A word I see on tik tok is “chopped;” a word often used to describe someone considered unattractive. Recently I’ve seen a new trend develop of girls putting a picture of themselves with text asking “Am I chopped?” displayed on the photo.
First of all, who cares? Second, why do we care?
Humans were not meant to see their faces. After the big boom, humans were put on Earth naked with no way of viewing their reflection (besides water) and no real need to. At this time, survival was trending, and these ancient beings would dress to survive. Now, however, humanity is overtaken with a need to be attractive, a need to be “perfect,” a need to fit in. I’m not saying we bring back caveman couture, but this whole “chopped” thing is obnoxious.
With the invention of the phone, we have 24-hour access to a handheld mirror: our phone camera. This itself has created more insecurity, but paired with posting selfies, editing selfies, and just being so completely aware of our faces, humans put an unnecessary value on fitting the beauty standard, something extremely stupid and harmful.
Our generation is obsessed with beauty. Obsessed with the idea of being perfect and devoid of the flaws that make us human. This is due to our constant use of social media where seemingly “perfect” people practically flaunt their beauty in our faces. On Tik Tok everyone promotes “miracle” drugs to unattractiveness; every week there’s a new product that gets rid of this or that or whatever bullshit, made-up thing the person selling the product wants us to be insecure about.
This, as you could imagine, has led to a whole bunch of weird beauty trends.
An obnoxious trend going around for the past few weeks is the “morning shed” trend which many describe as “over-consumption core.” This blatant and frankly weird attempt to become beautiful, is very odd to me. For those unaware, this trend is where, before bed, you put on a bonnet, with heatless curls in, two face masks (sometimes more), mouth tape (or lip stain, or both?), nose tape, whitening strips, pimple patches, and finally a chin strap. This is psychopath behavior. I’m sure this might do something, but life is way too short to be putting this much stuff on your face to sleep. This is a prime example of the chase and craving for beauty, even when it is legitimately insane. My “morning shed” would exclusively include my bonnet and even that falls off my head half of the time.
This trend reminds me of the anti-aging trend that has been going around as well. Young women are so scared of getting older and having wrinkles that they would do anything to stay young. Getting old and wrinkly is a part of life, and trying to avoid it with filler and the like, is just sad and completely unnecessary. This trend, like the “morning shed” trend, includes extreme beauty routines using bullshit products to simply avoid aging. Which once more raises the question: who cares? Life is ephemeral and we don’t even have enough time to enjoy it, so why spend it obsessed with your appearance? I understand a fear of judgement or wanting others to see you as beautiful, but no one likes a person simply based on the fact they are attractive, and if they do, that is a huge and glaring red flag. So instead of trying every trick in the book to be seen as attractive, do what makes you feel good, rather than relying on the validation of others.
I can only ask women everywhere to just not care what others think. Which I understand is difficult, but it is necessary. You weren’t meant to see your face, nor put this many products on it in hopes of reaching perfect beauty. So before you go asking “am I chopped?” ask yourself first why you should care.
omg bonnet mentioned