While scrolling through my TikTok For You page the last few weeks, I’ve repeatedly seen the latest beauty trend being featured: girls cannot stop sharing their shock and surprise over tubing mascara. Going viral for its ability to be wiped off in seconds with only water, tubing mascara has drastically risen in popularity.
Tubing mascara differs from standard mascara due to the polymers that wrap tubes around each eyelash, creating faux extensions rather than painting the lashes with an oil-based pigment. Most tubing mascaras are easily wiped off in seconds, which makes it easier to remove since there’s less force being applied.
Although many people have just discovered tubing mascara recently, it has been around since the mid-1990s. For those of you like myself who regularly end your days with raccoon eyes, this probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard of it.
I first discovered tubing mascara about six years ago when I was in high school, searching online for mascaras that don’t run. I had tried many different brands, formulas, and waterproof ones, but despite all my efforts, I always had rings of the product around my eyes by the end of the day, if not by lunch.
As a minimum wage worker, I looked for the cheapest recommendation of mascara. An article I read introduced me to a $5 unbranded one that could only be ordered on Amazon and wasn’t found in any stores near me. Reviewers were raving about it so I decided to buy it on a whim. I mean, I only had to pay $5.
After the mascara I ordered arrived a few days later, I wore it for the first time and quickly realized it would change my life. Not only did it extend my short lashes more than any other mascara had, but hours later, it looked the same on me. Gone were my days of running to the bathroom in between class periods to wipe my under eyes and eyelids as my old products melted off.
At one point, I noticed that my new mascara had a completely different formula than any I had tried before. When I would take it off at night, what I now know as polymer tubes would come off my lashes. I figured that they were what was causing such a difference in my life, and I was exactly right in my assumption.
I continued using my mascara for years before embarking on more research about it, which was when I discovered what tubing mascara is and was able to find more easily accessible brands that carried it. It also led me to research more about why my eyes are so excessively oily.
One of the reasons for oily eyes is humid climates (thank you very much, Florida). As someone with very hooded eyes, this checked out with my experience. My next course of action was trying to find an eyelid primer that kept my eyeshadow in place (but I have yet to be successful).
I rely on tubing mascara for my day-to-day routine, but I’m most appreciative of it whenever I go to an event or have a night out. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve run out of it and instead used a standard formula mascara on a Friday night, just to come home with the worst rings around my eyes. The combination of tubing mascara and a good setting spray guarantees my makeup still looks fresh at the end of the day.
In environments like concerts, where it’s crowded and hot so you’re bound to sweat, I never have any of my tubing mascara run. Maybe a few flakes of it have, but those are easily wiped away and don’t ruin the rest of my makeup, unlike an oil-based formula mascara that requires more effort to be wiped away and carries my concealer and eyeshadow with it.
I love the way tubing mascara amplifies my makeup looks because it extends my lashes so much. Whether I’m doing a smoky eye or a “clean girl” look, my lashes always elevate the results when I use the product.
I recently tried the specific tubing mascara that caused the TikTok craze about it overall, the e.l.f Lash XTNDR Tubing Mascara, and fell in love with the outcome! My lashes were so long and stayed upright after I used my eyelash curler (which doesn’t always happen, even with other brands of tubing mascara). Also, of course, the product never ran down my face. I completely understand the hype and will begin rotating it with my other mascaras in the future.
With or without excessively oily eyelids, tubing mascara is an enhancing and beneficial mascara that TikTok is right to be obsessed with. I’ve veered from my loyalty to it a few times but always went right back to it because nothing else compares. I’m glad the trend has introduced so many to what is, in my opinion, the superior mascara formula, so they can enjoy it too.
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