Something that has become increasingly noticeable on social media is the habit of taking perfectly ordinary human experiences, giving them catchy new labels and then turning them into entertainment. It is an incredibly effective way to drive engagement because people recognise themselves in the content, comment “that’s me”, tag their friends and share it widely. The algorithm rewards that behaviour, creators gain views and followers, and before long a phrase that did not exist a few months earlier is suddenly being spoken about as though it has always been part of our vocabulary.
“Luteal uglies” is a perfect example. There is nothing new about women feeling “out of sorts” in the days leading up to their period. Hormonal fluctuations can affect mood, skin, bloating and self-perception, and that has been recognised for years. A complex physiological and psychological experience has been condensed into a memorable phrase that lends itself perfectly to TikTok reels, Instagram captions and relatable memes. The more dramatic the content, the better it performs and this is where I begin to feel uncomfortable.
There is a very important distinction between raising awareness and creating a trend. Encouraging women to understand their menstrual cycle, recognise hormonal changes and seek help when needed is undoubtedly a positive thing because education empowers people and potentially reduces shame. It helps women realise they are not alone which is really important; none of that is in question but what concerns me is the point at which education of something that is not something that women can choose to opt out from has been turned into something to gain popularity.
Once a phrase becomes marketable, it develops a life of its own and every emotion suddenly fits inside the label. Every bad hair day, every photograph someone dislikes, every moment of self-doubt becomes evidence of having the “luteal uglies”. The label itself almost invites women to examine themselves through that lens because Instead of asking, “why do I feel fat today?”, they begin asking, “Is this the luteal uglies?” It sounds like a subtle difference, but psychologically it is significant.
Human beings are remarkably susceptible to suggestion – we are pattern-seeking creatures because spotting these patterns was essential for survival back in the days of caves and sabre toothed tigers. Recognising that certain berries made people ill, that dark clouds often preceded storms or that rustling grass could signal a predator gave our ancestors a better chance of staying alive. Our brains therefore evolved to constantly search for relationships between events, even when those relationships are weak or sometimes do not exist at all. In the modern world, that same instinct can lead us to connect ordinary experiences with newly popular labels, particularly when those labels are repeated thousands of times across social media. The more often we encounter an explanation, the more familiar and believable it begins to feel, regardless of whether it accurately reflects our own experience. Give people a name for something and many will begin noticing it more frequently; give it enough visibility and they begin expecting it, give it enough social media spread and people begin identifying with it. Psychology has demonstrated repeatedly that expectation influences perception. If you tell someone they are likely to experience something, they are more likely to notice it when it occurs. Social media amplifies that process on an extraordinary scale – which in reality is more “Savers” margarine than high quality butter.
There is also another layer that merits discussion: we already live in a society that places enormous emphasis on appearance. particularly for women. Many spend years battling unrealistic beauty standards, comparing themselves to edited images and questioning whether they are attractive enough, slim enough, young enough or simply “enough”. Against that backdrop, introducing another fashionable label that effectively says: “here’s the period of every month when you’ll probably look and feel awful,” hardly feels like progress! Even if that is not the intention, the message can easily become internalised.
Imagine being a teenager already struggling with confidence or someone recovering from an eating disorderl; consider a woman navigating through the menopause/ perimenopause and genuinely finding her every day emotionally difficult. Now their social feeds are full of women joking that they become hideous for two weeks every month whilst looking perfectly groomed in front of a ring light… It may be presented with humour, but repeated exposure has consequences. Humour does not make messages psychologically neutral – sometimes it is precisely humour that allows ideas to bypass our critical thinking because they are framed as something to entertain others.
The other unintended consequence is the creation of a kind of social conformity because once a phenomenon becomes popular online, there is often subtle pressure to recognise it in yourself – nobody wants to be left out of the conversation. Social psychologists have long understood the power of social proof: if everyone appears to be experiencing something, many people naturally begin to question whether they do too. That does not necessarily mean they are inventing symptoms, but could mean that they are interpreting normal experiences through a newly fashionable framework.
We have seen this pattern repeatedly: a new phrase emerges and spreads rapidly; monetisers produce endless variations, the news media starts reporting on it. Before long it’s treated as established cultural language rather than simply one way of describing a familiar experience. The cycle repeats itself over and over again.
It also raises uncomfortable questions about responsibility within journalism. I recently noticed a BBC article discussing the “luteal uglies” which included comments from the owner of a clinic for women. Whatever one’s views on hormone replacement therapy, it is impossible to ignore that this clinic featured in Panorama following allegations concerning prescribing practices and concerns about women allegedly receiving excessive hormone treatment who later developed serious illnesses. Those matters generated significant public concern and understandably left many women asking difficult questions about trust, consent and clinical judgement. My concern here is psychological rather than legal. How must it feel for women who believe they were harmed, or who remain deeply anxious about the treatment they received, to see the same public figure repeatedly presented by a major broadcaster as a leading authority on women’s health without any obvious acknowledgement that many patients continue to have unanswered questions? Public confidence is built not only through expertise but also through recognising the experiences of those who feel let down. Ignoring that emotional reality risks making those women feel invisible all over again and harm continues.
That, in many ways, reflects the wider issue with social media itself because it has an extraordinary ability to simplify complicated subjects into digestible bite size narratives. It rewards certainty over nuance, relatability over evidence, confidence over caution – life is never black or white. The women who quietly cope without posting rarely become visible. The women whose experiences do not fit neatly into a viral trend rarely become part of the conversation. Those who feel differently may even begin questioning their own experience because it does not resemble what everyone else appears to be describing.
The irony is that many of these conversations begin with good intentions. Wanting women to understand their bodies and remove stigma is important and this where where open discussion is important. Yet somewhere along the line we seem to have developed a habit of branding every normal aspect of human existence, wrapping it in clever terminology and turning it into content for monetisers, shock value. Once something becomes content, engagement becomes part of the equation, and engagement is not driven by balance, but by emotion.
Perhaps that is what concerns me most because I believe that awareness should leave people feeling informed, understood and reassured. Trends often leave people feeling that they have acquired yet another flaw to monitor. There is a world of difference between saying, “Some women experience changes in body image during the luteal phase,” and repeatedly presenting videos that effectively say, “Congratulations, here comes the part of the month where you’re ugly again.” One approach encourages understanding and the other risks encouraging expectation, comparison and self-surveillance; for women who already feel vulnerable, that distinction matters far more than a viral hashtag ever will.
People seem increasingly willing to let some of the most important biological stages of human life be narrated, labelled and defined by whoever has managed to build the biggest following and the brightest ring light. For us women, puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause and everything in between have become fertile ground for people whose primary qualification is their ability to attract clicks rather than any qualifications in medicine or science – an oddly dangerous position to find ourselves in. Most of us would never choose a midwife who conducted antenatal appointments by shouting sweeping claims from behind a ring light, or a GP who diagnosed patients via dramatic TikTok reels, yet millions are happy to absorb health advice from online randomers whose income often depends on making ordinary experiences sound alarming, unique or in need of their latest product – now add AI and it just gets murkier… Somewhere along the way, expertise has become optional while algorithmically engineered engagement has become “front page news”, and that should concern all of us.
Perhaps the next viral trend will be the andropause – after all, why should women have all the catchy labels? Give social media a few weeks and I’m sure we’ll be hearing about phrases like “Testosterone Tantrums”, “The Silver Fox Spiral”, “The Convertible Compulsion”, “The Barbecue Identity Crisis”, “The Golf Gear Awakening” or “The ‘Still Got It’ Syndrome”, all neatly packaged into bite-sized reels complete with hashtags, affiliate links and self-appointed experts. And, of course, there will inevitably be the inevitable hashtag… #NeedToBuyaFerrari.
It sounds ridiculous because it is and yet that’s precisely my point: we have become so accustomed to branding perfectly ordinary stages of life that we risk forgetting the difference between genuine health awareness and turning human biology into the latest piece of social media entertainment.
