About

An Angel Lost Its Wings is a catchphrase metaphorically likening a person getting rid of a certain aspect of their appearance, such as removing piercings or shaving off body hair, to an angel losing their wings. Spawned by a TikTok meme in April 2024, the catchphrase and its reversed version An Angel Found Its Wings both saw use as a meme caption format into early 2025.

Origin

On April 7th, 2024, TikTok^[1] user @_audreylayne posted a video of two nipple piercings lying on a towel captioned, "an angel has lost its wings." The video metaphorically likened a woman getting rid of her piercings to an angel losing its wings. The video (shown below) received over 4.9 million views and 806,000 likes in one year.

Spread

Screenshots of the post were widely circulated online in the following months. For example, on September 1st, 2024, the Facebook^[2] page Memes With An Overall Lack Of Context posted it, garnering over 2,800 reposts and 1,400 shares in six months.

In the months following the original post, the phrase "an angel lost its wings" and its variations achieved virality as a caption for memes in which people got rid of or altered a certain aspect of their appearance.

For example, on June 24th, 2024, X^[3] user @jewcyydiva reposted a TikTok video of a man getting his body hair removed, captioning it with the phrase. The post (shown below) garnered over 4,400 reposts and 41,000 likes in nine months.

On December 13th, 2024, X^[4] user @sharkAster posted an image of a DJ controller lying next to a trashcan, captioning it, "another angel in bushwick lost its wings." The post (shown below) received over 1,600 reposts and 26,000 likes in four months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References