The passport challenge: the new TikTok trend of the moment?
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In just 6 years, TikTok has become the place to birth trends. Between WTF videos, dances, tips, and hacks, content is popping up everywhere, and trends are being picked up by creators all around the globe. The beauty universe, which is very prominent on the platform, has recently seen a new trend that is sweeping through like a tidal wave: the passport challenge. Its promise: to have a perfect photo on your passport! But between beauty tips and the creation of complexes, here’s what really lies behind this beauty trend on TikTok…
Chase away the natural and it won’t come back galloping on TikTok… This is how we could describe the passport challenge that has flooded the social network since last April. With thousands of views on TikTok, this trend promises you a perfect passport photo for the next 10 years where it will follow you. A tempting promise given the collector-worthy photos that appear on our identity documents, making us look like:
- A corpse or criminal, depending on the intensity of the blinding white light
- Someone who has won the award for the biggest bags under their eyes
So when this TikTok trend tells us that we can put our horrendous photos in the past, and maybe become the new Tyra Banks (for those who don’t remember, the model was booked solely based on her passport photo), our curiosity is instantly piqued, just like the thousands of TikTok users who have shared or even tried the passport challenge.
How to succeed in the TikTok passport challenge?
To nail your makeup for the passport challenge before stepping into the photo booth, you need: a good brush stroke, a bit of technique, and above all, not to be afraid of looking somewhat like a paint pot in the end. Because yes, while passport photos are supposed to be natural, the TikTok challenge takes it from a whole different angle, meaning not leaving a single area of your face without makeup. So don’t hesitate to be heavy-handed with the foundation and bronzer.
It was with the video from creator Georgia Barratt that the beauty trend of the passport challenge broke through on TikTok. She explained the initial idea: to look fresh on your passport for its ten-year validity. Then filming a makeup tutorial to recreate the look step by step, the TikTok video captured users with the final reveal once the photos were printed. This led to thousands of replications of the look by people in search of a full glam passport photo!
Natural beauty or paint pot?
To achieve the makeup for the passport challenge, the young woman explains that the key is symmetry and contouring (lots and lots of contouring). These two points allow for reshaping the face, especially by slimming it down. Starting by setting her eyebrows with gel, the creator continues by redrawing their base with a light stroke to enhance their symmetry. Then comes a ballet of illuminating serum adding glow to the skin, primer and foundation, concealer, bronzer, highlighter, blush, mattifying powder… Redefining the shape of her face, with as many layers as a mille-feuille.
By playing with certain areas and shades, Georgia Barratt perfects her passport challenge look by slimming her nose, elongating her chin, hollowing her cheeks, and highlighting her cheekbones… Then comes the moment to elongate the eyes with a line of eyeliner extending from the lashes, but also in the inner corner. Not everyone can be a doe-eyed beauty. The final touch is applied to an enhanced mouth with a lip pencil and plumping gloss, giving the impression of having gotten stuck in the neck of a Cristalline bottle.
With hair slicked back and Kim K-style makeup, the creator presents the result in a photo. With the photobooth’s overly powerful flash, the result shows a “perfect face by current beauty standards”, frozen, without dark circles, wrinkles, imperfections, or redness… A magazine-type photo, but which will likely cause confusion at customs, after 8 hours of flight, with mascara running down bags as low as a baggy and a T-zone as humid as Arizona…
The look from the passport challenge has thus been revisited multiple times, with more “natural” variants while retaining the full glam aspect of the look. Some have opted for half false lashes, as opposed to eyeliner, to add a touch of volume more subtly.
The success of the passport challenge underscores the interest users have in the world of makeup. Initially deployed mainly on YouTube, TikTok now allows for even more creators and beauty trends to gain traction. However, between positive aspects and negative influences on young people, the line is thin and quickly crossed.
Social media has quickly become the best platform to communicate passions, exchange ideas with the world, and birth trends like the passport challenge. This is how we’ve seen makeup artists launching their channels and accounts to share their tips and advice so that everyone can try their hand at makeup. For example, we can take the case of makeup artist Marion Moretti, aka Marion Chameleon, trained at the Make Up Forever academy, who offers looks or product reviews on YouTube and her networks.
These profiles have thus allowed others to take an interest in the world of makeup and cosmetics, and gain skills. New vocations have emerged, both among girls and boys, like content creator Gaëlle Garcia Diaz, who has notably launched her own makeup brand, Martine Cosmetics.
Gaining visibility and experience, these profiles in the makeup universe are also highlighted through shows, such as Glow Up launched on Netflix, which is returning for a fourth season. Pitting profiles more or less entrenched in the field against each other, the show showcases many people sharing makeup looks on social media and who have become known in this way.
Makeup videos on social media are thus a way to propel one’s career while sharing tips to recreate different looks and make makeup more accessible to everyone.
Why is TikTok dangerous in terms of the beauty industry?
Social media often finds itself at the heart of scandals. This is particularly true for TikTok, which is already banned in many countries and recently targeted as spyware, with a request for removal from Apple and Google phones in the USA by the federal operations commissioner. Beyond questions regarding the dubious data management by the app, the content itself is controversial.
On one hand, with dangerous TikTok challenges, like the recent labello or scarf challenge, which have had dramatic consequences. And on the other hand, with challenges and discourse on social media that impact the mental health of its users, often young and impressionable.
The passport challenge is one of those contents that promotes an idealized idea of beauty. An image of beauty that has been built over the past few years, based on icons like the Kardashian clan, with a total absence of naturalness, makeup in layers upon layers, all sprinkled with Botox injections and butt enhancements that would make Poltronesofa chairs envious.
This trend, bolstered by the spread of contouring, and especially by thousands of filters, has contributed to the ideology of beauty being reduced to a thin face shape and a pouting mouth. Thus, users who previously had no complexes found themselves nourished by new fixations on their slightly square jawlines or round noses according to the “norms”… To the point of either becoming painters and spending 2 hours giving their faces a facelift to diminish these new complexes. Or even resorting to cosmetic surgery, which has seen a surge in demand recently.
Thus, the passport challenge, with its dozens of contouring steps to reshape one’s face, also contributes to the propagation of a very false idea of beauty, which is sad to see.
We can all have small complexes that we wish to hide, but under no circumstances should we let social media or society dictate what we are supposed to look like in order to be considered beautiful! And if you want to hide dark circles, swap the 5 layers of makeup for facial yoga!
