If you’ve been on TikTok lately, chances are you’ve seen posts from women sharing their post-breakup glow-ups. But in case you’re unfamiliar: the new trend sees young women sharing recent photos of themselves with captions like “When I think about dating again but remember what my last relationship did to me”, before revealing what they looked like while dating their exes.
The contrast is often pretty extreme. In one post, a woman juxtaposes a picture of herself looking sleek and prim against an older picture where her hair is frizzier and her face significantly fuller. The comments section is full of people in total disbelief. “There is NO way that’s the same person,” one user writes. “Girl what did he do to you?”, reads another. A separate post with almost one million likes features a woman revealing that she was incarcerated while dating her previous partner. “I was in jail last year [because] of my ex too,” reads one comment under the post.
The idea of a ‘post-breakup glow-up’ is nothing new; the world famously swooned when Lady Diana stepped out looking radiant at a fundraising dinner wearing her infamous “revenge dress” following Charles’ public admission that he had been unfaithful to her during their marriage. But since the advent of social media, countless women have taken to the internet to share their new and improved appearances after calling time on their toxic relationships. On TikTok, over 82,000 posts have been shared with the tag #breakupglowup.
Allowing someone else to control how and when you move on will only delay your healing process.
It’s cheering to see women embracing being single when society still places a disproportionate amount of pressure on us to be in romantic relationships at all times. But at the same time, it’s worth noting that trends like these aren’t entirely innocent.
It’s arguably a little dispiriting to see women feeling compelled to demonstrate that they ‘won’ their breakups by ‘improving’ their looks – especially when, in most cases, these ‘post-breakup glow-ups’ involve losing a lot of weight and clearing their skin. In 2025, you’d have hoped that we’d moved past suggesting that ‘glowing up’ involves adhering to narrow, toxic, and often unachievable beauty standards. In any case, it’s high time we moved away from being so appearance-obsessed; shouldn’t we be more concerned about healing and glowing up internally in the wake of a difficult break-up, instead of pouring our energy into getting thinner and achieving poreless skin?
But on the other hand, it’s fair to say the vast majority of these recent post-breakup glow-up videos are pretty tongue-in-cheek. They’re not really about glowing up – instead, they’re more about celebrating shedding the dead weight of a dead-end relationship (à la those photos of Nicole Kidman looking ecstatic after finalising her divorce from Tom Cruise). In one of these trending TikToks, one woman appears tired and downbeat in her pre-breakup photos. Post-breakup, she appears a lot healthier. “I love how in every single one of these the before picture just looks like a tired mom, because these men literally turn you into their new mommy,” one comment under the post reads.
Because it is true that women still do a disproportionate amount of housework: one 2023 survey found 63% of women living with men said they did more than their fair share of the housework. Relatedly, women also bear the brunt of “the mental load”, a term which refers to the ‘thinking’ work needed to keep a household running smoothly; research published in 2024 found that mothers take on 71% of the mental load, taking charge of tasks ranging from planning meals to managing finances. With all this in mind, it’s little wonder that research shows women are happier being single than men – and that this new TikTok trend is rapidly gaining momentum.
We should try to resist the urge to give in entirely to heteropessimism. I know there are swathes of truly terrible men out there – trust me, I know – but there are some good ones too. It’s tempting to throw your hands up and give up on dating entirely when you’ve had some rotten luck; it’s easy to assume that all men will leave you feeling (and, yeah, looking) tired, stressed, and depressed, and that you’re better off ‘protecting your peace’. Of course, it’s totally fair enough if you genuinely don’t have any desire to enter into a long-term relationship – but if lasting love is something you want one day, try to make sure that you don’t close your heart off entirely just because you’ve been through the ringer with some fuckboys in the past.
But for the time being? I’m happy to get on board with any trend that encourages women to have a laugh at the expense of their toxic exes. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?
First came strawberry girl, then came peach, but 2025 is all about berry 🍇🍓
