The new “How hard did puberty hit you?” challenge is a spinoff of another widely popular TikTok trend where people share their transformations, also known as glow-ups. The hashtag #glowup on Instagram produces more than 4 million search results, and the same hashtag has over 14.7 billion views on TikTok.
Not only are there 10-year glow-up challenges, there is also an entire genre of YouTube videos dedicated to the “24-hour glow-up challenge.” In these videos, people challenge themselves to become prettier, or to glow up, within the period of one day.
But as with many popular things on the internet, the trend hasn't gone without some criticism. Some claim that the internet’s obsession with dramatic physical changes does more harm than good. On the other hand, there’s a truly inspirational side to the glow-up videos. Gender transitioning or coming out can be daunting experiences for anyone, but looking at how far you’ve come and how much you’ve accomplished can be liberating for many LGBTQ youth. Such TikTok videos reflect a more profound kind of transformation and the sense of liberation that show that any glow-up, no matter what, is possible and that you’re all worth it.
Bored Panda reached out to social media influencer Nina Lin, with a solid fanbase of 2.3M followers and 79.5k likes in total. Nina shared her puberty glow-up video featuring two pics of her incredible transformation on TikTok, which went viral.
“I got into TikTok because my friends wanted me to start posting, they have always been on me about blowing up and always kept saying that people need to see this stuff, because I do the dumbest things,” she recounted.“I used to hate TikTok,” Nina said as she honestly didn’t expect her video to blow up as “everything just happened so fast.”
To everyone else and those who struggle about their identity and finding inner confidence, Nina said that “all I have to say is nobody heckin' cares, so why do you? Everyone is too busy focusing on their insecurity, so do you have to be too?” Nina believes that it takes more courage to be yourself than to be “liked” by everyone. “They DON’T pay your bills,” she added.
