On a social media feed dominated by nearly identical variations of Instagram face, unique features can make you stand out. The most recent movement? A wave of TikTokers is celebrating another much-maligned feature: undereye bags.
Last month, content creator Elise Perry (@eliseperry29) posted a passionate defense of undereye bags: “Ladies, keep your lower bleph,” she narrates while showing several photos of French actor and cool-girl poster child Léa Seydoux. “Keep your undereye bags. Please let Léa be an example of how incredibly hot and cool they are. This is what makes her sexy. This is what makes her so chic and fashion. Like this stare with the eye bag underneath? It’s so hot.” She goes on to share photos of other celebrities with this feature, including Kristen Stewart and Sky Ferreira, as well as beauty influencers emphasizing their undereyes with bronzer. “Save the bleph!” she concludes.
A bleph is short for blepharoplasty, the medical name for the eye lift. It can be done to either the upper or lower lids (or both) and was once considered an antiaging treatment reserved for those in the 50-plus realm. But in a post-COVID and Zoom world, younger and younger patients are getting eye lifts.
With 1.6 million views and counting, Perry’s video clearly resonates. In the comments, other TikTokers are sharing photos of their own undereye bags in solidarity. A selection of comments: “I’ve been feeling so insecure about mine lately, and this changed everything.” “You’re rewiring my brain right now.” “Dark circles and hooded eyes make me me.” “Here for this de-influencing.”
Content creator Kalyn (@eddiekayjunior) says watching Perry’s video gave her a boost of confidence. “It was always just a self-conscious thing for me,” she tells Vogue. “I was a little bit ashamed of them, because it’s always been associated with something negative—not getting enough sleep or aging. We’re used to seeing these dewy, fresh faces, the clean-girl aesthetic. So a different point of view is refreshing.” She names Zoe Saldaña, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Angelina Jolie as a few celebrities with stunning undereyes.
A few commenters are pointing out that the look has parallels to Korean beauty’s aegyo-sal, which involves creating an illusion of fatty deposits under your eyelids to achieve a youthful, doe-eyed look. Aegyol-sal “is commonly mistaken as eye bags when not done right,” makeup artist Rick Yang told Vogue Singapore in 2023.
Perry tells Vogue that she made her video in response to a handful of influencers going on the record about their lower-blepharoplasty procedures. “They were treating it so casually, like, ‘Oh, let me go get a matcha and remove my lower bleph,’” she recounts. “And I’m like, But that’s what makes your face look cool.”
Miami plastic surgeon Alexander Zuriarrain, MD, explains that the procedure has become more common with people in their 30s in recent years. This is in part thanks to an overall trend toward early intervention with cosmetic surgery, as well as the recent breakthrough development of nano-fat grafting for lower blepharoplasties. This new technique has led to a shorter recovery period and a more natural appearance compared to filler, he says. “It’s easy to combine with other procedures,” Dr. Zuriarrain adds. “A lot of women will come and do a breast augmentation, and then they’ll simultaneously deal with their dark circles.”
Like many, Perry was insecure about her undereye circles growing up, but her mother—who is French—always assured her that they were chic and French. Perry found inspiration in Tumblr-beloved indie icons of the 2010s, especially when compared to the glam beauty looks seen on contemporaneous celebrities like Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. “I was like, Oh, that’s where I fit in, that brand of girl, because the Kylie Jenner type of look wouldn’t look right on me,” Perry says. So she embraced and even emphasized her undereye bags. “I used to take eye shadow and put it under my eyes to enhance them. And then people would be like, ‘Why do you look like you got punched in the face?’ And I was like, ‘I’m being chic, okay?’ I wanted to look tired so badly.”
Perry wasn’t the only one embracing her dark circles in the 2010s. Beauty writer Sable Yong, author of the essay collection Die Hot With a Vengeance and the Substack “Hard Feelings”, is a longtime fan of undereye bags. “I remember writing an ode to my natural undereye shadows for XoVain when I was platinum blonde, which made them look even cooler, in my opinion,” she tells Vogue via email. “I’ve always had a bit of redness and shadow around my eyes naturally, and whenever I’ve tried to master concealer techniques to cover them, I find that I look strange—my eyes look smaller, swallowed up by my face. My natural shadows give my eyes contrast and definition. I’ve always liked that about them.”
Yong adds that the pressure to have near-invisible undereye bags “is so ingrained in beauty culture, it feels like the upper-face equivalent of being told to smile. I think undereye bags or circles imply a weariness that many people consider unbecoming, but I’ve always thought it gives an air of mystery and lore to a person. It makes me wonder, What have they been up to? and even more so, What are they thinking?” She concludes, “Undereye bags are the thinking woman’s best ‘accessory,’ to put it pretentiously.”
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