{"id":552,"date":"2025-05-21T15:53:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T14:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jusmedia.co.uk\/doze\/?p=552"},"modified":"2025-06-06T13:35:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T12:35:24","slug":"beauty-sleep-or-sleep-deprived-turning-rest-into-a-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jusmedia.co.uk\/doze\/2025\/05\/21\/beauty-sleep-or-sleep-deprived-turning-rest-into-a-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty sleep or sleep deprived? Turning rest into a ritual\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amidst growing anxiety about the quality of the country\u2019s sleep, after the UK was declared to be in the midst of a \u2018sleep crisis\u2019, an emerging trend on social media reveals one demographic with an entirely different priority \u2014 beauty. Who? Teenage girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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14-year-old Megan Gillespe is referring to the \u2018morning-shed\u2019 trend that took TikTok by storm in 2024, with videos under the viral hashtag regularly receiving tens of millions of views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2018shedding\u2019, removing each component one by one to reveal satisfyingly glowing skin and perfectly curled hair, a seemingly successful demonstration of being \u2018high maintenance whilst you sleep in order to be low maintenance during the day\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it looks so uncomfortable, people can\u2019t actually be sleeping like this, can they?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Community Marketing Executive for Code First Girls, Talia Legge, told Comforter: \u201cHaving 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cContent 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how damaging to your sleep can a routine like this be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleep Expert James Wilson, professionally known as \u2018The Sleep Geek\u2019, told Comforter: \u201cSleep need is a combination of how good and how much, it\u2019s different for every person and it\u2019s different every night. Because we can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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James Wilson – Sleep Expert<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This conclusion was confirmed by Megan, who told Comforter: \u201cIt takes me ages to get to sleep because I can only sleep on my back otherwise the heatless <\/p>\n\n\n\n

curlers dig into my head and the face mask will slide off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of \u2018waking up pretty\u2019 isn\u2019t just Megan\u2019s mantra. In fact, the expression \u2018the uglier you go to sleep the prettier you wake up\u2019 quickly solidified itself as the tagline of the \u2018morning-shed\u2019 trend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing Executive Talia told Comforter: \u201cDiscourse 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile the expression may seem playful, it reflects deeper societal issues tied to beauty standards. From my extensive experience working with influencers, I\u2019ve seen how phrases like this can become normalised within communities, leading to unhealthy behaviours like prioritising beauty over well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comforter reached out to all of the top performing influencers under the \u2018morning-shed\u2019 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, social media personality Lana Skye, who has accumulated over 50,000 followers <\/strong>with her beauty and lifestyle content, told Comforter: \u201cOf all the trends I have seen on social media over the years, this one really makes me roll my eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why is \u2018morning-shed\u2019 content so popular if it\u2019s so problematic?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTikTok enables trends like this to gain traction because the app facilitates instant purchasing of the items you see. Someone\u2019s 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.\u201d Lana continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat people can forget is that with product-based trends like the \u2018morning-shed\u2019, influencers receive commission based on how many people buy the items after watching their content. It\u2019s rarely about how good the products actually are, it\u2019s about creators maximising how much money they can make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what are the consequences for people who are subscribing to this trend?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sleep Geek told Comforter: \u201cYoung people have already got a society that has designed a working day for them that doesn\u2019t work with their body\u2019s natural rhythm, as they are predisposed to later wake up and sleep times. Now they\u2019ve got a society that is creating a cultural pressure to do something that directly impacts their ability to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe implications of this trend on the people subscribing to it is what I would call disordered sleeping. I worked with West Ham\u2019s women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThroughout my career I have seen the 80s, 90s Donald Trump-esque \u2018I\u2019ll sleep when I\u2019m dead\u2019 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 \u2018morning-shed\u2019 are being misled to prioritise physical appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if disordered sleeping is so damaging, why are teenage girls still taking part in this nightly ritual?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talia told Comforter: \u201cI think ultimately the \u2018morning-shed\u2019 serves as another example of the ever-tightening grip beauty standards have on young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe \u2018morning-shed\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Comforter team made Megan aware of the potentially damaging consequences such an intense sleeping routine could be having on her well-being, \u201cI guess I am tired a lot of the time, but at least I feel pretty,\u201d she told Comforter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sleep Geek countered: \u201cI have worked with everyone; I\u2019ve worked with single parents, I\u2019ve worked with celebrities, I\u2019ve worked with people doing shift work, I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am aware that we are living in a world where sleep isn\u2019t just about your health anymore, it\u2019s 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\u2019s sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are interested in the commercialisation of sleep:<\/p>\n\n\n\n