“Write about something you engage with.” That’s the advice one of Carolyn Zaccaro’s ’25 professors gave her as she contemplated potential topics for her Boston College Law Review note. Writing a note––approximately forty pages of completely original legal scholarship––is no small feat. But armed with this advice, Zaccaro found herself gravitating toward the sun—or rather, sunscreen—for further exploration.
For years, Zaccaro followed influencer, and Dieux Skin co-founder, Charlotte Palermino’s rise to prominence in the beauty industry. Palermino has amassed close to a million followers across Instagram and TikTok turning her “skincare-insider” knowledge into viral clips aimed at bringing transparency and advocacy to the beauty industry.
In particular, Palermino has been a staunch advocate for reforming the way the US regulates sunscreen. She even led a conversation with Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez on the topic, a conversation that served as the foundation for Zaccaro’s note. “[Palermino]’s conversation with AOC wasn’t just the catalyst for my interest in the topic. It also led me to many of the sources that I eventually used in my own writing,” Zacarro noted.
As Zaccaro embarked on the year-long journey of researching, writing, and eventually publishing her note, Stop Being Shady: How Current Regulatory Processes and Standards Burn Consumer Protection, she regularly returned to Palermino’s advocacy as inspiration. And in January 2025, when the Law Review published Zaccaro’s note, she finally reached out to Palermino to share with her how much of an inspiration she served throughout the process.
Then, something out of the ordinary happened. Palermino responded, not with a simple acknowledgement of Zaccaro’s work, but with an Instagram post of her own. The post, featuring pictures of Zaccaro’s note annotated by Palermino herself, came as a complete shock to Zaccaro: “I didn’t even think she’d read it, let alone share it with all of her hundreds of thousands of followers.”
Comments immediately flooded Palermino’s post lauding Zaccaro’s research and writing, and echoing her sentiments about the necessity for reform. Naturally, the post also led to an influx of engagement with Zaccaro’s note itself: as of April, the note has garnered 1,826 views and 202 downloads, numbers that far exceed that of a typical student note. For Zaccaro, the support is a “testament to the community [Palermino]’s cultivated” and “the power of legal scholarship” to reach audiences of all kinds.