Mom vs. Trend Shows You How To Recreate Popular Gen Z Beauty Trends

If you’ve ever wondered if you can pull off some of the trends you see on TikTok or maybe the ones your cool older niece told you about, then Romper’s new series, Mom vs. Trend, starring beauty guru Carly Cardellino, will help you decide if you want to try them yourself (and I’ll help you decide on the low rise jeans trend: no).

The series focuses on “the unavoidable Gen Z trends that we’re seeing everywhere,” Cardellino puts it. In each episode, Cardellino, writer, mother of two, beauty industry veteran (and Romper’s own in-house beauty expert) will break down the latest (and sometimes wildest) beauty trends that busy moms can try for themselves at home, even if all the time they have is a 30-minute nap window.

Episode one, which launched on May 5, dives into the jade nail trend: marbled manicures inspired by the green stone often seen in jewelry or on those face rollers used for depuffing.

Cardellino says the idea of getting a regular manicure as a mother is “kind of LOL because… when am I doing that?” so she attempts the manicure herself (using her lap as a steady surface, while wearing a gorgeous white dress, which definitely gave me anxiety). Her top tip for helping those rare manicures that moms do manage to get last longer is simple: wear dish gloves.

After applying several hues of green polish, a cream colored shade, and a top coat (her polishes are from Gucci, Olive & June, and good old Sally Hansen), and using a cool saran wrap technique to create a marbled jade effect, Cardellino uses her wrists and elbows to clean up toys as she waits for her nails to dry (relatable). Then, in a mom move that may later come to haunt her, she uses her daughter’s art brush to clean polish from her fingers and cuticles. “This trend kind of looks really intimidating, but it’s really easy” she says, and you may be surprised by how doable it actually does seem. If green isn’t your color, you could try the same technique using varying shade of pink for a rose quartz effect.

Each episode of this tutorial-style series will feature Cardellino sharing her hacks for successfully (hopefully) recreating trending makeup, skincare, and hair looks. And lucky for you, each episode is only a couple minutes long, so if you watch it quietly while locked in the bathroom, you may actually get to view the whole thing without someone interrupting you to ask for a snack.

Stay tuned for new Mom Vs. Trend videos on Romper’s YouTube channel.