It used to be that I started my makeup by swiping a doe foot loaded with near-white undereye concealer from the edges of my nose all the way out to my temples. That was standard practice in the 2010s; it’s what the beauty YouTubers taught us to do. Now I shudder at the thought, and I’m not the only one. As far as TikTok is concerned, undereye concealer has gone the way of the skinny jean: it’s over as we know it.
Most of the makeup videos that come across my feed these days are about ditching the traditional style of undereye concealer — usually lighter than one’s natural skin tone and oft heavy-handed — in favour of embracing the natural shadow of the undereye. And even when I’m not watching someone bare their shadowy undereyes, I’m getting schooled about coverage techniques that don’t involve concealer, such as subtle colour correction and undereye contouring. I’ve even seen a few people who like to wear sparkly eye shadow under their eyes instead of a brightening concealer.
It felt like I woke up one day, and suddenly no one — dare I say — hip was wearing undereye concealer anymore, a jarring thing to witness for anyone who came of age in the maximalist makeup era. I’m not just seeing things, I swear. “I have ditched super bright under eye concealer on myself and on my clients,” says makeup artist, Delina Medhin. “The times are changing.”
This cultural shift didn’t happen overnight. This might inspire a few exasperated eye rolls, but this is really the pandemic’s doing. Yes, yes, I know; we’ve all talked circles around lockdown’s impacts on beauty in the past four years. It caused a wave of makeup minimalism, resulting in fresh-faced trends like the clean girl aesthetic. But as makeup artist Karol Rodriguez points out, the effects of that are still lingering four years later, especially for younger generations who learned about makeup via TikTok mid-pandemic the same way I learned about makeup via YouTube mid-recession. “Post-Covid, everyone’s been… questioning the true need of every product. Everyone’s trying to achieve maximum impact with minimal effort,” they explain. “In the same way I don’t know anyone who wears wired bras anymore, a super bright undereye feels a bit overdressed.”
People started focusing on skin care more and makeup less, making this sudden societal hesitance toward concealer inevitable. They’ve been going hard on the eye cream and gua sha, and now they want to show off the fruits of their efforts, which they can do thanks to a heightened skill set. As Medhin says, “natural [skin] has always been in,” but historically speaking, the general consumer has never had as much access to free professional makeup advice as they do now, thanks to the internet. It makes sense that pre-TikTok makeup trends involved caking on heavy concealers and powdering to death — that method of coverage doesn’t require as much technical knowledge as something like colour correction.
Honestly? I think all of this is a great thing. For one, wearing less makeup — especially in an area as mobile as the undereye — presents less chance of caking, creasing, and smudging throughout the day. I think we all got too comfortable doing makeup to be photographed but not to be worn out in the real world. The slow death of the impenetrably bright undereye is a sign to me that we’re all really ready to be out in the real world again, and as Medhin says, “Less makeup looks better in person.”