\n<\/p>\n
The film’s makeup department head, Nicki Ledermann, deploys the cat eye at a fraught moment for this liner look. Last month in The New York Times<\/em>, journalist Jessica Roy wondered if the cat eye was glaringly dated, citing a popular TikTok in which a 29-year-old gets roasted for the look by her college-age sister. Of course, it\u2019s easier to dismiss things as \u201cover\u201d than to admit they\u2019re more complicated. That\u2019s why skinny jeans are dunzo\u2014in the age of Ozempic, there\u2019s less need to create the illusion of an \u201cideal\u201d body when you can needle it into submission. Ditto big feelings like heartbreak and yearning, both of which have been rebranded as \u201cmillennial cringe\u201d online, even as our culture grapples with very real issues of romantic loneliness, family estrangement, and chosen community at what can feel like the end of the world.<\/p>\n If we consider the cat eye in the context of this cultural anxiety\u2014the kind that makes us throw up our hands and say, \u201cit\u2019s over,\u201d instead of \u201cwait, something\u2019s happening\u201d\u2014then Ledermann\u2019s approach feels sharp. She uses the graphic flick to underscore the film\u2019s most ambitious women within a franchise that\u2019s fundamentally about how far you\u2019ll go to succeed\u2014and whether you, as a woman, have the \u201cright\u201d to enjoy it when you do.<\/p>\n