There Is Something So Ugly About TikTok’s “Bunny Pretty” Trend

Jul 25, 2023

By Chloe Laws

Lions, tigers, and bears are shockingly some of the least frightening animals on our radar at the moment. What has us saying “Oh, my!” is right on our screens: “Are you deer, cat, bunny, or fox pretty?” a robotic voice asks me through the speaker of my phone.

The question feels accusatory, and I can’t say I know how to answer. In fact, I hadn’t ever thought about it before this moment. The rational part of my brain tells me I’m human pretty — period. But the other part — soiled by over-consumption and hours of social media a day — tells me to keep watching to find out the “correct” answer. I do… and it turns out, I’m “bunny pretty” because of my “round cheeks”, “feminine features,” and “button nose.”

I’m made to feel that I’m in good company. My screen informs me that Adut Akech, Selena Gomez, and Amanda Seyfried (all of whom, I’m aware, I look nothing like) all also have been labeled under this “category.” This trend is a two-headed beast: some of the viral content simply groups images of celebrities into their respective animal categories, while other creators have designed filters that audiences can use to distort their features into the likeness of either a deer, cat, bunny, or fox. These are just a handful of the latest filters on TikTok altering our appearance using artificial intelligence.

In general, social media thrives off of categorization. Trends — if we can even call them that anymore — create a false sense of belonging, a community of sorts, a common space that you can be a part of for the fleeting time they remain relevant in the algorithm. It’s human instinct to seek likeness in one another. “Human beings are wired to connect — and we have the most complex and interesting social behavior out of all animals,” says Michael Platt, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. However, oftentimes, it can be sinister and embedded in ideals that are counterproductive, like misogyny, beauty standards, and fetishization.

In particular, this trend gave me an instant feeling of ick. And made me wonder, why are we so obsessed with likening women to animals?

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Cat eyes have monopolized the shape of our eyeliner and direction of eyeshadow brushes for decades — but these makeup techniques have generally been about defining your eyes versus changing them. However, since the introduction of social media, filters have been encouraging the world to transform into all different creatures.

“Fox eyes,” for example, has 369 thousand posts with the hashtag on Instagram to date, and an entire TikTok makeup challenge was born from it. Fox eyes are described by influencers as “sultry,” “snatched,” “upturned,” and, as the name suggests, “fox-like.” But the “fox eye” is particularly different because it encourages people to change how their eye shape naturally appears, with makeup that gives the illusion of an almond shape and posing by pulling the sides of the face up and away from its center. Like so many beauty trends, models Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid are the reference.

Understandably, many East Asian people found the trend offensive and called it out for cultural appropriation. Issa Okamoto, a content creator, took to Instagram and explained why: “My eyes are not your beauty trend. I’m proud to be BOTH Chinese/Taiwanese and Japanese but it took me years to be proud of these NATURAL #foxeyes,” she wrote. Okamoto continued writing,“it makes me so so SO sad to see wypipo [white people] posting photos doing the same pose (pulling their eyes back) that kids used to do to make me feel bad about my asian-NESS. OKAY so it’s 2020 and NOW it’s cool to have these foxy eyes. I’ve had these forever b. No trend needed. My culture is not your costume.”

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By Aliza Kelly

By Gabi Thorne

By Gabi Thorne

Not long after, a wave of “doe eyes” — a trend asking women if they had “siren or doe eyes?” — caught our gaze. Beauty experts then began creating content that aimed to show how just a flick of eyeliner could get you into character. “Siren eyes” require a long sharp wing, with the inner corners of the eyes being accentuated. “Doe eyes” are softer, and mimic that “deer-caught-in-the-headlights” bright-eyed expression, with a white-lined waterline and a short wing that stops before reaching the inner eye corner.

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Of course, you can also take the easy route, with no makeup required. So many existing filters on TikTok subtly change your face to fit the characteristics of animals (highlighting the tip of your nose, elongating your eyeliner, overlining your lips). We are set up for success to confine ourselves to what is deemed “beautiful” at any given moment.

What hasn’t changed drastically are beauty standards, which continue to exclude those who fall outside of the narrow unwritten definitions society has established. Every time we open a social media app, videos flash across the screen with examples of “pretty” — and the women in so many viral videos are able-bodied, thin, and white (with rare exceptions like Jennie from Blackpink and Rihanna).

Prettiness has evolved into assimilation and uniformity. It’s, therefore, not surprising that people on TikTok are trying to find likeless through looks. A lot of young girls comment saying they don’t know which animal they are. Some even joke that they are “rat-pretty,” still seeking to be part of a club even if they understand its absurdity.

This trend of animalizing women’s looks is particularly worrying to me because it lies at the intersection of multiple toxic beauty ideals. Propelling the trend are filters, using AI, which have been proven to affect self-esteem. StyleSeat recently found that 70% of Americans think beauty filters are bad for self-esteem, and 60% think they're bad for mental health. Most of us don’t, and will not be able to, look like the women heralded as the epitome of these “animal-pretty” standards without drastic measures. The women put on these pedestals often have access to the best plastic surgeons and makeup artists in the world; luxuries most people do not have. A new culture has arisen where young women watch celebrities change their appearance based on the latest trend (fox eyes and the rise of thread lifts are just two examples), and follow suit. However, once a trend goes out of style, as it always does, it cannot be reversed so easily for those of us without a surgeon on speed dial.

By Aliza Kelly

By Gabi Thorne

By Gabi Thorne

On the surface, it may look like the modernized Buzzfeed quiz; but unlike finding out what type of potato you are, or what Taylor Swift song is your vibe, this is about your body — and there’s no pencil eraser or delete button.

But why this obsession with animals? I think it might have something to do with all the inexplicably sexy cartoon characters that have graced our screens (Lola Bunny, Angie from Shark Tale, Max Goof, to name a few), and the rise of AI porn that incorporates anime animals into the likeness of women. Beauty standards continue to get more and more unobtainable… maybe it was only natural that the next step in this avalanche to make women feel bad was to throw animals in the mix. Comparison to other women doesn’t cut it anymore.

We have lost touch with what we actually look like, always trying to look different than ourselves. Every day there’s a new way to be wrong in our natural looks, a new change to make, a new ideal. I want to free myself from this pressure and remove the term “bunny pretty” from my mind. I am, and can only ever be, “me” pretty. The same goes for you, too.

Let’s rise up against the bunnies of the world, and embrace our ratness.

More TikTok trends:

Now watch Jennifer Garner react to TikTok trends.

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