The beauty content landscape in 2025 is undergoing a radical recalibration. Formerly dominated by performance, polish, and high-production glam, the most resonant beauty content today is subtle, mood-driven, and emotionally ambient. The Jellyfish Social Agents Beauty Report reveals that audiences are shifting away from the perfectionism of influencer-led routines, and moving toward a gentler, more intuitive aesthetic—one that values presence over persona, moments over methods, and feeling over instruction.

This shift is both measurable, cultural, and deeply strategic. Jellyfish’s Social Agents technology, which decodes content performance across design, sentiment, and user engagement, has tracked this transformation across thousands of social media posts. What resulted is a new kind of beauty logic; one that doesn’t shout to be seen but instead fits naturally into a user's feed, life, and mood.

Beauty in 2025 is a glimpse, in the sense that instead of 12-step skincare breakdowns and dramatic before-and-afters, the industry is seeing casual blush swipes in parked cars, muted overhead lighting, and fleeting product touchpoints that feel lived-in, not staged. The rise of in-house content, anonymous creators, and soft commerce cues is signaling the end of the influencer era and the beginning of something far more intimate and intuitive.

Key Shifts & Insights

From Performance to Presence

• 2024: Structured captions with “grip,” “routine,” and “steps” led engagement.
• 2025: Posts now center around ambient moments—single product shots, fleeting gestures, “on-the-go” energy.
• “Glow-Up” and “Luxury” themes are popular but visually pared down.
• Emoji use and CTA-style captions have decreased significantly.

Visual Design Is Softer, Quieter, More Sensory

• 2024: High-contrast lighting, tight framing, branded overlays, polished transitions.
• 2025: Rise of natural shadows, slow transitions, neutral palettes, real-life backdrops.
• Increase in texture-forward content—e.g., product being squeezed mid-motion.
• Fonts are lighter, overlays are minimal; videos are often one-shot and quiet.

Decentralization of Influence

• Drop in named creators and celebrity content across datasets.
• Surge in “no talent” and “in-house” content—anonymous hands, voiceless videos, and quiet narration.
• Content performs based on vibe and authenticity, not follower count or influencer identity.
• Engagement for anonymous/in-house content equals or exceeds that of influencer-led posts.

Commerce Remains but with a New Look

• Hard-sell formats (flat lays, multistep routines) have declined.
• Lip oils, glosses, and balms lead sales—visually satisfying, simple to demo, emotionally resonant.
• Captions have shifted from urgency (“must-have,” “change your life”) to calm seasonal suggestions (“SPF + lip oil feels right”).
• Engagement driven by texture, touch, and everyday application—not structured education. 

Beauty as Cultural Mirror

• Content shift reflects broader cultural fatigue: less curation, more calm.
• Influencer burnout, TikTok Shop saturation, and de-influencing trends inform new creative logic.
• Emotional resonance, not transformation, is driving engagement.
• Seasonal, sensory, softly styled content dominates.

This report outlines a definitive pivot away from beauty as spectacle, and toward beauty as sensation. This is a culture tired of instruction and optimization—one that craves presence, authenticity, and relief. Beauty content now succeeds when it mirrors how audiences feel, not just how they look.

In this new creative logic, the product remains central. However, the performance around it has softened, and brands that embrace subtlety, context, and emotional intuition aren’t falling behind; they’re leading the new wave of influence.