If you think that you’ve seen all that TikTok has to offer – dance challenges, hilarious videos, life hacks, fashion and beauty trends – then brace yourselves, for this is by far the most bizarre beauty trend to come from TikTok.
No, strike that, it is in all likelihood, one of the weirdest trends ever. Gen Z, a.k.a. the people who are actually young and lucky enough to pull a raging all-nighter without having to worry about dark circles are, in fact, faking dark circles. Yes, you read that right. TikTok teens are using makeup to create fake under-eye circles. The new viral TikTok trend is to use purple, blue, and red eyeshadows under your eyes to give the effect of what has long been considered highly undesirable – deep dark under-eye circles.
Naturally, we have a lot of questions for the young cohort. Are you really telling us that we’ve been spending quite literally thousands of dirhams on skincare treatments, eye masks, concealers, and under-eye creams to rid ourselves of stubborn dark circles for years, only for you to turn it into a trend? Seriously, Gen Z, you can take ours for free.
The question remains, why is Gen Z faking dark circles? Knowing the age group, there’s hardly any doubt that the trend is about raising awareness and embracing what is conventionally considered a “flaw.” Among all the things that this young generation stands for, authenticity and transparency rank number one. Perhaps that explains their obsession with TikTok. Where Instagram is about fancy, polished, filtered feeds, TikTok is a striking contrast – raw and unfiltered. It comes as no surprise then that Gen Z is questioning, bending, and breaking the (beauty) rules as we know them.
And, boy are they succeeding. Remember just last year when the internet was massively obsessed with freckles? But, before they became an internet sensation, freckles were something to be concealed and hidden with layers of makeup. Look at us now; not only do we now have makeup pencils and stencils to emboss our faces with faux freckles, but Instagram filters with freckles are also extremely popular, thanks to Gen Z, of course. Can they do the same about our stigma around dark circles?
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Come to think of it, why are dimples, for example, considered desirable – so much so that people undergo cosmetic surgeries to get one – while freckles are considered a flaw? Who even made these rules? Are under-eye circles really that unappealing, or are our brains simply wired to think that way? Is the key to feeling comfortable and confident in your own skin merely a change of perception? More importantly, will Gen Z be the generation that finally undoes decades of female self-perception and conditioning?
