Littered with filtered images and flawlessly made-up faces, social media is notorious for promoting unrealistic standards of beauty.
That’s why the anti-beauty trend — which eschews outdated ideals in favor of authentic expression — is particularly refreshing. Championed by celebs like Julia Fox and Doja Cat, the anti-beauty phenomenon is slowly but surely taking over the internet. Hashtags like #uglybeauty and #manrepeller and #antibeauty have amassed millions of views on TikTok, with content creators calling for the end of oppressive beauty standards and the downfall of the male gaze.
What Does Anti-Beauty Mean?
So what does anti-beauty mean, exactly? The term can loosely be defined as opposed to societal norms and traditional ideas of beauty. It can also be used to describe makeup, hair, nail or fashion aesthetics that are the opposite of what’s popular.
As a trend, the anti-beauty movement prioritizes individual expression over perfection. It seeks to rebel against beauty standards or societal expectations and ideals for physical appearance. Anti-beauty advocates want to banish beauty standards because they believe they promote a narrow and unrealistic feminine beauty ideal, creating intense pressure and leading to body dissatisfaction and mental health issues. (For proof of this, just look at the meteoric rise of mental health issues in youth who use social media, where images of idealized faces and bodies abound.)
In addition, many anti-beauty proponents also point out that beauty standards are often Eurocentric, favoring features that align with Western ideals and marginalizing and alienating people of other races and backgrounds.
The anti-beauty trend isn’t just about rejecting patriarchal beauty standards and the male gaze. It’s about embracing the things that make you feel beautiful and wearing what you want — whether that’s a face full of white makeup, a floor-length ball gown or the hair you woke with this morning.
How To Get the Anti-Beauty Look
What does the anti-beauty trend end up looking like in practice? That’s up to you — after all, it’s all about individual expression and breaking arbitrary rules.
Creatively imaginative and boundary-pushing interpretations of the anti-beauty trend can be spotted all over TikTok. Here are some of the trending looks we love:
Bleached Brows
A signature look of the anti-beauty trend, bleached eyebrows create a striking, otherworldly look. What exactly is the appeal of this alien-like aesthetic? According to some beauty experts, bleached brows can make your eyes look rounder or bigger.
FYI: Bleached brows might be trending, but they’re not new. Madonna rocked bleach brows in the ’90s, followed by Jared Letto in 1998 and Lady Gaga in 2014. Today, the look is popping up on “It” girls everywhere, including the likes of Julia Fox, Kim Kardashian and Maisie Williams.
How To Get Bleached Brows
You can bleach your eyebrows with a crème face hair bleach, like the Sally Hansen Extra Strength Crème Hair Bleach ($5.99 at Target). Just be extra careful when using bleach near your eyes, and use a skin protectant like Vaseline to protect the skin around your brows.
If you’re not ready to commit to permanently bleached brows, you can replicate the look by brushing a couple of layers of concealer onto your eyebrows. Look for a concealer that is a slightly opaque, lighter shade than your eyebrow. We recommend the color-correcting Sisley Paris Phyto Cernes Eclat Eye Concealer ($62.50 at Amazon). After applying concealer, secure the look with a translucent powder, like the Beauty Bakerie Setting Power ($24 at Amazon).
Black Lipstick
Black lipstick is another anti-beauty staple favored by Julia Fox, the anti-beauty movement’s unofficial ambassador. The look is dark and dramatic and flies on the face of the conventional pink and red lipstick shades historically deemed attractive by the male gaze.
How To Get the Black Lipstick Look
There are plenty of worthy black lipstick options out there, but we like Maybelline’s SuperStay Matt Ink Liquid Lipstick in Thrill Seeker ($7.98 at Amazon). The highly pigmented liquid lipstick has a matte finish and extremely long wear.
Maximalist Nails (aka Junk Nails)
The Junk Nails craze is another trend taking over our social media feeds. Think of it as free-form maximalist manicure art — anything from vibrant colors to rhinestones to beads to glitter goes. With junk nails, each nail can serve as a different canvas, and the only rule is there are no rules.
When it comes to junk nails, TikTokers don’t mess around. Just search the hashtag #junknails to view some jaw-dropping creations, from ultralong nails packed with teddy bears and candy charms to light-up nails with butterfly wings.
How To Get Junk Nails
You can spend several hours in the salon, or you can DIY your junk nails with your own polish and 3D add-ons. Unleash your inner nail artist with this 32-color gel nail polish set ($15.99 at Amazon) and nail art kit ($9.99 at Amazon), which comes packed with gems, studs, pearls, sequins and more.
Bold Hair Colors
Technicolor tresses have been having a major moment. Nearly every star has dabbled in brightly colored hair, from Doja Cat and Katie Perry to Dakota Fanning and Hilary Duff. TikTok is also a treasure trove of colorful style inspiration, from multicolor unicorn to shimmery silver hair.
How To Get Bold Hair Color
Unless your hair is light blonde, to begin with, you will need to put your hair through a harsh bleaching process to achieve the candy-bright-colored hair you see on social media. It’s best to go to a salon and leave the process to a professional to get the results you want.
However, there is a way to add colorful locks to your hairdo without doing any damage or making irreversible changes: Hair extensions. Best of all, you don’t even need a salon professional to install them — there are plenty of hair extension options that come with clips you can attach to your head and style yourself.
To experiment with different shades, consider these rainbow hair extensions ($9.99 at Amazon). The pack includes 24 extensions in different colors with easy-to-snap-on comb clips. The extensions are heat resistant, meaning you can style them with a curling iron on a low-temperature setting.
The Man Repeller Aesthetic
The term “man repeller” is often credited to Leandra Medine Cohen, founder of the now-defunct Repeller fashion blog. The site defined a man repeller as someone who “outfits themselves in a sartorially offensive way that will result in repelling members of the opposite sex.” Put another way, the man-repeller aesthetic is a style that prioritizes self-expression and personal taste while maintaining a playful disregard for the male gaze.
How To Get the Man Repeller Aesthetic
You can achieve the man-repeller aesthetic by wearing clothing that you happen to think is stylish — extra points if it’s quirky, delightful, or confusing to the male species. Man-repeller fashion staples include but are not limited to boiler suits, drop-crotch pants, shoulder pads, turbans and jewelry that looks like weaponry.
Want some inspiration? We love these cow-pattern clog shoes ($100 at Sixty-Nine) or this loose sleeveless plaid jumpsuit ($35.99 at UOOZEE).
The post The Anti-Beauty Trend Is Proof We’re Over the Male Gaze appeared first on The Real Deal by RetailMeNot.
