Men are shaving off their eyelashes, and science says it is a terrible trade

The shaver buzzes. A man leans back, eyes shut, and the blades run right along his eyelids.

A few seconds later, his long lashes are stubble.

The clip was shared by the Turkish account Anında, and the replies poured in fast. Some people laughed. Some were horrified. A few just wanted to know why on earth a grown man would do this to his face.

He is not the first man to do it. And what he shaved off is far cleverer than it looks.

Why are men cutting their eyelashes?

Because some men think long lashes look too feminine.

The idea has been spreading for a while. In April 2025, CNN reported on videos from barber shops in Turkey and New Zealand where barbers trimmed men's lashes. Some used buzzing electric clippers. Others used plain hairdressing scissors, right next to the eye.

In one clip CNN described, a man asked his barber to cut his lashes after his wife said they looked too long and girly. The habit is tied to "looksmaxxing", a corner of the internet where men chase a harder, more rugged look through extreme grooming.

So the video from Anında did not come out of nowhere. It reopened a fight that keeps coming back.

What did people say about the eyelash shaving video?

The replies split into two camps, and neither was gentle.

The first camp called it fragile masculinity. One person crowned the man its "final boss". Another said he would regret it soon.

The second camp went straight for the eyes. People pointed out that lashes are there to protect you. One warned that dust could now blind him. A reply in Japanese said long lashes shield the eye from sand, dust and pollution.

Others took it personally. One reply asked why anyone would shorten their lashes, saying women are crazy about men with long ones. Another joked that they had already lost everything but the shirts on their backs, and now even eyelashes were under attack.

One person shared a story about their own father. They said he did the same thing once and could not close his eyes properly until the lashes grew back. It is one person's memory, not a medical finding, but it got plenty of nods.

Photo: Stansell Kenneth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

What are eyelashes actually for?

Almost nobody in the replies knew this part. Your eyelashes grow to a set length, and it is the same rule across a long list of animals.

In 2015, a team at Georgia Tech in the US measured eyes and lashes on preserved animal hides at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They looked at 22 mammal species, from humans to hedgehogs to giraffes.

They all shared roughly the same ratio. The lashes were about one third as long as the eye is wide.

That was too neat to be luck. So the team built a small wind tunnel, about two feet tall, with a fake eye inside. The "eye" was a tiny dish of water, 20 millimetres across. Mesh around it played the part of lashes.

Then they blew air at it and changed the lash length each time.

Lead author Guillermo Amador said lashes form a barrier that controls airflow and how fast the surface of the eye dries out. His colleague David Hu said that as short lashes grew longer, they slowed the air, creating a calm layer right above the eye.

In other words, the length the man shaved off was close to the perfect length for the job. The study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, found just one big exception. Elephants have extremely long lashes.

It is the kind of hidden design that makes you look twice at the human body, a bit like the man who says he gets by on 30 minutes of sleep and makes everyone question what we really need.

Is it bad to cut your eyelashes?

Eye doctors are not fans.

Vickie Lee, a consultant eye surgeon at Imperial College London, told CNN that lashes do far more than look nice. She said they protect the eye, trigger the blink reflex, reduce airflow, and filter sunlight and glare.

She also warned about what trimming leaves behind. A cut lash has a sharp, stubby end, she said, and that end can rub the surface of the eye and cause irritation.

Then there is the obvious danger. Any blade or shaver that close to an open eye can slip.

Photo: Lebu Ayiga / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Do eyelashes grow back if you cut them?

Yes. The good news for the man in the video is that trimming only takes off the tip. The root, deep in the eyelid, keeps working.

Lashes grow, rest, fall out and get replaced in a steady cycle. Lash-care guides put a full regrowth at roughly four to 12 weeks, with most lashes back within about two months.

For a month or two, though, his eyes lose part of their shield.

Why do long eyelashes look good on anyone?

The replies kept circling one sore point. Plenty of people find long lashes attractive, on men and women alike. One reply called the shortening craze plain nonsense.

There may be a simple reason the eye is drawn to them. Long, dark lashes frame the eye and make it stand out on the face. It is a big part of why mascara sells. Market research firm Mintel told CNN that mascara is the most used eye makeup in the US.

Which makes this one of the strangest trades online. Some people pay to add length. Others pay a barber to take it away.

If you enjoy the odd things people do to themselves, the story of the woman who lived 500 days alone in a cave is another trip.

Photo: Micky Zlimen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

So what length should eyelashes be?

The answer was settled long before anyone picked up a shaver.

Look at a hedgehog. Look at a giraffe. Look in the mirror. The lashes all land on the same rule, about one third of the eye's width. Animals are full of hidden design like this, and some of it lasts a very long time, as the baby mammoth frozen for 50,000 years shows.

At that length, lashes work as a tiny wind barrier that keeps your eyes wet and your view clear.

The man in the video wanted to look tougher. What he really did was take apart one of the best-engineered pieces of his own face. Within a couple of months, his body will grow it straight back to the same length, whether he likes it or not.