What is DeathTok? Morticians drop macabre secrets of embalming dead bodies on TikTok
Young morticians are now taking to TikTok to share the secrets of the death business with the world. TikTok users like Syracuse-based funeral director and embalmer Eileen Hollis and mortuary science student Mimi (@mimithemortician) are among those to have garnered thousands of followers by posting about what they know about dead bodies.
“If you’re seeing this right now, I’d like to formally introduce you to DeathTok,” Mimi, 20, said in one of her recent TikTok videos. “I’m here to normalize death care, as I’m a normal 20-year-old girl who is currently about to graduate from mortuary school.” She explained in another video that morticians must disinfect and then wash the dead bodies a number of times during embalming.
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Halls owns and operates her own funeral home. In one of her TikTok videos, she explained to viewers how it can take up to an hour and a half to complete the embalming process. “But that timing can increase based on the condition of the body,” she said on social media. “For example, did they die in the middle of summer? Are they decomposing at a faster rate? Did they go through a really tough illness that left their body with a lot of edema?” “Not two bodies are alike, everybody comes to us with different needs," she continued on TikTok.
One of the followers asked Hollis whether family members of the deceased want the morticians to shave off the body's pubic hair. Answering the question, Hollos said, We don’t shave or wax pubic hair for that matter. I wouldn’t dream of waxing a dead human body because their skin is so fragile in the afterlife.” Hollis also said that families of the deceased must be asked if they want their loved ones to have facial hair. “If the family decides to leave the facial hair, I will scrub it really good, whether it’s a beard of a mustache or a handlebar mustache, and I will put a little of beard oil in it just to hydrate their life,” she said.
Lauren J Bowser, a licensed mortuary practitioner, in Piscataway, NJ, had earlier told New York Post about working in a funeral home. “I have an old soul,” she said. “Once I realized that I was not scared of the dead and that I could take care of them, I [knew I] was just meant to do it.” “I work in a place where we are carrying on the traditions of great-great-grandparents,” Bowser added. “But if a 98-year-old grandmother dies, her 65-year-old daughter may not use the internet every day, but the 40-year-old granddaughter sure does.”
