Why It’s Time to Celebrate Softness After the Age of the 'Snatched' Face

For years, Kim Kardashian et al, has been encouraging us to "snatch" our faces to high heaven. We'd bought into it way before Skims released their controversial line of face shapewear earlier this month—dutifully carving out our cheekbones, jawlines and eye sockets, as thousands of TikTok tutorials instructed. Some of us took it further: trimming off the ends of eyebrows to look more "lifted", before gelling our hair into restrictive ponytails designed to pull taught foreheads even higher. It's the defining beauty standard of our time and has been adopted by stars as diverse as Lindsay Lohan and Kris Jenner, to Emma Stone. The public, though, seems to be tiring of it.

Over the past few months, I've spotted all manner of social media videos, calling for a return to "soft faces" and sharing tutorials where they work with their features, not against them. "What if your face doesn't need to be snatched and lifted. What if you can stop actively fighting your natural features?" asks Jamie Janejira, a Thai-American, multi-hyphenate make-up artist and model in one such video. Instead of using blush to elongate her cheeks, she melts a dusty pink cream into the apple of her cheeks to mimic her natural flush pattern and emphasise her natural roundness. She says that she once shaved off the ends of her eyebrows to look more lifted, but now emphasises their downward turn: "I think eyebrows curve down for a reason," she adds. "They frame the eye. Brows that curve down are not going to make your face look sad and droopy."

The video went viral, with commenters hailing Janejira's account as the "healing side" of Instagram. One woman wrote: "As a soft, round-faced girlie, I love this. I feel silly trying to do makeup that doesn't match my features, it looks awful on me [sic]".

Janejira herself tells me: "I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the snatched look, but I'm ready for people to start thinking for themselves and stop blindly following trends. Many faces don't look like that, and they were never meant to look like that. I think that for people with soft, round features, the best and most beautiful thing you can do is let your face do what it wants to do, and be soft."

However, amidst the larger trendification of the human face, is this sentiment actually trickling through to the mainstream?

Award-winning aesthetic doctor, Dr. Priya Verma, tells Marie Claire UK that a more contoured or defined jawline has “always” been amongst the most sought-after aesthetic improvements requested by women and men at her clinic. “The term ‘snatched’ has been a more recent description, and whilst not every patient comes in requesting that kind of jawline, it is by far the most common characteristic of ageing I address. In my central London clinic, 60-70% of patients want improvements in their jowls, submental (under-chin) heaviness and lower face laxity.”

Advanced facial aesthetician, Dr Tara Francis, agrees. She explains that the "snatched" revolution came in around 2020-2021, during the COVID-19 lockdowns. "It often starts with requests for a sharper jawline, lifted cheeks or brows, and a more contoured profile," she says, detailing that the most popular procedures for this include a combination of jawline and chin filler for definition, midface filler to lift and contour the cheeks, botox to the masseters to slim the lower face, and skin tightening tehcnologies like radiofrequency, microneedling or ultrasound. There are other options, though: Dr Verma prefers Endolift—a minimally invasive, laser-based skin tightening and selective fat reduction treatment.

However, all three professionals note that the "snatched" look is dying down, and that clients are embracing a softer look that tends to work better with their natural biology. "Patients now want refinement and definition, but not at the expense of softness or natural movement", Dr Francis says. "It's evolving into something more balanced and understated. I'm seeing more requests for subtle tweaks that preserve character, rather than chase symmetry or perfection. Think gentle contouring, hydrated skin, and natural curves to the cheeks and lips."

Dr Verma doubles down: "The truth is, we are not all supposed to look overly sharp and angular; we each have different compositions of skin and fat draping over our bony skeleton, engineering our individuality. Treatments like polynucleotides, skin boosters and regenerative injectables are growing in popularity because they improve skin quality and restore volume subtly, rather than creating sharp, obvious lines."

It's also worth noting that the "snatched" look can work against many demographics' natural face structure. In any case, it's not one-size-fits-all, explains Sinaesthetics founder and consultant dermatologist, Dr Sina Ghadiri. "Facial shape varies widely across ethnic backgrounds. Many East Asian, some South Asian, Middle Eastern and African backgrounds may have softer contours, rounder face shapes, or fuller cheeks, which do not inherently create that sharp, lifted look—although the truth is individual genetics play a great role and a person of any ethnicity may be deemed to lack a 'snatched' look."

As such, measures to re-create this ideal, especially with invasive treatments, can lead to disappointing results: "Chasing a feature that doesn’t suit one’s face shape can lead to overcorrection, overfilling or an unnatural appearance, and this is far too easily done at the hand of the practitioner. Gradual changes towards a person’s desired look are recommended, and one must always respect and consider the contours of pre-existing facial anatomy to achieve a satisfactory result."

But no matter the incoming shifts, we live in a time where we can morph our faces to the whims of trends and the celebrities that endorse them. As such, "snatched" was always going to end. Much like how the Noughties' "bolted on" breasts now hark to an erstwhile beauty standard, so will permanent procedures like buccal fat removal (which slims the face by removing the fat pads located in the lower cheeks). Accordingly, practitioners like Dr Francis urge caution: "Facial aesthetics trends tend to evolve rather than disappear entirely. A phase may peak for two to three years, but its influence lingers. What changes is that the execution is less dramatic, more natural, and better technique."

Essentially, while beauty errs more and more towards the dystopian, we must be mindful of what we (literally) buy into.