Another day, another on-the-nose beauty trend.
Since the dawn of the vajazzle, beauty bloggers have been following fashion fads and preening their perfectly natural features into ‘fun house’ faces; plucked, tucked and stuck into something surreal. Salvador Dali would be proud.
The latest trend follows the ‘more is more’ rule when it comes to nostril hair:
One Instagram user, Gret_Chen_Chen. shook the very foundations of the online beauty world when she applied false eyelashes to the rim of her nostrils, feigning nostril hair, and dubbing them ‘nose hair extensions’.
Gret_Chen_Chen is also partial to stick on beards, moustaches and block-fringe wigs that cover her eyes, Sia-style.
Somehow, I’m not convinced she entered the world of nostril hair with a serious mission to debunk the myth of female body hair? Maybe she was just dropping a hint that she wanted a hair trimmer for Christmas?
But, beauty bloggers are not about to miss an opportunity to jump aboard a bandwagon – joke or not.
One user said it was ‘cute and naughty at the same time’ while another Insta-lemming marvelled at the ‘creative’ idea.
Like with all temporary fads, then come the copycats:
Intagrammer @davisonvideo, who describes herself as a ‘model, producer and media pundit’, said she ‘couldn’t not try the @gret_chen_chen nose hair extension trend’ and went one step further by adding lip lashes.
I personally think the nostril hair extensions are somewhat reminiscent of Mother Nature’s beautiful, misunderstood and much-maligned Star-nosed Mole.
In case you’ve never encountered the wonder of natural selection before, here’s a picture of one of the curious-looking little critters.
The star-nosed mole has 22 fleshy pink appendages on its snout, which they use as a touch organ with more than 25,000-minute sensory receptors.
They can also detect seismic waves, which I’m pretty sure your bog standard Superdrug false lashes cannot.
Far be it for me to shame anyone’s nose or nostril hair – or their beauty regime, for that matter – I’ve heard facial hair and beards are very in right now, anyway.
We’ve come a long way since the bare-faced fashions of the nineties and noughties and people seem to be accepting the hairy fact, hair is perfectly natural and occurs in all sorts of places on the male and female body.
In protest of the beauty double-standards – and because they can’t afford the price of modern day preening – many woman have followed the lead of public figures like Paris Jackson, who determined to go natural on the red carpet.
After all, each and every adult human has hair in the interior nasal passage, which has multiple functions, including filtering foreign particles from entering the nasal cavity and collecting moisture, and increased nasal hair has even been linked to a decrease likelihood in suffering asthma.
But like the star-nosed mole, I’m left lost, blind and dumbfounded by the pointless pursuit of futile facial hair growth, just to grow your followers on social media. It’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?
It only leaves one question: Is the parade of fast fads being parodied or is fashion just a joke?
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.