Men Shaving Eyelashes: Why Doctors Say This ‘Masculine’ Trend Could Wreck Your Eyes
Just when it feels like the internet has run out of new ways to talk young men into questionable grooming choices, along comes another one. Men shaving eyelashes off entirely, in pursuit of looking more “masculine,” is now circulating widely enough that an actual optometrist felt compelled to step in and explain, patiently, why this is a genuinely bad idea. It’s a strange one even by the standards of recent viral trends, if only because the trade-off is so lopsided — a marginal, imagined aesthetic gain against a very real risk sitting an inch from your eyeball.
What Is The Men Shaving Eyelashes Trend, Exactly?
The logic behind it is about as thin as it sounds: some men have decided eyelashes read as feminine, so removing them entirely supposedly makes a face look tougher, more angular, more “masculine.” A viral TikTok video showing one man shaving his lashes off has racked up more than 36 million views, and it’s far from the only one — other clips show people trimming their lashes down with scissors instead, as though that’s the safer alternative.
It isn’t a huge leap to see where this fits. It follows a similar pattern to what Louis Theroux uncovered while filming his Netflix documentary on the manosphere earlier this year — a corner of the internet where increasingly extreme, often painful acts get reframed as markers of masculinity, with very little pushback until the physical consequences show up.
Why Eyelashes Exist In The First Place
Here’s the part the trend skips entirely: eyelashes aren’t just decorative. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, they act as a physical barrier and sensory trigger that catches dust, debris, and sweat before it reaches the eye’s surface, while also setting off a protective blink reflex the moment something gets too close. Dr Paramdeep Bilkhu, clinical advisor at The College of Optometrists, explained to LADbible that lashes help keep dirt, dead skin, and sweat out of the eyes, reduce infection risk, and cut down on UV exposure to the eye’s surface. Take them away, and none of that protection disappears in theory — it just stops functioning, because the hardware that was supposed to do the job is gone.
That sensitivity to touch is doing real work, too. It’s specifically what triggers the reflexive blink that protects the eye when something — an insect, a speck of dust, a stray branch — comes flying toward it. Remove the lashes, and that early-warning system gets noticeably slower, since the eye now has to rely on actually seeing the threat rather than feeling it first.
The Real Risk: What Happens When It Goes Wrong
Beyond the loss of protection, there’s the small matter of what it takes to remove eyelashes in the first place — a blade or a pair of scissors, held extremely close to one of the most delicate parts of the human body. According to BBC Science, a single slip is genuinely all it would take to damage the cornea or the tear film, the thin liquid layer that keeps the eye’s surface lubricated and functioning properly.
Dr Bilkhu didn’t soften this part either, warning bluntly that “you are risking real harm to your eyes” by attempting to remove or trim lashes with a shaver or scissors. Shavers held that close to the eyelid can cause cuts and nicks to already thin, sensitive skin, while scissors introduce the added danger of a penetrating injury if anything moves unexpectedly — a sneeze, a flinch, a shaky hand. None of that is a hypothetical worst-case scenario; it’s simply what tends to happen when a sharp object meets soft tissue an inch away from the eyeball.
If something does go wrong, the warning signs of a corneal injury are worth knowing regardless of how it happened. Cleveland Clinic notes that redness, watering, blurred vision, and a persistent feeling that something is stuck in the eye are all signs of a scratched cornea that generally warrant a same-day visit to an eye doctor rather than waiting it out.
If You’ve Already Done It: What Happens Next
For anyone who’s already gone through with it, there’s at least some reassuring news. Eyelashes do grow back, though Dr Bilkhu noted it can take several months for them to fully return. In the meantime, he recommends taking extra care during washing, grooming, or applying anything near the eyes to avoid products getting in, and wearing eye protection in dusty or outdoor conditions where the missing lashes would normally have been doing some of that filtering work automatically.
Another Entry In A Growing List Of Risky ‘Maxxing’ Trends
Men shaving eyelashes doesn’t exist in isolation — it’s the latest addition to a wider pattern of self-improvement trends aimed at young men that trade actual evidence for viral shock value. It sits in roughly the same category as bone smashing, the trend involving repeatedly striking the face with blunt objects in hopes of reshaping bone structure, which has already been linked to concussions, facial fractures, and in at least one reported case, blindness. Both trends share the same basic flaw: a made-up mechanism of action, confidently explained online, that has no real grounding in how the human body actually works.
Not everything filed under “looksmaxxing” is dangerous — plenty of it is just skincare, fitness, or grooming advice dressed up in trend language. But men shaving eyelashes belongs firmly in the riskier bucket, somewhere closer to bone smashing than to anything resembling sound self-care. As Dr Bilkhu’s advice makes clear, the eyes don’t really negotiate on this one: the lashes were doing a job, and removing them doesn’t make anyone look tougher so much as it makes them more exposed. If there’s a lesson buried in yet another one of these trends, it’s probably the same one as always — the body usually had a reason for doing things the way it already does them.
