Beauty—ah, how unpredictable it can get. One day, it patronizes old-fashioned Western ideals. The next, it calls my eye bags a hot trend, thanks to the Koreans sporting them under pink liners and sparkle.

One thing I learned from writing about beauty is that it’s not always about what’s beautiful at the moment. It’s about how the beautiful came to be. Always expect someone to experiment, because, today, it’s imperfection—not beauty—that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Look at some of yesterday’s blemishes that are now considered cool.

Cute eye bags

Rooted in a desire to look more childlike and cheery, Koreans have been contouring their aegyo-sal or baby eye fat. Puffy, smiling eyes are said to add more depth to monolids—if they decide to keep them—and, as a result, lend charm and character to the face.

Now’s the time to thank your job or your Netflix marathons for keeping you up late. If you’ve got those eye bags naturally, all you need to do is enhance them to make them appear less dark, droopy and swollen by cooling and hydrating them with a good eye patch and cream. Brighten the area with concealer, and then contour the underside of your bags with nude brown that suits your skin. Highlight the fat with some shimmer, and smile away.

Youthful freckles

While your fair-skinned friend is busy avoiding the sun and a peppered face, many others are sporting dots on their cheeks and noses. Freckles are the new beauty marks; Marilyn Monroe’s mole has been dethroned.

Freckles feign a look of innocence. It’s a chance to mimic youth, when the slightest exposure to the sun gives light-skinned folk pigmented specks rather than a bronze tan. The trend, I feel, is the westerners’ answer to the aegyo-sal. If anyone ever found the first one weird, this is a friendly reminder that all of us are simply getting creative about how to look young and naive.

Ready to test it? Grab your trusty brown eyeliner pen or pencil eyeliner and draw random dots on your nose and cheeks. When you’re satisfied with the number, blot out the darkness with a sponge and concealer. If ever you become obsessed, err, please know you can tattoo them like others have done.

Black is the new ombré

Don’t worry about being way behind your next dye appointment. The hair authorities have now postponed your trip to the salon, even giving you an incentive for letting your roots show. Grown-out roots are the latest iteration of the ombré, though I’d like to think it’s just a genius way to legitimize our laziness.

If you dyed your hair a light blonde, the trend works by creating dimension via the contrasting colors on your crown. If it’s on the darker side, your natural roots may blend in more smoothly with your dyed hair. As a last cheat: You may choose to take it up a notch by lightly adding an in-between color that helps blur out the transition into a sleek finish, without giving your secret away. —CONTRIBUTED