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I wore concealer under my eyes even on days when I wasn't wearing makeup. Coffee with my husband on a Saturday? Concealer. Quick grocery run? Concealer. Zoom call from home where nobody could see anything below my shoulders? Still concealer. I'd been doing it for so many years that I didn't even think about it anymore. Covering my dark circles was just the first step in getting ready. Until one morning I forgot. My name is Aubrey Hayes. I'm 38, I live in Chicago and work as a sales director, and I have had dark circles for as long as I can remember. They definitely got more noticeable as I got older though. Not dramatic black circles or anything. Just that bluish-purple shadow underneath my eyes that somehow makes you look tired even when the rest of your face looks perfectly fine. Without makeup I always felt like I looked slightly sick or like I hadn't slept enough. Which was annoying because most of the time neither was true. I got pretty good at covering them. Peach color corrector first. Then concealer. Then a tiny bit of powder so it didn't crease. I knew exactly which concealers were too yellow, which ones dried out around the little lines under my eyes and which ones looked amazing for two hours and then somehow made me look 56 by lunch. This was apparently one of the skills I developed in my 30s. I tried fixing the actual problem too. Vitamin C eye cream. Caffeine serum. Retinol made specifically for the eye area. Peptides. Niacinamide. A brightening cream that I ordered after reading approximately 400 reviews. One eye cream was $115 and the jar was so small I honestly laughed when I opened the box. I used it anyway obviously. And some of these products were nice. My skin felt softer. A few helped with dryness. The caffeine ones sometimes made my eyes look a little less puffy in the morning. But the darkness was still there. So eventually I decided it was probably genetics. My mom has dark circles too, and I had read enough online to know there are about fifteen different reasons people can have them. Thin skin. Pigmentation. Blood vessels. Hollows under the eyes. Puffiness creating shadows. Genetics. Basically everything except Mercury being in retrograde. So I stopped trying to "fix" them and just got better at covering them. For years, the first makeup product that touched my face every morning was concealer. Even if I wasn't really wearing makeup. If we were going for breakfast, concealer. Running errands, concealer. Getting on a Zoom call, concealer. Sometimes I would put it on before I even did my skincare properly which I'm pretty sure makes absolutely no sense. But it had become automatic. The moment that made me realise how much I hated this was actually pretty stupid. My husband took a picture of me one Sunday morning while I was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee. I didn't know he was taking it. No makeup, hair up, sweatshirt, completely normal Sunday morning. He sent it to me later because apparently he thought it was a nice picture. My first thought was: Jesus, my eyes. Not the photo. Not him. Not the fact that it was actually a sweet picture. My dark circles. I zoomed in on them. Then I deleted the photo from my phone. He still has it, thankfully. But I remember thinking afterward that it was kind of sad that I couldn't even look at a completely normal picture of myself without immediately analysing the area under my eyes. A few months later a friend sent me a photo wearing these two little white devices underneath hers. At first I thought they were just fancy eye patches. They weren't. She told me they used red light and EMS and that she'd started using them a few times a week because her eyes always looked puffy in the morning. I asked if she liked them and she said yes, enough that she had actually kept using them. That part matters because she is exactly like me. We both own a graveyard of beauty devices that were VERY exciting for about twelve days. So I asked for the link. It was the DermaQ Eye Massager. Two small devices, one for each eye. They sit on conductive gel pads underneath your eyes and combine red light with gentle EMS stimulation. There are three intensity levels and each session takes about ten minutes. The biggest selling point for me wasn't even the red light. It was that they were hands-free. You put them on and then you can basically forget about them for ten minutes. I read the page, looked up red light, looked up EMS, closed everything and decided I didn't need another beauty device. Then I ordered it two days later. Very disciplined. When it arrived I tried it the next morning. Clean face, nothing underneath. I placed the gel pads under my eyes, attached the devices and started at level one. The EMS feels a little strange at first. Sort of a gentle tingling or pulsing feeling. It wasn't painful for me at all, just different. Then I went downstairs and made coffee. I actually forgot about them for a few minutes which I think is the best review I can give a beauty routine. Ten minutes later I took them off. My eyes looked refreshed. The puffiness looked a little better to me. The dark circles were obviously still there. I wasn't expecting them to disappear in ten minutes and if they had I probably would've assumed something suspicious was happening. So I kept using it. Three or four times a week. Usually in the mornings because that's when my eyes bother me most, although sometimes I do it at night while I'm reading or answering emails. After a while I noticed the skin under my eyes just looked better overall. Smoother. Less heavy. Less puffy. And because that whole area looked more refreshed, the darkness underneath my eyes didn't seem as obvious either. I want to be careful how I say this because dark circles are weird. There are so many different causes and I don't think any one little device is going to magically erase every type of dark circle. Mine did not disappear. But they became less noticeable to me. Enough that I started using less concealer. At first I thought maybe I was imagining that part. Then one morning I was doing my makeup for work and realised I'd skipped the peach corrector. I'd used that stuff almost every day for years. I looked at myself for a second and thought... Do I actually need it? So I just used a small amount of concealer and left. A couple weeks later I went downstairs on a Saturday with nothing under my eyes at all. No corrector. No concealer. Nothing. We went for coffee. I didn't even notice until we were already sitting there. That was probably the point when I realised something had changed. Not because my dark circles were suddenly gone. They weren't. I just wasn't thinking about them every time somebody looked at me anymore. And that has been surprisingly nice. The DermaQ devices now live on my bathroom counter in their charging case. I use them three or four times a week for around ten minutes. Sometimes while I'm making coffee. Sometimes answering emails. Sometimes scrolling Instagram, which is probably where I discovered half the products that are now sitting unused in my bathroom drawers. It's easy enough that I've actually stayed consistent. That's the part I underestimated. I've bought plenty of expensive skincare that I technically liked but stopped using because there were too many steps. This is two little devices. Put them on. Press the button. Ten minutes. Done. The DermaQ Eye Massager combines red light with gentle EMS stimulation and has three intensity levels, so I started low and gradually moved up to what felt comfortable. I still wear concealer. I still use eye cream. I still have dark circles. They're part of my face and probably always will be to some extent. But they don't dominate my face the way I felt like they used to. The whole area underneath my eyes looks smoother and more refreshed to me now, and I don't feel like I have to cover it before anybody sees me. That was honestly what I wanted. Not perfection. Not to look 22. Just to stop feeling like the first step of getting ready every morning was hiding my eyes. There's also a 100-day money-back guarantee, which made trying it considerably easier for me because my bathroom cabinet is basically a museum of beauty products that did not live up to expectations. At least this one gave me enough time to actually use it properly before deciding. Mine stayed. P.S. I still have that Sunday morning photo my husband took. I asked him to send it to me again a few months ago because I realised I had deleted my copy. I still notice my eyes when I look at it, but I don't hate the picture anymore. Maybe that's a little dramatic but its true. P.P.S. For me, this was one of the best things I purchased for my eyes. I just started noticing less puffiness, smoother-looking skin around my eyes and, eventually, that I wasn't trying to cover them up every single morning. That was enough for me.