Amidst growing anxiety about the quality of the country’s sleep, after the UK was declared to be in the midst of a ‘sleep crisis’, an emerging trend on social media reveals one demographic with an entirely different priority — beauty. Who? Teenage girls.
“I saw video after video of really pretty girls peeling sparkly face masks off, they were tearing little strips of tape from their mouth, undoing pretty coloured straps from their jaw and waist and pulling their hair out of cute pink silky heatless curlers and I thought, I want to do that, I want to look like them.”
14-year-old Megan Gillespe is referring to the ‘morning-shed’ trend that took TikTok by storm in 2024, with videos under the viral hashtag regularly receiving tens of millions of views.
The content sensation sees influencers waking up with faces uncomfortably obscured by a plethora of products: mouth tape, jaw straps, under-eye patches, bonnets, and sheet masks. They begin ‘shedding’, removing each component one by one to reveal satisfyingly glowing skin and perfectly curled hair, a seemingly successful demonstration of being ‘high maintenance whilst you sleep in order to be low maintenance during the day’.
But it looks so uncomfortable, people can’t actually be sleeping like this, can they?
Senior Community Marketing Executive for Code First Girls, Talia Legge, told Comforter: “Having managed a community of 64 influencers I have observed how powerful their recommendations are, therefore if we see content creators pushing a narrative that says sleep should be used as a time to enhance personal beauty, people will both listen and copy.
“Content campaigns like this one subconsciously capitalise on the insecurities of their target audience. In this case, influencers with predominantly young female audiences are playing on the appearance anxiety young girls are likely to face, in an attempt to normalise an extremely unrealistic, restrictive and disruptive routine that has the effect of reducing sleep to a beauty ritual rather than a biological necessity.”
But how damaging to your sleep can a routine like this be?
Sleep Expert James Wilson, professionally known as ‘The Sleep Geek’, told Comforter: “Sleep need is a combination of how good and how much, it’s different for every person and it’s different every night. Because we can’t definitively measure the quality of our sleep, we focus on how much sleep we get, despite the fact that how good is far more important.
“It is simply undeniable that the young women participating in this trend are having a hugely negative effect on their sleep. You need to be able to move in your sleep, and to do that, you need to be unrestricted. Regardless of how well you usually sleep, if you are cramming your face with all of these products you can not be meeting your sleep need, and this can become extremely damaging over time.”
This conclusion was confirmed by Megan, who told Comforter: “It takes me ages to get to sleep because I can only sleep on my back otherwise the heatless
curlers dig into my head and the face mask will slide off.
“I do sometimes look forward to the nights where I decide not to do it all because then I can lie on my side and fall asleep a lot quicker. But me and all my friends say we would rather be a bit tired and wake up pretty than sleep better and feel ugly when we get out of bed.”
The idea of ‘waking up pretty’ isn’t just Megan’s mantra. In fact, the expression ‘the uglier you go to sleep the prettier you wake up’ quickly solidified itself as the tagline of the ‘morning-shed’ trend.
Marketing Executive Talia told Comforter: “Discourse like this is damaging for a plethora of reasons; it reinforces superficial values, it has a detrimental impact on mental and physical health, it sets unrealistic expectations and it normalises appearance anxiety.
“While the expression may seem playful, it reflects deeper societal issues tied to beauty standards. From my extensive experience working with influencers, I’ve seen how phrases like this can become normalised within communities, leading to unhealthy behaviours like prioritising beauty over well-being.”
Comforter reached out to all of the top performing influencers under the ‘morning-shed’ hashtag. We asked them what everyone is thinking; do you actually sleep with all of these products and tools covering your face? We received zero responses.
However, social media personality Lana Skye, who has accumulated over 50,000 followers with her beauty and lifestyle content, told Comforter: “Of all the trends I have seen on social media over the years, this one really makes me roll my eyes.
“As an influencer myself I work alongside a lot of other influencers and I can confidently say that the vast majority of the creators will be applying all of these products and tools solely for content purposes. They will be well aware of how much engagement these types of videos get, and will simply remove most of it, if not all of it, when the camera stops rolling.
“The issue is that many young and impressionable women will not be aware of this and will hold themselves to these unrealistic standards every night. This is why I would never feel comfortable making these types of videos.”
So why is ‘morning-shed’ content so popular if it’s so problematic?
“TikTok enables trends like this to gain traction because the app facilitates instant purchasing of the items you see. Someone’s claiming a face mask cleared their skin? It can be on its way to you in seconds through TikTok Shop, without you even having to leave the app.” Lana continued.
“What people can forget is that with product-based trends like the ‘morning-shed’, influencers receive commission based on how many people buy the items after watching their content. It’s rarely about how good the products actually are, it’s about creators maximising how much money they can make.”
But what are the consequences for people who are subscribing to this trend?
The Sleep Geek told Comforter: “Young people have already got a society that has designed a working day for them that doesn’t work with their body’s natural rhythm, as they are predisposed to later wake up and sleep times. Now they’ve got a society that is creating a cultural pressure to do something that directly impacts their ability to sleep.
“The implications of this trend on the people subscribing to it is what I would call disordered sleeping. I worked with West Ham’s women’s team a couple of years ago, and I observed the meticulous safeguarding that went into protecting the players from disordered eating, However, no precautions existed for disordered sleeping despite the fact that it can have an equally as damaging effect.
“Throughout my career I have seen the 80s, 90s Donald Trump-esque ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ mentality diminish, and I would now argue we are seeing attitudes towards sleep swing the complete opposite way. But whilst the majority of the population is working towards improving their sleep, it appears teenage girls exposed to content like the ‘morning-shed’ are being misled to prioritise physical appearance.”
But if disordered sleeping is so damaging, why are teenage girls still taking part in this nightly ritual?
Talia told Comforter: “I think ultimately the ‘morning-shed’ serves as another example of the ever-tightening grip beauty standards have on young people.
“I would argue that the vast majority of teenage girls partaking in this trend are sacrificing their sleep unknowingly, unaware of the consequences it is having on their wellbeing.
“The ‘morning-shed’ plays into a sort of harmless self-care narrative, but in reality there is nothing playful about influencers subtly enforcing beauty standards onto their audience, especially not beauty standards that directly affect something as important to people as their sleep.”
The Comforter team made Megan aware of the potentially damaging consequences such an intense sleeping routine could be having on her well-being, “I guess I am tired a lot of the time, but at least I feel pretty,” she told Comforter.
The Sleep Geek countered: “I have worked with everyone; I’ve worked with single parents, I’ve worked with celebrities, I’ve worked with people doing shift work, I’ve worked with Government ministers. I see every type of person you could imagine and I would argue that nobody in the world talks to more poor sleepers than me every week.
“I am aware that we are living in a world where sleep isn’t just about your health anymore, it’s also, unfortunately, about your appearance. If young girls out there are desperate to wake up looking beautiful, my advice would be to ignore these consumerist trends. The best way to wake up feeling good about yourself is to get a good night’s sleep.”
If you are interested in the commercialisation of sleep:
