Is that a sneeze coming on or are you just Gen Z?
It’s been ten years since the word “selfie” was listed as the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year, during which millennials on social media have made iconic such facial formations as the oft-mocked duck face or throwing up an ironic peace sign.
Now, there’s a new pose en vogue, and it’s been dubbed the “scrunch face.”
“You know how we always go through the phases of the faces every girl makes? This is what it is right now,” TikToker @Starwberrymilkmob said in a viral TikTok video as she then proceeded to scrunch her nose, squint her eyes and raise her mouth in a cartoonish grin — as if she’d foolishly taken a whiff of spicy seasoning.
This scrunch face pose has overtaken TikTok, BeReal and Instagram to become Gen Z’s newest popular pose, influencers allege. The video calling out the furrowed face phase has gathered 1.1 million views and hundreds of comments as TikTokers backed up the observation.
“It literally is,” @CELLYY.9 agreed.
“YOURE SO RIGHT OMG,” @Emily3llis commented.
TikToker user @dobbby1234 explained, “It’s the ‘im having so much fun’ pose.”
Some hadn’t even noticed their go-to pose was so trendy. “I didn’t even realize I was buying into a trend,” @ryannstrngflw said.
Scroll through any of Gen Z’s favorite social media apps and you’re sure to come across girls scrunching their faces as they dance or guys mischievously squinting on the couch in their BeReal update.
Abby Roberts, a beauty influencer on TikTok, explained that a lot of these poses become popular because of the social media apps they’re primarily being posted on.
“On TikTok, everyone loves facial expressions for some reason, because it’s quite a young audience and you have to really be emotive and have it go with the music and stuff,” she said in a recent interview with Vox. “So everyone does all these crazy faces; like, sticking their tongue out is a big thing as well. I guess it’s just translated into photos.”
Others have also noted that scrunching your face is one of the first facial expressions people nail down when they’re an infant, which may also play a part in the fondness of this face.
“There’s this hyperfixation on being a cute little baby,” Brittany Tomlinson, a 26-year-old TikToker and comedian with 7.4 million followers on the app, also told Vox about current social media trends.
Meanwhile, Zoomers continue to set themselves apart from their elders in ways both aesthetic and practical, from their choice of socks to their life aspirations.