[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/6984e8d2d95f8a6bb40189bf\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/tiktok%20facial%20depuffing%20trend.jpg”]<\/p>\n
I remember the first time I used a pair of cold teaspoons to depuff my eyes. I was 13 and had awoken on the morning of a school field trip to find my eyes were swollen shut, and not for the first time\u2014a semi-regular occurrence an allergist chalked up to a dust mite sensitivity. My parents gave me an antihistamine, but I consulted Doctor Google for faster-acting remedies, most of which involved putting miscellaneous household items in the fridge, then on my eyes. The teaspoons didn\u2019t work. I went on the trip, dejected and no less swollen than when I had woken up. It marked the beginning of a years-long crusade to track down any and every depuffing hack I could find. Since then, the internet has become increasingly eager to oblige.<\/p>\n
The beauty industry has been peddling depuffing tricks for decades, especially for the undereye area. In the \u201880s, hemorrhoid cream was sold as a quick fix for baggy undereyes; in the \u201890s and 2000s, it was chilled cucumber slices. But for the modern day, TikTok has distilled the idea of depuffing and repackaged it as vital health advice that applies to one\u2019s entire body. In recent years, terms like \u201ccortisol face\u201d and \u201clymphatic drainage\u201d have entered the lexicon of even the most casual beauty enthusiasts, heightening concern over even the mildest of bloating, spreading inaccurate and fatphobic rhetoric about double chins, and overall casting a harsh spotlight on the perfectly normal ways our bodies retain fluid.<\/p>\n
My For You page is a shrine to snatched young women magnanimously sharing their tips for taut faces. This guidance typically falls under two categories: beauty advice and beauty advice posing as \u201cwellness\u201d advice. The former tends to focus on facial sculpting tools such as gua shas and microcurrent devices alongside cosmetic treatments; the latter emphasizes things like diet, anti-stress tactics, and supplements (still with the goal of slimming or sculpting the face by reducing inflammation). While the messaging can vary, the ethos of this content is consistent: Bloating, no matter how benign, is bad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The appearance of your face, this content often implies, directly correlates with your health and how well you care for it. Sometimes it goes even further. One creator I came across recently argued that a bloated \u201cmoon face\u201d is a sign of a malfunctioning liver. \u201cYour liver is your detoxing organ, so if you\u2019re inflamed and you\u2019re puffy, it\u2019s likely that you\u2019re not detoxing properly. Looking after your liver can get rid of so much of that puffiness and inflammation.\u201d Another kicked off a video by saying, \u201cYou\u2019re not ugly, you\u2019re not puffy, you just have cortisol face. I was so inflamed from so much stress and anxiety; it caused my face to swell up all the time.\u201d (Unsurprisingly, the video was made in partnership with a company selling \u201ccortisol-reducing\u201d supplements.) Some creators go even deeper down the rabbit hole, suggesting that a puffy face is a telltale sign of an autoimmune or hormonal disorder like adrenal dysfunction, polycystic ovary syndrome, or Hashimoto\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that how you feel is sometimes reflected in your face. But as board-certified dermatologist Mona Gohara, MD, explains, mild facial bloating is a normal and necessary function of the human body: \u201cFacial puffiness is far more normal than the internet would have us believe.\u201d She says it can be caused by a number of everyday factors including but not limited to sleep deprivation, stress, allergies, diet, travel, and even sleeping position. Genetics, of course, impacts your overall facial structure, too; some people just have naturally full undereyes. But in most people, facial bloating and undereye puffiness are usually just reactionary. \u201cInflammation doesn\u2019t always signal disease; sometimes the face is simply responding to life,\u201d Dr. Gohara says.<\/p>\n
Framing perfectly normal facial swelling as evidence of an underlying health problem is, at best, disingenuous. Can we all admit that we\u2019re not really looking to get healthier when we\u2019re seeking out ways to depuff our own faces? I think, subconsciously or not, most of us just want to be hot; I can\u2019t judge that in a society where hotness has the power to open doors and change lives. When I have too many martinis and wake up looking visibly worse for wear, the first thing I do is consult TikTok for an anti-bloating gua sha routine. I don\u2019t do it to feel healthier; I do it to give the illusion that I have healthier habits than I do. By scraping my bloated face with my little rock, I\u2019m hoping to erase the previous evening\u2019s hedonism and look like someone who went to bed on time and woke up for a 5 a.m. run. If I were really looking to improve my health, I might have actually gone on that run instead of inspecting myself in the mirror for puffiness. Or, you know, consulted an actual doctor for advice.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only natural to want to look more put together than you feel\u2014or to feel pressured to meet today\u2019s hyper-snatched beauty standard\u2014but trying to find a medically significant reason to justify this desire can be harmful. Dr. Gohara can tell you exactly why: \u201cThe problem is that online culture has moralized these natural fluctuations, equating puffiness with poor health or lack of discipline,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve confused wellness with worthiness, but the face is not a report card.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
By conflating the two, we not only pathologize completely normal facial features and bodily functions\u2014we also uphold the exhausting age-old myth that meeting a narrow standard of beauty is a sign of a person\u2019s value. Heather Widdows, Ph.D, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick whose work focuses on the ethics of beauty culture, previously told Allure<\/em> that internet culture spreads a belief \u201cthat if we have the right face and body, if we are thin, firm, smooth, and young enough, then we will be rewarded with the good life.\u201d But our physical features, she said, \u201care things that we have no more control over than we do our height or shoe size; it\u2019s just how our bodies are made.\u201d<\/p>\n If we\u2019re willing to demonize our own lymphatic systems, I have to wonder what\u2019s next. Will influencers start selling high-end neti pots to clean out our sinuses in the hopes of shrinking our noses? Will we frame body odour as a sign of internal decay? Regardless of which body part or function we hone in on, it\u2019ll be yet another ploy to sell us more products. That\u2019s really what this depuffing stuff is all about. Give us more reason to be anxious about our looks, and we\u2019ll buy more stuff.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably going to take a while before I stop obsessively trying to figure out if a mild food allergy is to blame for my occasional bloating, but I know the first step will be to stop comparing myself to strangers on the internet. I should also keep reminding myself that beauty trends are cyclical. In five years, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if round, Botticelli-esque faces became en vogue, forcing people to desperately search for the buccal fat they had once had surgically removed. When that day comes, I\u2019ll clutch my frozen teaspoons and laugh.<\/p>\n More from the beauty news and culture desk:<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, join Madelyn Cline at her monthly facial:<\/strong><\/p>\n Follow<\/em> Allure on<\/em>\u00a0Instagram<\/em>and<\/em>\u00a0TikTok, or<\/em>\u00a0subscribe to our newsletter<\/em>to stay up to date on all things beauty.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.allure.com\/story\/tiktok-facial-bloating-misinformation”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/6984e8d2d95f8a6bb40189bf\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/tiktok%20facial%20depuffing%20trend.jpg”] I remember the first time I used a pair of cold teaspoons to depuff my eyes. I was 13 and had awoken on the morning of a school field trip to find my eyes were swollen shut, and not for the first time\u2014a semi-regular occurrence an allergist chalked up to a dust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52,226],"class_list":["post-1759455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-allure-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1759455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1759455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1759455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1759455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n