Viral Review Claims Sephora Body Butter Attracts Large Wolf Spiders

Reviews about a brand of body butter sold by the beauty product retailer Sephora have sparked numerous anecdotes online about a highly specific problem: when people apply the body butter, it attracts a bunch of male wolf spiders. This led to musings on Reddit that the Sol De Janeiro body butter contains a series of chemicals that are similar to wolf spider pheromones, mimicking the scent of a receptive female wolf spider.

The rumors started with a review of the Sol De Janeiro body butter on Sephora's website, which apologetically gave the body butter only one star because of how many spiders it attracted. On December 25th, the review was posted to Reddit's /r/sephora, and from there it took off with people on Reddit sharing similar experiences.

Responses have been varied. Some seem scared, horrified and shocked at the idea of turning into a walking spider magnet. Others are more enthusiastic. One popular post on the Sephora subreddit asks for any extra Sol De Janeiro body butter because the original poster aspires to gather a "spider army" in order to address a mosquito problem in their neighborhood.

On X, posters are comparing the spider situation to another high-profile and highly-memed product: the Panera lemonade that kills you.

The pheronomes explanation, which argues the body butter contains a chemical that spiders interpret as hormonal signals to mate, may have originated with a Reddit comment in the original Sephora thread. Online, spider-related memes like Spiders Georg have also become an important part of the conversation as posters make sense of the news.