Heroin chic’s nihilistic cousin lobotomy chic is back again, in full force with her dissociative smokey-eyed stares and ever-expanding doomful pouts. Amassing roughly 10.5 million views on TikTok alone, the aesthetic has been knocking about the internet for a few years now, coining itself a hybrid of Tumblr indie sleaze, Americana, female manipulator waif, and soft girl nymphet. The stylish resistance thrives in its Tim Burton-esque beauty techniques and reclamation of a historically male gaze aesthetic. It’s a bleak ode to girlhood, revelling in apathy and a lack of care. As sad girl winter approaches, the lobotomised babe is due a stylish update, with this season’s hottest hyper femme staples in ironic tees and bloomers, and bizarrely blighted glam topped with tiny specs and a deadpan stare. It’s blasé, messy, chaotic, and ridden with infuriating indifference, and we are here to show you how to get the 2023 lobotomy look. 

Harking back to the origins of this new philosophy, the memefied lobotomy has been romanticised to the point of no return by niche internet users, who find it rather funny to declare they are getting theirs at Claire’s Accessories this weekend. “Live Laugh Lobotomy,” say thousands of TikTokers. It may be quite an insensitive approach to a type of brain surgery popular in the 1930s for disconnecting the frontal lobe to other parts of the brain, but snowflakes may have just about given up trying to fight the PC cause. Like the opposing route to the online phenomenon #Corecore (a masculine take exposing the flaws of capitalism), its popularity is proving, yet again, that it’s all getting just a little bit too much for our overstimulated brains.

So to be a hot young lobotomised babe, we are exploring all the ways you can nail your mindless meandering into a new era of thinking less and posing more. Ironic, really, in that the effort required to be vague and brainless requires a detailed set of trends you must abide by… Either way, scan through our list of the most stoic style statements you can recreate.