Every generation experiences different trends – popular fashions of that certain time. For the current generation, that seems to be completely run by social media, and these trends are truly expanding and becoming even more popular and socially praised and, in some cases, criticized.

Current social media beauty trends present a few of the most popular makeup tricks passed down from makeup artists and beauty gurus, which include contouring, highlighting and strobing.

Contouring and highlighting are the act of using dramatically lighter and darker shades of makeup to give shape and to an area, and it is typically used to add definition to the face. Highlighting can bring features of the face forward, while contouring recedes areas, such as the cheekbones.

Strobing has been called the “lazy person’s contouring,” and focuses strictly on applying an illuminating highlighter (a shade of makeup much lighter than your skin that may have sparkle or shimmer in it) where the light would naturally hit your face, such as cheek bones, nose, brow bone and chin.

Stemming from these trends, social media has also put forth more extreme beauty trends, such as clown contouring, knife contouring, glitter freckles and glitter brows.

Clown contouring was made popular by YouTuber BellaDeLune and has been crowned as a new way to extreme color-correct, highlight and contour.

She does so by using white, red, pink and light purple makeup to contour her face, putting different colors on different parts of her face, giving her the illusion of wearing clown makeup, before being blended out to look more natural.

“Makeup is already expensive enough as it, and I’m sure this woman had to buy several products to get all these colors she used,” said junior nursing major Rachel Hadel.

Although the tutorial BellaDeLune gives in the video seems complicated and has received criticism, it doesn’t seem to be turning beauty lovers away. The video has been viewed more than 5 million times and has been imitated by many other social media personalities.

Knife contouring was made popular by YouTuber Barbiegutz and is just like normal contouring and highlighting, except the lines used to add definition to the face are done by tracing the edge of knife on your face.

“I’m not too familiar with knife contouring and would be super weary of even trying it. I’m too clumsy for that,” said senior mass media major Vanessa Nunez.

Glitter freckles are just what they sound like. Crafting glitter is applied directly to the face, typically on and around the nose, eyes and cheeks, to create the look of artificial freckles.

Glitter freckles have been criticized by some, saying that the idea may exploit those who do have natural freckles and may have struggled with accepting and learning to love them.

“Coming from a person who is pursuing a degree in the medical field, I know that having glitter on your face can possibly end up in your eyes,” Hadel said. “This could not only causes irritation in the eyes, but the skin as well.”

On the same topic of glitter use in everyday makeup, glitter brows have become very popular.  Glitter brows are achieved by applying a water-based eyelash glue to your eyebrows, and then directly applying glitter.

As a response to many women wearing glitter brows, many men started the trend of glitter beards, which is when glitter is applied directly to a man’s beard, giving off a magical effect.

There’s no doubt that social media has produced interesting beauty trends, and many praise the way social media is handling the trends. Nunez, also a lover of beauty trends, showed her support for the sometimes-complicated routines.

“Makeup, in general, is a creative outlet. I think trying these weird trends feels like a sort of accomplishment but it also makes you think outside of the box,” said Nunez.