Elizabeth Day: Feeling frazzled? Don’t worry, it’s all the rage 

Every so often, popular culture tilts on its axis and makes you feel unwittingly ahead of the curve. 

It is a rare but significant event, like the passing of Halley’s Comet, when the vagaries of fashion and personal identity converge and meet for a few seconds in a tiny, bright spot that dazzles briefly before disappearing.

It happened with corduroy trousers: I wore them as a child when they were the epitome of cringe and then hipsters made them cool again. When the Twilight movies were all the rage in the early 2000s, my vampiric pallor that had caused me such angst as a teenager was suddenly de rigueur.

But at no point have I felt so aligned with the zeitgeist as I have right now. The latest beauty trend, according to Teen Vogue, is drawing on under-eye bags. Yes, you read that correctly. Teenagers are smearing dark concealer under their eyes and taking to TikTok to share the results. This has led to a lot of tired-looking adolescents going what the kids call ‘viral’.

In December, at the end of a year which left us exhausted and with eye-bags so deep they could have carried all our panic-bought toilet roll, a TikTokker called Sara Carstens with over 1.7 million followers was the first to do it.

Sara is 19. One nine. So she has not yet been ground down by the trudge of life. She does not have the au naturel eye-bags that speak of early morning cardio, late-afternoon Zoom calls, frantic home-schooling efforts and one-too-many vodka tonics before bed. She does not, in short, have the dark circles that enforced sleeplessness affords most other adults. But she can, in the fullness of time, aspire to the standards we have set.

Truly, it feels as though I’ve been in training for this for years. Now that sleeplessness has become attractive, I’ve started to think about other things we could re-market. So, for TikTokkers on the lookout for new content, here are the next beauty trends I’d like to go viral…

1 Chipped and flaking nails

Did you get a gel manicure shortly before the imposition of yet another unexpected national lockdown? Did you quickly begin to hate yourself for showing such a lack of foresight in the name of having a pretty burgundy OPI gloss on your nails called something like ‘Midnight Mexico City Skating Rink’? Did you spend many days praying that your polish wouldn’t chip and then, when it inevitably started to flake, did you pick and scratch like a demented cat with fleas until you were able to peel it all off? And do you now have pitted, dry nails that threaten to break at first contact with a ring pull? Don’t worry – it’s fashionable!

2 Eyebrows that are simultaneously overgrown and yet sparse 

Has it been a while since you last had your eyebrows waxed? Has your eyebrow hair now grown to absurd lengths everywhere except the bald patch you’ve had since you overplucked in your 20s? Fear not – random eyebrow regrowth is all the rage!

3 Forehead wrinkles

Have you been staring at the computer screen for several hours a day screaming ‘Derek, you’re on mute!’? Have you been so stressed that you’ve spent weeks on end with a permanent frown on your features? Does watching the governmental press conferences leave you screwing up your face with distaste? Good! Those entrenched facial ruts are now being aped by TikTok teenagers with streaks of bronzer. You’re, like, so on trend.

And there you have it: three new ways of being a hot mess, with the emphasis firmly on the hot. The influencers can thank me later.

This week I’m…