The girl in my phone is pulling a small piece of black tape off her lips, smiling as she wiggles it in front of the camera. She undoes the clasp of a chin strap fastened in the back of her head. She peels off glistening overnight masks: one on her brow, and one under each eye. She shakes free a mass of curly hair from a baby pink silk bonnet, rubs an oil into her roots, tells her audience she’s about to have an “all the things shower”. 

That is the ‘morning shed’: the strategy of removing beauty products and coverings which have been worn overnight. On TikTok, videos in regards to the morning shed have racked up tens of millions of views, with content creators swearing by the mantra “the uglier you go to bed, the warmer you get up”. One other video: this time the lady is in bed. She looks barely uncanny, her actual face obscured by layers of products. “Ladies, if he doesn’t love you along with your mouth tape, Korean sleeping mask, boric acid, side sleeper pillow, toe separators, and silk bonnet…” the caption reads.

Watching these clips, of ladies going to bed lathered in chemicals and wearing “toe separators” (whatever they’re), it’s difficult to not wonder: how are these people having sex?

24-year-old Daisy’s extensive nighttime regimen involves applying multiple products, putting in a mouthguard, and wearing an eye fixed mask. While she and her boyfriend still have sex, she’s aware that her commitment to her routine is precluding opportunities for post-sex intimacy. “My boyfriend gets so annoyed with me,” she says. “As soon as we’re done having sex I actually have to run to the toilet and spend a minimum of 20 minutes double cleansing my face and applying my serums and moisturiser.”

“There’s no moment of falling asleep together right away in a romantic way,” she continues, adding that sticking to her routine is a “non-negotiable” as she doesn’t “get up feeling confident” if she skips it. “By the point I’m done, my boyfriend is asleep and there isn’t any more opportunity for cuddling.” Her boyfriend isn’t blissful with the situation: “He brings it up within the morning often and we sometimes have an argument about it.”

After all, circumstances will vary from individual to individual, and it’s not possible to straightforwardly conclude that anyone with an elaborate nighttime skincare routine will not be having sex. “Sex exists outside of the ‘go to bed and switch the lights off and fuck’ clichés of Hollywood,” says beauty critic Jessica DeFino. “I feel it’s a bit reductive to say that morning shedders probably aren’t having sex simply because they’re covered in layers of face masks and mouth tape before bed […] On a regular basis sex exists outside of the bounds of looking ‘sexy’.”

Besides, for some, being open along with your partner in regards to the amount of labour that goes into your beauty routine can actually be a way of being vulnerable with them. Within the early stages of her past relationship, Holly* would sleep together with her make-up on overnight and it was only as she became more comfortable together with her partner that she felt in a position to do her full skincare routine before bed. “It felt like a recent type of intimacy […] they still found me attractive at what I felt was my most self-conscious, least sexy,” she says. 

But there’s actually something decidedly unerotic in regards to the way wellness and sweetness culture is heading: no person seems to skip their skincare routine because they’ll’t bear to wrench themselves away from their partner’s arms even for ten minutes anymore, or welcome getting a little bit of saliva or sweat (or semen) on their skin. No – as a substitute, we’re going to bed with our mouths taped shut, afraid to let our faces be touched or smile, passing on opportunities to spend the night at a partner’s house lest they see your make-up-free skin, and getting Botox even on the detriment of emotionally connecting with others. “Beauty culture may cause us to be preoccupied by our appearance at just about all times: some studies show that girls distracted by thoughts of their very own appearance during sex may experience lower sexual satisfaction and fewer consistent orgasms,” says DeFino.

Perhaps it’s no surprise we’re in a sex recession when the sweetness industry is encouraging us to pursue such unrealistic, inhuman ideals. In keeping with a recent report into global sex habits by the Kinsey Institute’s Dr Justin Lehmiller in partnership with dating app Feeld, the typical Gen Zer is having sex just 3 times a month. A large 37 per cent of Gen Z reported having no sex in any respect within the last month. But little wonder, when all the things feels so sanitised and clinical and uncanny. What’s erotic about ‘glazed donut skin’ or the ‘clean girl aesthetic’? “Beauty culture encourages women (primarily) to prioritise aesthetics over erotics — appearing sexy over feeling sexy,” DeFino adds.

We’re hell-bent on pursuing perfection, with a few of us internalising the thought we’re undeserving of affection before achieving some arbitrary (and not possible to keep up) standard of beauty. “For many ladies specifically, becoming beautiful is seen as more necessary than having sex and falling in love, but only because becoming beautiful is messaged as a portal to having sex and falling in love, a non-negotiable a part of the method,” DeFino adds. “The pursuit of beauty is in lots of cases a pursuit of ‘the great life’, sex and love included.” 

But a lot of erotic appeal lies in believability: when someone appears perfect it’s not possible to really connect with them or lust after them (it’s why Paul Mescal, who, though muscular, is so hot: he looks real). In any case, it doesn’t seem as if anyone even wants to be lusted after anymore. “I do it for me! It’s self-care!” is the cliché rallying cry of those that relentlessly and unashamedly pursue beauty standards – and while the concept spending a great deal of money on attempting to stop our skin wrinkling is one way or the other feminist or empowering is clearly delusional, it is true that the obsession with our appearances is mounting in tandem with our culture’s growing emphasis on individualism and self-optimisation.

In RS Benedict’s seminal 2021 article Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny, she argues that previously – rightly or wrongly – people strived to look good “so that they could attract other hot people and fuck them”. Nevertheless, she writes, today priorities have shifted. “A body isn’t any longer a holistic system. It will not be the vehicle through which we experience joy and pleasure during our transient time within the land of the living. It will not be a house to live in and be blissful,” Benedict wrote. “It, too, is a group of features: six pack, thigh gap, cum gutters. And these features exist to not make our lives more comfortable, but to extend the worth of our assets.”

This chimes with DeFino’s view. “Beauty standards have all the time been about disciplining the feminine body to make it less like a body and more like an object of consumption,” she explains. “The self-objectification of beauty standards might more accurately be called self-mechanisation today; we attempt to flatten any and all signs of life — wrinkles, pimples, pores, fat — right into a robotic approximation of perfection.”

But this isn’t any solution to live. Perhaps your skin shall be less vulnerable to breakouts if you happen to never let anyone kiss your face; possibly your hair shall be shinier if you happen to douse it in argan oil before bed day by day (I’m sorry to say your jaw won’t be more chiselled if you happen to wear a chin strap, though, that’s been definitively debunked). Perhaps society shall be kinder to you, along with your clear skin and glossy hair; it’s true that conforming to dominant beauty standards can reap myriad socioeconomic advantages, and because of this it’s nigh-on not possible to withstand pursuing what society deems ‘perfection’. But what’s really more necessary – social status? Or really living?

*Name has been modified