“Jaw ripped off”: how the chin became fashion’s new pressure point

Five months ago, Natalie, a 27-year-old Canadian, paid C$4,000 for chin liposuction. She had always had a little double chin, she said, but last year she had put on weight and it had gotten bigger. The more she focused on her chin, the more she focused on other people's chins. “You see people in the media, on Instagram. They have an ideal image,” says Natalie (pseudonym). “You want to achieve this look. And sometimes this can only be done through surgery. »

The procedure went well. Immediately after, “it looked perfect. It was ripped off. "Ripped off," she explains, means "a straight chin down." It is generally used for slim and pretty people.

Over the past few years, the phrase "jaw ripped off" has gained traction online. The #snatchedjawline hashtag has over 210 million views on TikTok, where it's used to promote a litany of products that claim to deliver a taut, smooth jawline. They include Jawzrsize, a bizarre-looking chewing ball, and Rockjaw's "mastic chewing gum," which claims to work facial muscles (experts generally warn against excessive chewing for fear of dental problems and jaw dislocation). The expression is associated with the Tiktok trend for "mewing" (putting the tongue on the roof of the mouth to make the face more "sculpted"), and with hundreds of face yoga applications, creams, jade rollers, sling-like jaw masks, and electrical devices that claim to temporarily lift the skin using light therapy. None of these products are backed by rigorous, long-term research; some come without any scientific backing. They nevertheless flooded the market as the jawline became a beauty pressure point. ="model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement" class="dcr-173mewl">

The term is also frequently used by plastic surgeons and medi spas promoting liposuction, jaw fillers and fat dissolving injections. Although ads for “invasive cosmetic procedures” are banned by TikTok, non-paying videos chronicling the procedures are commonplace. Many are posted by influencers in their twenties who have procedures for the "ripped" look. Some, like Halley Kate, who has 1 million followers, and Hope Schwing, who has 9.9 million followers, are posting lip-syncs on Tiktok while their faces are still wrapped in post-surgery compression garments.

While some TikTokers pass off the surgery as a relaxed process, many others document horror stories of fat-dissolving injections — which experts say , can be particularly unreliable, especially when administered inexpertly - which have become infected and left scarred.

Natalie's experience reminds us that even successful procedures can be difficult to manage. Her convalescence was tough: she barely slept for a fortnight, because she was...