The woman in my phone is pulling a small piece of black tape off her lips, smiling as she wiggles it in front of the camera. She undoes the clasp of a chin strap fastened at the back of her head. She peels off glistening overnight masks: one on her forehead, and one under each eye. She shakes free a mass of curly hair from a baby pink silk bonnet, rubs an oil into her roots, tells her audience she’s about to have an “everything shower”. 

This is the ‘morning shed’: the process of removing beauty products and treatments that have been worn overnight. On TikTok, videos about the morning shed have racked up millions of views, with content creators swearing by the mantra “the uglier you go to bed, the hotter you wake up”. Another video: this time the woman is in bed. She looks slightly uncanny, her actual face obscured by layers of products. “Ladies, if he doesn’t love you with your mouth tape, Korean sleeping mask, boric acid, side sleeper pillow, toe separators, and silk bonnet…” the caption reads.

Watching these clips, of women going to bed lathered in chemicals and wearing “toe separators” (whatever they are), it’s difficult not to wonder: how are these people having sex?

24-year-old Daisy’s extensive nighttime regimen involves applying multiple products, putting in a mouthguard, and wearing an eye mask. While she and her boyfriend still have sex, she’s aware that her commitment to her routine is precluding opportunities for post-sex intimacy. “My boyfriend gets so annoyed with me,” she says. “As soon as we’re done having sex I have to run to the bathroom and spend a minimum of 20 minutes double cleansing my face and applying my serums and moisturiser.”

“There’s no moment of falling asleep together straight away in a romantic way,” she continues, adding that sticking to her routine is a “non-negotiable” as she doesn’t “wake up feeling confident” if she skips it. “By the time I’m done, my boyfriend is asleep and there is no more opportunity for cuddling.” Her boyfriend isn’t happy with the situation: “He brings it up in the morning often and we sometimes have an argument about it.”

Of course, circumstances will vary from individual to individual, and it’s impossible to straightforwardly conclude that anyone with an elaborate nighttime skincare routine is not having sex. “Sex exists outside of the ‘go to bed and turn the lights off and fuck’ clichés of Hollywood,” says beauty critic Jessica DeFino. “I think it’s a bit reductive to say that morning shedders probably aren't having sex just because they're covered in layers of face masks and mouth tape before bed [...] Everyday sex exists outside of the bounds of looking ‘sexy’.”

Besides, for some, being open with your partner about the amount of labour that goes into your beauty routine can actually be a way of being vulnerable with them. In the early stages of her past relationship, Holly* would sleep with her make-up on overnight and it was only as she became more comfortable with her partner that she felt able to do her full skincare routine before bed. “It felt like a new form of intimacy [...] they still found me attractive at what I felt was my most self-conscious, least sexy,” she says. 

But there’s certainly something decidedly unerotic about the way wellness and beauty culture is heading: nobody seems to skip their skincare routine because they can’t bear to wrench themselves away from their partner’s arms even for ten minutes anymore, or welcome getting a bit of saliva or sweat (or semen) on their skin. No – instead, we’re going to bed with our mouths taped shut, afraid to let our faces be touched or smile, passing on opportunities to spend the night at a partner’s house lest they see your make-up-free skin, and getting Botox even at the detriment of emotionally connecting with others. “Beauty culture can cause us to be preoccupied by our appearance at almost all times: some studies show that women distracted by thoughts of their own appearance during sex may experience lower sexual satisfaction and less consistent orgasms,” says DeFino.

Perhaps it’s no surprise we’re in a sex recession when the beauty industry is encouraging us to pursue such unrealistic, inhuman ideals. According to a recent report into global sex habits by the Kinsey Institute’s Dr Justin Lehmiller in partnership with dating app Feeld, the average Gen Zer is having sex just three times a month. A sizable 37 per cent of Gen Z reported having no sex at all in the last month. But little wonder, when everything feels so sanitised and clinical and uncanny. What’s erotic about ‘glazed donut skin’ or the ‘clean girl aesthetic’? “Beauty culture encourages women (primarily) to prioritise aesthetics over erotics — appearing sexy over feeling sexy,” DeFino adds.

We’re hell-bent on pursuing perfection, with some of us internalising the idea we’re not worthy of love before achieving some arbitrary (and impossible to maintain) standard of beauty. “For many women in particular, becoming beautiful is seen as more important than having sex and falling in love, but only because becoming beautiful is messaged as a portal to having sex and falling in love, a non-negotiable part of the process,” DeFino adds. “The pursuit of beauty is in many cases a pursuit of ‘the good life’, sex and love included.” 

But so much of erotic appeal lies in believability: when someone appears perfect it’s impossible to really connect with them or lust after them (it’s why Paul Mescal, who, though muscular, is so hot: he looks real). In any case, it doesn’t seem as though anyone even wants to be lusted after anymore. “I do it for me! It’s self-care!” is the cliché rallying cry of those who relentlessly and unashamedly pursue beauty standards – and while the idea that spending loads of money on attempting to stop our skin wrinkling is somehow feminist or empowering is obviously delusional, it is true that the obsession with our appearances is mounting in tandem with our culture’s growing emphasis on individualism and self-optimisation.

In RS Benedict’s seminal 2021 article Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny, she argues that in the past – rightly or wrongly – people strived to look good “so they could attract other hot people and fuck them”. However, she writes, today priorities have shifted. “A body is no longer a holistic system. It is not the vehicle through which we experience joy and pleasure during our brief time in the land of the living. It is not a home to live in and be happy,” Benedict wrote. “It, too, is a collection of features: six pack, thigh gap, cum gutters. And these features exist not to make our lives more comfortable, but to increase the value of our assets.”

This chimes with DeFino’s view. “Beauty standards have always been about disciplining the female body to make it less like a body and more like an object of consumption,” she explains. “The self-objectification of beauty standards might more accurately be called self-mechanisation today; we strive to flatten any and all signs of life — wrinkles, pimples, pores, fat — into a robotic approximation of perfection.”

But this is no way to live. Maybe your skin will be less prone to breakouts if you never let anyone kiss your face; maybe your hair will be shinier if you douse it in argan oil before bed every day (I’m sorry to say your jaw won’t be more chiselled if you wear a chin strap, though, that’s been definitively debunked). Maybe society will be kinder to you, with your clear skin and glossy hair; it’s true that conforming to dominant beauty standards can reap myriad socioeconomic benefits, and as a result it’s nigh-on impossible to resist pursuing what society deems ‘perfection’. But what’s really more important – social status? Or really living?

*Name has been changed