In the early hours of the morning on the first day of her senior year last year, 18-year-old Dilyn Marie Taylor awoke to an appointment with a make-up artist. The booking was a surprise gift from her mum, after she had mentioned wanting a professional to do her back-to-school make-up. ”I got my make-up done professionally for prom, but everybody does that,” she says. ”So my mum wanted to make my first school day special.” Unfortunately, Taylor says she ”didn’t like” the make-up itself. ”The base was cool, but she made my eyebrows too thick and I didn’t have time to carve them down,” she says. Still, she received multiple compliments from her friends in Columbus, Ohio, who asked Taylor how she got her make-up to last throughout their first day.

While Taylor was the only person in her year group (that she knows of) who got a make-up artist on that day, she’s not the only high schooler to hire a professional to make a major back-to-school statement. Brianna Dyer, a make-up artist in New Orleans, says she started receiving requests for ”back-to-school glam” last August. ”It’s become more popular this 2024 school year,” she says. ”I’ve done it for about 12 girls so far, all high school seniors aged from 16 to 18-years-old.”

According to Dyer, the most requested first-day-of-school make-up look is natural glam, which makes sense, given that some high schools have regulations around hair and make-up. As for the reason for the booking, she says that most clients mention wanting to show up to their first day with confidence. ”That’s the day everyone waits for over summer, so having a fresh hairstyle, set of nails, and now a full face of make-up is their own luxury,” she says. ”It’s like their ’pop out’ day; it sets the tone for their year and gives them that extra boost.” It was for this reason that Taylor had her make-up done. ”I always want to make a good impression on the first day of school, and I’m just extra, so I try to put a ten on everything,” she says. ”Everyone was shocked because the first day is really not that important, but, to me, every day is an event.”

”Back-to-school” prep has always been a thing. But while the start of September was usually marked by stationary runs and adding stickers to your favourite workbooks, the internet has upped the ante when it comes to what it means to be ”ready” for the new year. Now, along with 11-year-old ”Sephora tweens” reaching for retinol earlier this year, there are back-to-school influencers like Demetra Dias promoting low-rise jean hauls, hair schedules for the week and even people spotting kindergarteners with fake nails.

These new beauty expectations come with a gruelling routine. Dyer’s growing number of teenage clients are booking extremely early morning appointment slots, with 5am being her earliest start so far. This, it seems, is the trade-off for reaching the new back-to-school standard. Across TikTok, young girls are sharing extensive ”get ready with me for school” routines that start at 1am (Cassie Howard’s 4am aggressive skincare scene Euphoria comes to mind), and middle schoolers are waking up with heatless curls. Social media beauty standards and the internet’s obsession with wellness-infused ”productivity” performances are definitely at play, which is raising concerns for teachers online (and in the classroom).

”Media and society is aging up children,” one first-grade teacher wrote on X (formally Twitter). ”Grown women are struggling with comparisons to people that have money they will never see, body dysmorphia, colourism, racism, etc. You don’t think it would be exponentially worse for kids?” Others have speculated that we’re witnessing ”a direct result of the lack of children’s programming, music and clothing”.

Children and teenagers, to some degree, have always been obsessed with the idea of growing up and playing adult. But, in the digital age, that means keeping up with the crushing weight of modern beauty standards and aspiring towards a perfectly influencer-style life – filled with morning skincare blogs and La Mer serums. We see this as glow-up culture further infiltrates the back-to-school space, telling literal 13-year-olds to ice their face to reduce puffy eyes and drink water to lose weight. Sure, some high schoolers are getting professional back-to-school make-up as a fun gift from their mum or as a quick confidence boost, but there’s no denying that the beauty standard for teenagers, in general, is reaching an unattainable level. After all, a 5am wellness wakeup today and an 11-year-old reaching for retinol today means a 4am routine and a ten-year-old asking for Drunk Elephant tomorrow. And professional back-to-school make-up is only an exciting novelty when young people don’t feel like they need a ”snatched" face all year to simply show up to class.