Listen up, beautiful goblins of the internet: your eyes? The ones that aren’t exactly the same shape? The ones that make you feel like an abstract Picasso painting when you try to do eyeliner? Those are not a flaw. They are character development.
Somewhere along the line, we got tricked into thinking that symmetry = beauty. Which is weird, because all the most interesting people have faces that are just a little off-kilter. (Florence Pugh. Tilda Swinton. Adam Driver. The entirety of the Renaissance.) You think the Mona Lisa is hanging in the Louvre because she had a perfectly even eye crease? Absolutely not.
Your asymmetrical eyes make your face dynamic. Expressive. Impossible to turn into some AI-generated beauty standard abomination. They are the reason you don’t look like a creepy, uncanny valley doll.
And yet, here we are. Staring at ourselves in the mirror, tilting our heads, squinting, and—if you’re anything like me—eventually concluding that one of your eyes is actively rebelling against the rest of your face.
Exhibit A: My Own Face, Which Is Doing Its Best
Here is what I know to be true: one of my eyes is always more awake than the other. It’s like one side of my face is deeply invested in staying alert, while the other side is three seconds away from curling up with a blanket and taking a nap.
And because high school is a time of innocence, wonder, and deeply unnecessary commentary about your appearance, people pointed it out to me when I was younger. Which meant that for years, I was obsessed with the fact that my eyes were uneven. As if this was the defining feature of my face. As if this was something people were discussing in their free time, meeting up at coffee shops to whisper, “Did you see her? Her left eye is slightly smaller. We simply cannot let this stand.”
Exhibit B: Famous, Absurdly Attractive People Who Also Have Uneven Eyes
Let’s talk about some of the most universally recognized ridiculously good-looking people on the planet.
• Ariana Grande: One eye is smaller. Still wildly successful. Still wearing thigh-high boots with confidence.
• Selena Gomez: One eye is smaller. Still an actual Disney princess in human form.
• Angelina Jolie: One eye is smaller. Still responsible for an entire generation of people developing crushes on women with sharp cheekbones.
• Marilyn Monroe: Her right eye drooped. Still one of the most famous sex symbols of all time.
So unless your plan is to personally walk up to Ariana, Selena, Angelina, and the literal ghost of Marilyn Monroe to inform them that their faces are unacceptable, I think we can all agree to stop nitpicking our own.
And If It Really Matters…
Does it feel like every makeup tutorial acts like getting perfect symmetry is the goal? “Just map out your eye shape!” “Use this trick to even out your hooded lid!” “Correct your droopy eye with this hack!” Ma’am, your eyes and my eyes are not broken. They are simply two separate entities that happen to live on the same face. They do not need to match any more than my elbows do.
However, if eyeliner is your nemesis (as it is mine), you have options:
1. Lean into the chaos. Smudge that liner. Do a grungy, slept-in look. If it’s good enough for 90s Kate Moss, it’s good enough for us.
2. Distract with lashes. Mascara and false lashes create an optical illusion that makes any asymmetry way less noticeable. Let Big Lash Energy carry you.
3. Accept that every human face is uneven. There is literally not one person on this planet with perfectly symmetrical features. Even Beyoncé has a good side. You are in excellent company.
But the Reality? No One Actually Cares About This Except (Maybe) You
You know who notices that your eyes aren’t perfectly symmetrical? You. That’s it. Maybe some very bored internet conspiracy theorists who like to make side-by-side comparisons of celebrity faces, but I promise, no one in your actual life is analyzing your face with that level of scrutiny.
The rest of the world is busy. They are eating snacks. They are thinking about whether they remembered to take the laundry out of the washing machine. They are far too preoccupied with their own neuroses to focus on ours.
Here is my very official, very serious, medically accurate advice: love your face. It is a wonderful face. It is an interesting face. And frankly, it has much better things to do than worry about symmetry.
So, stop fighting your face. Your asymmetrical eyes are not an obstacle to beauty—they are the beauty. And if anyone tells you otherwise? Hit ‘em with a dramatic, uneven side-eye and carry on.
*This is a rewrite of a previous blog post.
*For the record, I would’ve never noticed the celebrities had asymmetrical eyes. I just picked four random babes and they all had uneven eyes. As I said, unevenness is a human condition!
