It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday evening. While you’re hanging out in your pajamas, hair swept back in a bun, catching up on Real Housewives of New Jersey your phone lights up with a text from your kind of fuckboi-ish – but oh so hot –  friend with benefits.


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“Come through tn?” it reads, a simple, yet so douchey sentiment that somehow manages to set your soul on fire.


“You know it,” you say, springing into action before your phone can plop down onto your comforter. You fly into the shower, brush your teeth and sit down at your makeup chair, where you manage to accomplish one of the greatest quick-glams in your makeup-wearing life – your lashes are perfectly set, your liner is sharper than Taylor Swift’s in “Vigilante Shit” and your contour actually looks decent and not like you’re poorly following a Kim Kardashian makeup tutorial circa 2016.



Confident in your MUA-worthy beat (maybe you should start a beauty TikTok channel?) your delusions of beauty grandeur are quickly shot – one round of getting it on and a few hours of cuddles later, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror – it’s bad. It’s really bad.


If this scenario of looking worse for the wear upon merely stepping foot inside your man’s abode sounds all too familiar, you’re far from alone – “boyfriend air” is alive, kicking and sabotaging all of our best beauty efforts, if TikTok glam gurus’ latest conspiracy checks out.



The concept of “Boyfriend Air,” TikTok’s latest relationship and beauty theory is relatively straightforward – there is something in the air that always makes you look worse after spending time with your S.O., a sentiment several TikTok influencers illustrated firsthand during the trend’s fever pitch back in February.


“Getting ready for nothing,” TikToker @imzaahe captioned her viral clip showing a before and after hanging out with her S.O.



“Oh my god, what the fuck I look good I look good I look delicious,” lip-synched user @girlboss6969 (nice) alongside one of the trend’s most popular audios before smiling, the audio of “I look like a fuckin’ busted up radiator” playing over her smiling, but slightly less glammed-up after clip.



Yet  @imzaahe and @girlboss6969 (once again, nice) are far from alone – just ask the girls behind Barstool Sports’ “Mean Girl” podcast.


“I feel like if I would like, sleep at my boyfriend’s for like two days, two nights, whatever, I would turn into this like, monster,” Speculated Barstool Sports producer Alanna Vizzoni during a recent installment of the podcast, before elaborating how boyfriends tend to “let off this humid air.”


Boyfriends – the human version of makeup wipes.