The ‘Tired Girl’ Makeup Trend: How K-Beauty Perfected the Look Years Ago

The viral ‘tired girl’ makeup trend, which has amassed millions of views across TikTok, has quickly become one of 2024’s defining beauty aesthetics. Embracing dark circles, pale blurred lips, and a slightly undone softness, the trend is a rejection of perfectionism and celebrates a raw, lived-in look.

Celebrities like Jenna Ortega (notably in her Wednesday press looks) have popularised the slightly smudged eyeliner, bruised lip stains, and under-eye emphasis that embody this moodier, more vulnerable take on beauty.

But according to Melody Yuan, founder of Skin Cupid – the UK’s leading destination for authentic Korean skincare – this isn’t entirely new. In fact, the aesthetic has striking parallels with long-standing K-beauty and J-beauty techniques that have celebrated softness, imperfection, and emotional storytelling for years.

“K-beauty has always been about enhancing what’s already there – celebrating natural features and even showcasing imperfections rather than hiding them. The global fascination with ‘tired girl’ makeup shows that these aesthetic values are resonating far beyond Korea.”

Beyond Beauty: Why Gen Z Is Embracing ‘Tired Girl’ Aesthetics

The rise of “tired girl” makeup isn’t just a stylistic shift; it reflects deeper cultural currents. Against a backdrop of wage stagnation, rising living costs, housing struggles, and political disillusionment, younger generations are embracing an aesthetic that feels more honest than aspirational.

In this sense, the “tired girl” look acts as a counterpoint to the hyper-polished “clean girl” trend, which emphasised 5am yoga, flawless skin, and relentless self-optimisation. Instead, tired girl beauty flips the script: it’s not about performing wellness, but wearing exhaustion with quiet pride.

Parallels with K-Beauty Traditions

While it feels new to Western audiences, the building blocks of the “tired girl” look are already familiar to fans of Korean and Japanese beauty:

1. Shared Focus on Softness & Subtlety: K-beauty has long favoured blurred lips, gentle smudges, and a “perfectly imperfect” finish. The tired girl’s blurred lipstick and undone eyeliner echo this ethos.
   
2. Under-Eye Emphasis: Instead of concealing shadows, tired girl makeup leans into them – mirroring aegyo sal, a K-beauty technique that highlights natural puffiness under the eyes to create a youthful, approachable look.
   
3. Dewy, Lived-In Skin: Both aesthetics avoid heavy foundation in favour of natural texture, slight redness, and luminosity, resisting the “airbrushed” Western glam ideal.
   
4. Emotional Storytelling: From “puppy liner” to “sad eyes,” K-beauty has pioneered makeup that expresses feelings. The tired girl look continues this tradition, turning tiredness itself into an aesthetic: fragile, dreamy, even melancholic.
   
5. Cultural Shift Toward Realness: Just as K-beauty embraces imperfection as charm, the tired girl aesthetic reframes tiredness as beauty, not flaw.
   

“The rise of these trends underscores a cultural shift toward self-care and authenticity. Consumers now want products that deliver visible results while letting individuality shine through, rather than skincare and makeup that promotes a cookie-cutter idea of perfection.”

In short: the viral “tired girl” aesthetic may be trending on TikTok, but it’s deeply rooted in K-beauty principles that have been quietly shaping global beauty standards for decades.

Read more from Crave, the lifestyle magazine UK audiences turn to for inspiration and trends.