Have you seen the ‘Gen Z Pout’?

The pout has become a subject of bottomless analysis online, where the slightest of movements by a young person risks being declared a generational microtrend. (The designations are not always precise: Sennott, born in 1995, is a young millennial.)

Just last year, commentators identified a “Gen Z stare,” a blank look supposedly displayed by teens and 20-somethings when they are asked a question. There have also been skirmishes over side parts, skinny jeans and crew socks.

These labels may be catnip for influencers and media outlets, but how much do they actually register with those they theoretically describe?

“Sometimes I think it’s a little cringe: ‘Gen Z this,’ ‘Gen Z that,’” said Shaikh, a college freshman in Seattle. She thinks it is fun to weigh in occasionally, but she cannot see herself pursing her lips in imitation of a celebrity.

Saee Purohit, 22, who works in clothing merchandising in Princeton, New Jersey, said she did not typically pay much attention to the barrage of behaviors ascribed to Gen Z. But she heard about the pout a couple of weeks ago in a video about influencer Ashtin Earle. Purohit was surprised when she scrolled through some of her own posts afterward.

“I realized I kind of did the same thing,” she said.

The pout shares DNA with the duck face of the 2010s, a stiffer construction favored by Megan Fox and Kim Kardashian. The Gen-Z version was called out in 2022 by writer Rayne Fisher-Quann, who labeled it the “dissociative pout” in an article for i-D magazine.

The goal, she wrote, was “to look as though you just happened to be photographed whilst contemplating your abject disaffection with the world around you.”

Coinages like “Gen Z pout” tend to be rewarded on algorithmic social media platforms because they reliably generate debate, said Kelsey Weekman, the writer of the Gen Z culture newsletter “okay zoomer.” Young people like to weigh in on whether a label really applies to their generation. Some older people want to find out if they are still on the cutting edge.

All about the GenZ pout trend (Photo: Freepik)

Weekman said she thought the flurry of opinions about pouting was also a product of how much time people spend observing their own faces on screens. “Because of that, there’s going to be a total breakdown of every single thing you could possibly compare from generation to generation,” she said.

Perhaps the look is a way of mimicking the lip fillers that have gained popularity among younger people, said Elaine Ficarra, 25, who lives in Philadelphia and works at a biotechnology company.

Or maybe it is a matter of attitude. If millennials strain to appear flawless online, Ficarra said, young people today want to appear the opposite. “Our generation is trying not to come off as try-hards,” she added

Paradoxically, looking so disaffected can take quite a bit of effort. When Ficarra tried out a pout last week during her lunch break, she cracked herself up while puckering her lips awkwardly at her phone camera.

“It’s not that natural,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.