NEW YORK – Picture a face that is blank-eyed and puffy-lipped, like a koi fish on Ativan medication.

That, according to a cluster of recent articles and social media posts, is a textbook “Gen Z pout”.

It is an expression being attributed to young celebrities such as Lily-Rose Depp, Rachel Sennott and Ariana Greenblatt, who appear to purse their lips with forensic precision when posing for pictures.

Some argue that the look is meant to cultivate an air of chic detachment. Others are not quite convinced.

“The ‘Gen Z pout’ is genuinely making y’all look like Homer Simpson,” Ms Fatima Shaikh, 19, wrote in a TikTok video.

The pout has become a subject of bottomless analysis online, where the slightest of movements by a young person risks being declared a generational microtrend. (The designations are not always precise: Sennott, born in 1995, is a young millennial.)

In 2025, commentators identified a “Gen Z stare”, a blank look supposedly displayed by teens and 20-somethings when they are asked a question. There have also been skirmishes over side parts, skinny jeans and crew socks.

These labels may be catnip for influencers and media outlets, but how much do they actually register with those they theoretically describe?

“Sometimes I think it’s a little cringe: ‘Gen Z this’, ‘Gen Z that’,” said Ms Shaikh, a college freshman in Seattle. She thinks it is fun to weigh in occasionally, but she cannot see herself pursing her lips in imitation of a celebrity.

Ms Saee Purohit, 22, who works in clothing merchandising in Princeton, New Jersey, said she did not typically pay much attention to the barrage of behaviours ascribed to Gen Z. But she heard about the pout a couple of weeks ago in a video about influencer Ashtin Earle. Ms Purohit was surprised when she scrolled through some of her own posts afterwards.

“I realised I kind of did the sa...