If you, like me, often find yourself scrolling for hours on social media and getting caught up in every trend, you’ve probably heard of the ‘morning shed’. These beauty routines will normally include overnight use of a myriad of different beauty products focusing on all aspects of your face: eye patches, collagen face masks that dry overnight, teeth whitening strips, mouth tape, brow and lip tint, and heatless curlers. Not forgetting silicone chin straps designed to keep your entire face in place while you sleep. Aside from the chilling visuals of women quite literally compressing and constraining their faces, the daunting number of products used and time spent on this pursuit should make us examine the extent to which many of us will go to achieve today’s impossible beauty standards.
The ‘morning shed’, having come into fruition on TikTok in 2024, presents itself as a more ‘logical’ or ‘sensical’ alternative to spending hours on a morning beauty routine by instead spending hours on an evening beauty routine designed to last until the morning. Rather than getting caught up in whether or not the ‘morning shed’ routine actually saves time, I want to pose perhaps a more daunting question: is it so imperative to our lives that we look as good as possible all the time that it’s plausible to use products that can limit breathing capacity and comfort? After all, could there be absolutely nothing worse than looking unpresentable, tired, or — god forbid — like you just woke up.
With social media now influencing young, impressionable people more than ever, ideas like this can be really dangerous, feeding into unrealistic beauty standards that dictate people’s lives, appearances and self-expression. The way that femininity is marketed towards young people emphasises branding and consumerism in a way that aligns owning more products and having an elaborate routine with having knowledge and authority on how to fulfill beauty standards to the fullest extent.
The most popular beauty influencers spend a disproportionate amount of time showcasing, promoting and urging us to buy the latest beauty products, many of which are expensive, ineffective, and completely unnecessary. Not to mention the environmental impacts of overconsumption and production of items that are often made and packaged with plastics and other non-renewable materials. If we consider that these beauty standards that we all seem to be obsessed with are not only completely made up, but are a key form of patriarchal control, these illusions, myths and fairytales of skincare routines that will finally save us come crumbling down before our eyes. Amidst the endless discourse and trend cycles, it can be so easy to get caught up in what the latest viral facemask or serum is that we can forget that sometimes what our skin needs is just to breathe.
Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash