I tried TikTok’s viral anti-aging trend – taping my mouth gave me acne and made my face hurt, I’d rather have wrinkles
IF I had a nickel for every time someone joked about taping my mouth shut, I’d probably have 10 dollars. Hey, I’m a chatterbox.
Conveniently, $10 is how much it cost me to try the viral anti-aging hack that has every online beauty guru talking – including me, of course.
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Confession: ever since I went all-in on baby products to infuse my skin with a youthful glow, I’ve been fixated on my lines.
Specifically, I’ve been researching how to erase my laugh lines and marionette lines. They’re different!
Laugh lines extend from your nose to the corners of your lips; marionette lines pick up where they left off, and continue down to your jaw.
I love laughter (who doesn’t?) and puppets (I’m twisted), but I would like to remain wrinkle-free. Enter mouth tape.
According to scores of beautiful women on TikTok, taping your mouth shut at night allows you to maintain a mannequin-like visage for decades.
But dermatologists have argued that the viral hack does nothing, and other experts warn it can impede breathing.
I’m willing to try any viral TikTok hack or product, so adding a pack of 60 tape strips to my Amazon cart for $10 was a no-brainer.
The hack reportedly works over months of use, so I wasn’t testing its efficacy. I just wanted to know if it was doable.
Listen, I’m used to a little discomfort in the name of beauty. After all, I’ve slept in curlers since my teens.
But when I pitched this article, my proposed headline was “I tried TikTok’s viral mouth-taping hack – did I die?”
On night one, it sure seemed like I might.
I completed my normal nighttime routine, making sure to leave the area directly around my mouth moisturizer-free.
The adhesive on the tape can’t stick to a greasy surface, so my night cream was benched for the week.
Another vital product made temporarily redundant was my lip balm (this is foreshadowing).
At the first application, the mouth tape didn’t seem like it would be uncomfortable.
It was flexible enough that I could open my mouth slightly (great, breathing!) but when I relaxed, it kept my mouth shut.
Confident I would make it through the night, I set my alarms and closed my eyes.
By morning, the tape had loosened.
It hadn’t come off completely, but it definitely wasn’t holding my mouth firmly closed like it had when I first applied.
I was disappointed and surprised by this. Technically, mouth tape is sold to help with snoring cessation; its anti-aging properties are an off-label bonus.
Reviews indicated this brand was perfect for overactive sleepers, which was why I chose it. Because I am the perfect woman, I snore, drool, and talk in my sleep.
I’d hoped the tape was prepared to limit my overachieving somniloquism but had no such luck.
Two pieces on either side of my mouth didn’t work any better, but by night three, I was starting to have bigger problems.
Normally, I sleep in lip balm. Well, normally I do everything in lip balm, from morning to night, but the mouth tape changed my routine.
I tried applying the tape, then adding a layer of lip balm over it, but the tape slid right off, so I decided to abstain overnight.
But even though I still applied balm during the day, within a few days of sleeping in mouth tape, I had dry, cracked lips.
The fragile skin, normally so well-maintained, fell apart as I subjected it to the elements unprotected. That also gave the adhesive a firmer grip.
Good, right? Wrong! On the morning of the fourth day, I winced as a few little flecks of dead skin ripped off as I peeled the tape away.
Breathing through my nose in the dry air also exacerbated my existing winter nosebleeds.
After a full week of taping my mouth shut, I completed the trifecta of gross face problems.
Along with my flaky lips and bloody nose, I had a generous crop of ripe whiteheads crowding the edge of my bottom lip.
It’s inevitable. The moment you try any anti-aging measures, the acne comes back to remind you it’s good that you’re not a teenager.
The conclusion of my experiment came just as I began to truly lose patience with it – perfect timing.
In one week, I didn’t expect to see any anti-aging results, so my hypothesis was correct (unless you count the resurgence of high school breakouts).
The mouth tape created a disappointment paradox: adhesive enough to hurt my lips, but not strong enough to hold my muscles in place.
Does this hack really work, as the TikTok beauty gurus insist? Maybe. But is it worth it? Definitely not.
I’d rather age gracefully – well, as gracefully as a sleep-talking drool machine can – and have soft, pain-free lips and no acne lipliner.
If I change my mind, there’s always retinol, plastic surgery, and Photoshop.