chewing gum made to chisel your jawline is becoming more popular, if you want another thing to feel insecure about.
chisel your jawline, get a labiaplasty, give your tween kid $300 to buy sol de janeiro during a financial crisis. anything else?
No one is safe from body image trends. Today, we’re talking about labiaplasties and jaw chiselling methods.
1. there’s a chewing gum that is made to chisel your jawline
It’s not just women that are victims of short-lived but mentally fucked body-altering trends.
Brooke Kato published an article about teenage boys wanting to buy chewing gum to chisel their jawlines.
Of course, there are Reddit posts on this. There’s a LinkedIn post to reach the crypto bros, too.
Brands like Giga Chew and Jawliner (don’t even @ me on these brand names, I KNOW), are selling specialised chewing gum with chewing exercises to help ‘tone’ jawlines.
Brooke Kato writes that this phenomenon is part of the looksmaxxing social media trend: to change or ‘maximise’ their appearance to appear the best in beauty standards. This article from Business Insider says that it’s a “toxic scam”.
Some are saying that a lot of those social media videos are just trolling, however, the damage can still be done.
“I was learning about problems I hadn’t even noticed,” James said. “Some of these flaws aren’t fixable at all … for a lot of teenagers out there, it can definitely be bad for their mental health.”
June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. These ideas are just another image to sell. Another body-altering trend to follow. When you look at those Reddit posts, it looks like young men aren’t getting the educational, proper advice when it comes to self-love and body confidence. It’s coming from older incel-like men with nothing better to do on the internet.
And ultimately, why can’t we all just go to therapy?
2. labiaplasties and “lazy kebab vaginas”
Nandini Dhir from The Daily Aus reported that labia surgery is on the rise, as well as feelings of shame. This is the case due to people thinking that the unattainable standards from pornography and social media are what normalcy looks like, lack of available realistic images and education, and childbirth.
“Labia shame is heightened for Gen Z. Around one in four (23%) people aged 18-24 said they feel anxious, ashamed or embarrassed by how their labia looks.”
As someone who used to laser people’s genitals for 10 hours a day, I have a fundamental understanding that everyone’s genitals look different. They should look different!
Storytime: After asking a client the standard medical questions before lasering their brazilian area, they suddenly felt a pinch with one of the pulses. I stopped and went through the medical questions again.
Me: “Are you sure you haven’t had any recent medical procedures?”
Client: “Actually, I did have a labiaplasty recently.”
Please don’t get laser hair removal if you’ve had a labiaplasty recently, for the sake of your vagina, and all the money you’ve spent on it.
This Punkee article by Sexologist Chantelle Otten analyses the first season of Netflix’s Heartbreak High, a remake of the original 90s Australian TV series, on how the characters navigate sex and relationships.
Quinni, one of the characters, has found that there’s a rumour spreading that she has a ‘lazy kebab vagina’. But after researching vaginas, she finds out that all vulvas are different.
The Women’s Health Vic report on labia diversity reports that more than half (56%) of all people with vulvas have visible, or protruding labia minora, and many have labia that are asymmetrical.
We’ll see what tomorrow will bring to the table.