Sure, beauty is subjective, but society has drilled the so-called “perfect” features into our brains. We know exactly how we rate, which traits to highlight, and which to… tolerate. It’s exhausting. Beauty is wildly unique, but that doesn’t stop us from running the same internal checklist every time we glance in a mirror or scroll through a dating app.

And here’s the kicker: every swipe, every crowded bar flirt, every attempt to “find your equal or maybe just slightly above” — comes with the risk of heartbreak. The kind that leaves you curled up in bed for days, texting tragic essays worthy of Charlotte Brontë, or filming sobbing TikToks destined for a glow-up reel that will never happen.

Finding your ogre (or legally-compliant ghoul of choice) might seem more desirable than a hot person who tortures you emotionally. Gen Z sure thinks so.

Enter Gen Z’s latest solution to love’s misery: “shrekking.” Lime-green, low-key savage, and somehow genius, it’s the trend everyone is talking about. Let’s unpack it.

What is ‘shrekking’?

The term comes from people joking that they’re “dating their Shrek.” Yes, that big green guy with the accent. Basically, it means deprioritising looks, settling a little, or even intentionally going for someone you aren’t conventionally attracted to.

Before you clutch your pearls, yes, it’s a bit unkind. Ideally, we’d never treat a partner as “less than,” but let’s be honest, sometimes we do. You might adore someone for a million reasons, but in terms of the beauty scoreboard? Not exactly a tie.

Gen Z may have coined the clever phrase — from the creators of “freak matching” and “grim keeping” — but the concept is ancient. Helen of Troy could be said to have “shrekked” when she married Agamemnon, decades her senior. Anne Boleyn? A total hottie who actively pursued Henry VIII, got him to ditch his first wife, and — fun fact — changed the course of English history. And yes, we can all remember the headlines when Ariana Grande and Ethan Slater first made their pairing public.

“Shrekking” isn’t new, but it’s louder than ever. So why is it........

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