Hedicore Comeback and Caveman Method
a rare monday long read
Welcome back to After School Weekend Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. I’m testing out a Monday-Friday send schedule this week; if you love it or hate it, let me know. Btw, a monthly subscription costs less than even the most mid matcha latte in NYC, so please consider upgrading. 🫶
In today’s letter:
Caveman skincare girl
Kate Mackz backlash
TikTok’s death knell
Stay-at-home girlfriend fallout
“The new Gen Z uniform”
Divorced Karencore
Rope sandals summer
Digital perm revival
What young consumers think of the Gap x Dôen collab
“Nature’s filler” surge
Tan line fetishes
And so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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WARTS AND ALL
“CAVEMAN SKINCARE GIRL” AND GOING VIRAL FOR DOING THE MOST LEAST
Earlier this week, reader Henry Lansing DMed me on Twitter:
A 22-year-old creator named Tia Zakher — “funemployed,” per her TikTok bio, and splitting time between Montreal, Dubai, and Cairo (chic!) — recently revealed she’d stopped washing her face to help repair her skin barrier after years of picking at it.
She called her skincare routine — or lack of, really — the “Caveman Method.”
Apparently, when you don’t touch your face for seven weeks, it looks like this:
After Henry DMed me, Zakher went super viral, and now, less than a week later, pretty much everyone’s covered the story:
Derms say this so-called “Caveman Method” might temporarily reduce irritation (do you think doctors ever get tired of being interviewed about dumb TikTok trends?), but the consensus is that it will cause buildup, clogged pores, and even fungal infections
Across social media, there is no shortage of people mocking Zakher, but I think her “Caveman Method” virality reveals two telling things about this generation:
