Origin

The meme appears to have originated from an X (formerly Twitter) post by user reitsukai on December 12, 2019, which featured a seemingly FaceApp-altered image of “Human Shrek” from the 2004 film Shrek 2 -- a bearded, handsome-looking version of the ogre -- with the caption "I FACEAPPED HUMAN SHREK AND THIS WAS THE RESULT……… PLEASE TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DATE HANDSOME SHREK"

I FACEAPPED HUMAN SHREK AND THIS WAS THE RESULT……… PLEASE TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DATE HANDSOME SHREK pic.twitter.com/nsKhiJPpRW

— adam 💜 🍉 (@reitsukai) December 12, 2019

Appearance

"Handsome Shrek" differs from the original look of the human version of Shrek in different ways:
- a designer stubble for a beard
- altered facial features : clearer skin, thinner nose, lighter eyes, plumper lips, and darker-colored hair and eyebrows

Spread

Following the original tweet, the image was widely reshared and remixed across platforms. Users swapped in the edited portrait, often AI-upscaling it while preserving the original vertical crop from reitsukai's original post. Some iterations of the meme gained traction for comparing beards to makeup, comparing Handsome Shrek to actor Henry Cavill, or just finding him generally handsome. Several users even mistook the beard for a genuine film still, until they learned it was edited. To this day, it is often always systematically used as a reaction picture in "beards being men's makeup" discourse.

Below are notable reposts (all dated post–December 12, 2019):

Reddit: r/Shrek

Reddit: r/memes

Reddit: r/Shrek

Reddit: r/DreamWorks