s.
Shamari-Rene told the Daily Dot that said she’s sympathetic to Neyo’s pain but that she did “nothing wrong.”
“My client basically didn’t trust the process. That’s the process of a chemical peel,” she said. “It was triggering for him, and he overreacted.”
In response to Shamari-Rene’s video, Neyo posted multiple screenshots of interactions between himself and Shamari-Rene, including evidence that she refused to refund him his payment and a screenshot of a post she made featuring one of his videos.
In response, Shamari-Rene posted a video from TikToker and fellow esthetician @picklevikk, who shares in Shamari-Rene’s belief that Neyo picked at the peel.
“These pink spots,” @picklevikk says, referring to Neyo’s areas of concern. “This, however, is not normal. This occurs when you pull the skin off. The skin was not fully healed, so therefore it was still attached to this dark skin that was not ready to come off. It is the same concept as picking a scab off of a cut.”
Meanwhile, Neyo’s skin appears to be making a recovery.
“My skin is clearing up,” he says in an Instagram video posted on Sunday. “The color is coming back.”
Neyo did not immediately respond to Daily Dot’s request for comment via Instagram DM.
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