I’m sitting at the kitchen counter with my older millennial sister when she starts tugging at her skin, pressing into fingers her cheeks. “Umm, do you see these lines?” she says, her eyebrows shooting up so high they practically touch her forehead. As I’m a writer who covers beauty, she asks me, “How can I fix my face!?” and presses me on treatments like under-eye PRP injections and Botox. “What about a brow lift? Or is everyone doing that Ultherapy stuff now?”
As her Gen Z correspondent, I deliver updates through the lens of what I’m seeing on social media. On this particular day, I tell her, “Well, TikTok says that doing nothing to your face is the trend.” I show her a viral TikTok from Ash Powers that predicts that in 10 years, being a little ugly and a little wrinkly will be trendy. Powers argues that as more people smooth and tweak their faces, untouched features will become rare and therefore more desirable.
My sister looks at me skeptically, which is fair. For an industry that normalizes the idea of preventative facelifts and preteens using retinol, it’s a little shocking to see bare, injection-free faces going viral, but plenty of people—myself included—are on board with the idea. Powers’ post has over 3 million views and 500,000 Likes. The comments are full of people celebrating smile lines and calling Powers’ prediction “refreshing and beautiful.” Others reference the viral eye bag trend, where beauty influencers highlight their natural under-eye circles; another mentions the death of the Instagram Face. One commenter even writes, “I’ve always thought crow’s feet were cute, tbh.”
While I entirely agree with Powers’ stance that rareness and desirability go hand in hand, I do think there’s more to this whole untouched face trend than just that. Personally, opting out of cosmetic beauty treatments stems from my own desire to be different. Social media has flattened culture so much that if someone’s wearing Adidas Sambas and an Anine Bing sweatshirt, you just know they have a TikTok account full of GRWM or “morning shed” videos. Our fashion is so predictable and algorithmic—I refuse to let my face be, too.
Hailey Noecker, 25, a New York–based freelance writer, tells me the same thing: A homogenized culture is exactly why she’s made a “no filler” pact with herself. “Online, everyone looks the same. It makes you think that’s how you should look because that’s all you see when you scroll.”
Let’s also not forget that keeping up with cosmetic treatments is expensive. Botox averages $500 a session, a set of fillers is upwards of $2,000, and buzzy resurfacing treatments like Fraxel and Morpheus8 cost more than $1,000 a pop. In a country where the average salary for a woman in her 20s hovers around $50,000, treatments like this are largely unattainable, and the idea of keeping up with them has become off-putting. “The whole thing is exhausting. If we’re not injecting our faces, we’re buying expensive tools and products to replicate their effects,” says Atlanta-based fashion and beauty writer Emilee Russel. “At some point, you just need to say enough is enough.”
While there are plenty of reasons for untouched faces to be a trend, there are unfortunately far fewer reasons for the trend to have any real staying power. Writer and beauty critic Jess DeFino says that for wrinkles and crow’s feet to really be “in,” it would require a total overhaul of how the beauty industry makes its money, a total overhaul of society’s widespread ageism, and a total overhaul of how society views and values women. “Beauty has been defined, in part, as ‘youth’ for centuries, and women have been valued for their beauty for centuries,” DeFino explains. “These are deeply embedded ideals that can’t and won’t be overturned by one particular trend cycle. Beauty standards are the physical manifestation of systems of oppression, so any meaningful and long-lasting change in the beauty standard would require the dismantling of those core systems of oppression—in this case, that’s ageism and sexism.” Talk about a tall order.
Russel agrees. “While viral videos of untouched faces certainly feel like a step in the right direction, how we see ourselves and our own aging faces is more complex,” she says. “We celebrate women who age naturally, yet there’s often a disconnect with our personal choices. We champion these women, but do we truly want to be them? When we are met with the decision of facing the needle or embracing wrinkles, what do we choose?” The nearly 20 million neurotoxin and dermal filler procedures performed in the U.S. in 2023 alone prove her point.
The untouched face trend has me also thinking a lot about the internet’s collective obsession with The White Lotus actor Aimee Lou Wood. Aimee Lou recently said that not having veneers or Botox makes her feel “a bit rebellious”—and the beauty industry loves her for it. I mean, she even has a deal with Merit, a popular clean makeup and skincare brand at Sephora. But let’s not forget: The standard of beauty isn’t one, single, specific look—it’s a set of parameters that allows for slight deviation in some areas, so long as the standard is upheld in most areas. DeFino puts it simply: The beauty industry loves a quirk, like crooked teeth or crow's feet, but only when it's offset by conformity. Aimee Lou Wood is thin, white, and wealthy—with otherwise symmetrical and desirable features. Her quirks are embraced in mass culture because she otherwise adheres to the ideal, DeFino explains.
So yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here. And a lot to question and be skeptical of, too. But maybe, just maybe, the untouched face trend is the start of a shift. Will I be giving up eyeliner or moisturizer? Absolutely not. But for right now, I feel zero pressure to poke or prod at my skin to look a certain way. I really just want to look like myself and truly believe that as the internet becomes more and more AI-generated, having a face that looks fully human—complete with lines, pores, and spots—feels special.
And who knows? Maybe my sister will be asking me the same questions in a year and I’ll be telling her all about the latest and greatest skin-tightening treatment. But my hope? I can say that an untouched face isn’t just a trend, it’s a new normal. And while DeFino predicts it won’t, she tells me she’d absolutely love to be wrong.
Morgan is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer, covering everything from health and sex to fashion and beauty. Her work can also be seen in Bustle, Refinery29, Well+Good, and more. She’s a big fan of these things, in order: silk slip dresses, giving unsolicited life advice, working out, and Taylor Swift’s entire discography.
