Your Lockdown Glow-Down Is Absolutely Normal

If you spend much time on TikTok, you've probably seen those videos. You know the ones: young people on the first day of lockdown, before it cuts to them later, towards the end of 2020 or early 2021, with J Cole's “No Role Modelz” playing in the background. Their 'after lockdown' faces are free from acne, braces off, teeth gleaming. They look taller – more sculpted, somehow – glowing with newfound confidence. 

These videos are meant to highlight what has become known as the lockdown glow-up. Really though, they kind of just show what a difference one year makes in a teen's life. That weird and glorious era when you grow into your skin, suddenly own cheekbones and no longer look or feel like wet cement. Which is very cool for the glower uppers. But entropy goes both ways. All of which is to say: Many of us – myself included – have definitely had some kind of lockdown glow-down.

If I were to do one of those videos, you'd see how my unthreaded eyebrows have grown wild and untamed, and not in a vibey way. My skin looks less bouncy than it did a year ago – no doubt the result of weeknight tequila and lemonades coupled with constant stress smoking and weird sleep patterns and sedentary work days. I genuinely think I've aged five years since March 2020. Before lockdown, I thought faces could only ever be puffy or droopy. Now I know they can be both. 

This aging feels existentially unfair, like it wasn't earned through partying and laughing, but instead just happened. Aside from mild annoyance, though, I am surprised that I do not give that much of a shit. Or at least less of a shit than usual. I haven't spent any of the past year doing yoga. I haven't become sober, or learned how to make courgetti. I still don't run outside. It's been a year of disease and sombre daily death counts and enforced isolation. I have respect for those who have emerged from such circumstances looking like glistening Instagram models, but no more than those who haven't. 

Nobody I know has told me they've had a lockdown glow-up. The main conversation among friends and acquaintances has been how to keep our mental health in check, how to keep the money coming in, how to navigate a damp flat in SE24 with four other people who are also going through the same sucky year. The pandemic has also meant that many have relapsed into eating disorders, or obsessive thinking. Any avoidance of this kind of distress has been a positive thing, or something to work towards. If you've managed to get through this time without sinking into some type of dire situation, that's worth celebrating. 

Some corners of the internet have embraced – or at least poked fun at – their lockdown glow-downs. Back in November, men online were posting TikTok videos of their transformations, with photos of them in early 2020 with pecs and jawlines, to late 2020 with greyer faces and weird sticky-up hair. Watching these videos was relatable. People look crumpled and tired; the result of a lack of sunlight and movement. Unless you’re into prison-style workouts, it’s not easy to look gym-ed up when you’ve only been permitted one daily walk to the local Tesco.

I'm not suggesting we all “embrace” our perceived “flaws”, or start chanting inspirational quotes from Instagram infographics at ourselves in the mirror (“I am grateful to be alive in my flesh prison!”). I am also not suggesting that glow-downs are a bad thing, or something that ought to be reversed; I’m not even sure glow-downs exist outside of our completely made-up beauty standards.

What I am saying is that it’s fine and normal to not be looking one hundred percent polished and perfectly put together right now. I am saying that there’s been a lot going on, and therefore it’s not a case of looking better, but caring less. So what if your face is absolutely covered in maskne? At least you’ve been wearing a mask. You might have saved someone’s life.

Also, as the old philosophical adage goes: If everyone’s had a glow-down, does your own glow-down even count? The bar is collectively lower. But if the past year has taught me anything, it’s that the bar needn’t exist at all.

@daisythejones