I recognised this in college, before he got his teeth done, before he got the tan and the confidence and the style, back when he was obsessed with Eminem and had terrible bleached hair. I bagged him as my bestie nice and early, before his uber glow-up.
2018, Hannah Jewell, She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolutions, and Massively Crushed It, unnumbered page:
Let us now marvel at a lady who achieved one of the most impressive glow ups in the thousand-plus-years history of the Byzantine Empire: Empress Theodora.
2018, Betches, When's Happy Hour?: Work Hard So You Can Hardly Work, pages 20-21:
Over time, society got a few glow-ups and eventually became all industrialized and shit, and as a result, there have been a number of important milestones for women in the workforce.
2019, "The Top 10 Skincare Products", Modish, April 2019, page 8:
2018 was the year for all of us, because these ten products got released into the market, and they were responsible for so many of our glow-ups.
2019, Alana Sullivan, "The Myth of the Glow Up", Kitsch (Cornell University), Spring 2019, page 10:
At some point during our society's love affair with physical transformations, before-and-after photos and, most recently, the Instagram "glow-up," we concluded that the internal selves of those who undergo physical changes must necessarily also be transformed.
2019 May 17, R. Eric Thomas, “Project Runway Season 17, Episode 10 Recap: Say It With Your Chest”, in Elle[1]:
Bishme’s dress has had a glowup since the workroom. There’s a huge purple ruffle at the bust and there are faces, presumably of Baltimoreans' children, made out of sequins on the bottom of the dress.
2019, Megan Bianco, "At the Movies: 'The Farewell' is Bittersweet", Dana Point Times, 26 July 2019 - 1 August 2019, page 8:
Nora Lum, also known as Awkwafina, has to have one of the biggest "glow-ups" in modern pop culture.
2020, Kelly Small, The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work, unnumbered page:
Let's publicly celebrate the ethical “glow-ups” of our colleagues, clients, and suppliers who are making changes to their practices by taking action against injustice and improving conditions for all people.
2020, Marissa Sandoval, "Jonas Brothers", in "Best of 2019", Beyond the Stage, January 2020, page 26:
At some points, the video seems to be showing off the brothers' glow ups, but if you were married to Sophie Turner, I'm sure you'd show her off as well.
2020, Sarah Bahr, "Powerful Women Of Newfields", Newfields, Spring 2020, page 8:
As the country's foremost fountain fashioner in the early 20th century, this Hoosier gave the gardens of wealthy Americans their glow-ups.
2020 December 18, Katie Rosman, “In 2020, These Things Came Out on Top”, in The New York Times[2], →ISSN:
Rotten bananas have had a pandemic-fueled, geek-to-chic, the-Kardashians-probably-want-to-do-an-Instagram-collab glow-up.
2017, Rebecca Noel, "Senior Glow Ups", Lecacy (The Kinkaid School), 11 May 2017, page 29:
We've all changed quite a bit since freshman year (thank goodness), but some people have particularly "glowed up."
2018, @agerenesh, quoted in Express, 14 June 2018, 15 June 2018, page 32:
“Every single person in the 'Degrassi' cast somehow glowed up in the best way.”
2019, Alexis C. Madrigal, "No, You Don't Really Look Like That", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 February 2019, page 18:
Speaking as a longtime iPhone user, I find it undeniable that Portrait mode — a marquee technology in a recent edition of the most popular phones in the world — has been glowed up.
2019, Alana Sullivan, "The Myth of the Glow Up", Kitsch (Cornell University), Spring 2019, page 10:
"Wow, damn u really glowed up. Holy shit. Ur not even the same person! I barely reckanize{{sic} you in that pic."
Reflected back to me off my father's beaming smile, the new things in my life filled me with pride. It was a kind of pride they hadn't given me before. I wondered if I hadn't, deep down, glowed up just for him.