{"id":712024,"date":"2025-11-19T17:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T14:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=712024"},"modified":"2025-11-19T17:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T14:02:11","slug":"is-face-tape-the-secret-to-eternal-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=712024","title":{"rendered":"Is Face Tape the Secret to Eternal Youth?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Magazine<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Is Face Tape the Secret to Eternal Youth?<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Lena Dunham<\/span><\/span><\/span>Photographer <\/span>Steven Klein<\/span><\/span><\/span>Styled by <\/span>Tonne Goodman<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 19, 2025<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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MAGICAL SHRINKING<\/strong>
\nNext-gen adhesives, ultra-tight topknots\u2014is there a way to combat the tug of time? Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman.<\/span>Photographed by Steven Klein. Vogue<\/em>, December 2025.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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When Nora Ephron wrote the words \u201cI feel bad about my neck\u201d it was a rallying cry for women everywhere. Yes,<\/em> they thought. Finally!<\/em> A woman widely considered an intellectual had come clean about the fact that no matter your deep and worldly concerns, your keen understanding of the beauty industrial complex\u2019s choke hold, or<\/em> your desire to be free of it, you will\u2014at some point or another\u2014realize that you are aging, and you won\u2019t like it. Nora was a beloved friend and mentor, but it took me a long time to understand what she was talking about.<\/p>\n

I have been test-driving beauty trends at Vogue<\/em> for over a decade. In my tenure I\u2019ve done everything from microblading to lash extensions, red lipstick to red hair, tooth whitening to mob-wife nails\u2014and even a foray into the Gen Z trend of face glazing. Some have been informative (wow, tooth whitening isn\u2019t as cut-and-dried as I\u2019d thought) and others life-changing (my microbladed brows won friends and influenced people, and my face remains glazed), but none threw me into an existential tailspin quite like this assignment on face tape\u2014how suddenly you can hardly open a social media app without being offered some form of tape that is not Scotch or duct, but is instead meant to delay the inevitable, to offer you sweet sleep that will leave you bright-eyed and youthful, or even rejigger your visage before your very eyes.<\/p>\n

Fear of aging is, after all, about more than just the resultant wrinkles, the sagging in places you never knew could sag, the literal thinning of your skin. It\u2019s about more than libido waxing and waning, or your role as an object of desire moving\u2014at least in certain settings\u2014to the background, as your crone status takes foreground (crone,<\/em> a word that feminism tried to reclaim but could not give a proper makeover). We fear aging because we fear death, and we fear death because we don\u2019t understand it. And so we control what we can\u2014some of us exfoliate and slap on serums, others exercise until our muscles burn. We dye our hair and divvy up our food into smaller and smaller portions. Unless we make the decision to age with radical acceptance\u2014a practice that offers few mainstream role models, existing as we do in a culture that celebrates women for doing things as basic as letting their curls spring into gray around their deep-plane facelifts. To see a woman going gently into that good night without any intervention, you may have to hop a plane to an organic farm in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

My editors at Vogue<\/em> started me with a range of tapes, more than any one woman could reasonably use\u2014so many that I had to outsource testing to the girls in my office. The mouth tape\u2014a TikTok trend run amok as far as I was concerned, intended to promote better sleep by forcing you to breathe through your nose\u2014lasted about a half hour before I ripped it off, desperate to tell my husband something of absolutely no consequence. It was as if by taping my mouth, I was suddenly powerfully moved to speak gibberish. So I offered two kinds to my assistant Mia\u2014VIO2 Unscented Mouth Tape, a clinical blue strip shaped like a T-bar, and Skin Gym\u2019s millennial pink offering, molded into a cheeky kiss. Mia swore it caused her to drift off faster than she could say \u201cI have something to tell you,\u201d but later admitted she always sleeps like a baby. Ah, to be 28 again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Face taping may be all the rage right now\u2014whether it\u2019s the mouth, the kinesiology tape that promises to stop wrinkles before they start, or the complex sets that create a temporary lift by pulling from the sides and joining at the back of the head with something resembling a ponytail holder. But tape has a rich history in Hollywood, dating back to the golden age when Joan Crawford used surgical tape hidden beneath a wig to create a temporarily snatched visage that would make even Kris Jenner\u2014she of the viral facelift\u2014jealous. It\u2019s remained a trick of the trade, something savvy makeup artists use on clients who either don\u2019t want to go under the knife or whose results are starting to loosen. But in an age when no beauty secret stays secret for long, it\u2019s only natural it would emerge from the dark of the soundstage and become one of 2025\u2019s most talked about trends.<\/p>\n

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Recently, celebrities like Charli XCX (here, at the Fashion Awards in 2023) have been flaunting their face tape.<\/span>Photo: Lionel Hahn\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I will admit here that I have always thought I was a no-interventions type of gal. Save for a not-very-effective (but alarmingly painful) shot of Kybella into my chin, I\u2019ve forgone the kinds of tweakments that are barely considered unnatural anymore. I was proud of this stance, perhaps even a little cocky. I was also in my 20s. As I age\u2014sped up by a very sexy case of early menopause\u2014I am forced to reckon with the reality of having my face age with me. Yes, you gain wisdom and peace. But it\u2019s impossible\u2014especially when confronted with constant photographic evidence of tighter, younger versions of you\u2014not to stare, terrified, into the mirror, wondering what the next injustice will be. I could handle the witchy gray hairs that sprouted from my head, then my chin. I wasn\u2019t too shaken by the stretch marks that grew across the top of my chest, like a purply network of tree roots. Even my one breast bidding adieu to her sister, making a run for my belly button, I survived with good humor (although Hollywood tape tricks can do wonders for that too). It\u2019s the face that gets me, every time.<\/p>\n

And so, I decided I would devote a week to Skin Gym\u2019s face tape, which purports to fix the facial muscles, preventing them from scrunching, squinching, or squooshing in the night. My best friend Russell is an acupuncturist, and seemed like the perfect person to place my tape, slapping it on my frown lines, crow\u2019s-feet, and nasolabial folds. He seemed, at the very least, to be taking the job seriously, and when the tape was on\u2014lovely rose-colored Band-Aids, easy to apply and rather adorable to look at\u2014we both agreed that the sensation was one of relaxation. Our faces, usually animated with shock, awe, or rage, were forced into stasis. We put on a documentary about murder aboard a cruise ship and endeavored to just chill. It had not even been an hour when he asked, \u201cDoes your face feel\u2026insane?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It did, I agreed, feel really crazy. The spots where the tape had been applied were both hot and cold, itchy and tingly, a sensation I can only compare to leaving Elmer\u2019s glue to dry on your hand in second grade. We ripped the tape off in a fit of pique and scrubbed ourselves furiously with hot towels. Second tape experiment: a fail.<\/p>\n

We also had to admit that the spate of wrinkle-free celebrity faces we had been admiring\u2014Kris Jenner\u2019s among them\u2014were likely not the result of a serious face-tape regimen. At the very least, they were due to what Brits call the Croydon facelift, a.k.a. a ponytail so tight that it stops the forehead from moving at all. At the most\u2014and most likely\u2014they were deep-plane facelifts, a new variation on the tried-and-true nip-tuck that is being sought out by younger and younger patients. Instead of taking loose skin and pulling up and back, a deep-plane facelift involves repositioning the tissues under the skin of the face, so that the entire thing is moved up, as if adjusting a sagging tube top. In layman\u2019s terms, the face\u2014muscles and ligaments included\u2014is pulled to where it once belonged, reducing the taut, catwoman look made famous by Jocelyn Wildenstein and reaching for something more natural and true.<\/p>\n