The Worst Anti-Aging “Hacks”: From Anti-Wrinkle Straws To The Morning Shed
Young women have always known they’re on borrowed time when it comes to cultural relevance and sexual power. These are currencies rooted in youth and beauty. By nature, they are fleeting feminine delicacies. In the past, when women had less freedom and autonomy, they were likely badgered more frequently, more bluntly, and with greater urgency about their front-loaded lifetime value.
Now that women have greater independence and legal equality to save them from the necessity of using their youth and beauty as bargaining chips to secure a lifetime of security (as well as preserve bloodlines and forge political alliances), marriage is less crassly regarded as a woman’s only economic proposition to avoid a lifetime of living in squalor.
And yet the fear of irrelevance, invisibility, and dwindling sexual power remains. That primordial anxiety hasn’t vanished. It’s only been refracted through the distorting mirror of social media. Women now live in unprecedented proximity to reminders of their own aging and to a marketplace of curious contraptions that promise to pause time.
The idea is simple: a product can be your fountain of youth—a moment on the face, a lifetime of social relevance. But there’s a point where anti-aging neuroticism doesn’t just yield diminishing returns, it becomes a kind of spiritual erosion. The rituals grow so convoluted and visibly desperate that they no longer preserve beauty but announce its inevitable expiration. They don’t buy you more time as much as they rob you of your sanity. Some of these anti-aging “hacks” would make even Dorian Gray squirm.
Anti-Wrinkle Straws
If you didn’t know, the suction action of sipping through a straw can contribute to wrinkles over time (like most anything that requires activation of the facial muscles). Drinking through a straw creates perioral wrinkles, formed from repeated pursing of the lips, which form creases around the mouth. Over the years, this can form vertical lines along the upper lip, also known as smoker’s lines. However, smoking accelerates these signs of aging not only through this motion, but also through oxidative stress and reduced blood flow, which break down collagen and skin elasticity.
While this is one of the more subtle anti-aging hacks circulating online, it’s still an unnecessary solution to a non-existent problem. If you’re worried about milkshake-induced perioral lines, the only surefire fix is stopping using straws altogether. Let’s be honest: sipping through one of these things looks stupid and makes everyone with the misfortune of being in your proximity uncomfortable. Their popularity has surged online, with countless reviews from young women on TikTok, who all resemble a guppy on Valium who’s just a little too aware of its own mortality.
If you’re concerned about developing upper lip lines from sucking through a straw, the intuitive solution would be to gulp from the glass. No suction needed. But because that solution doesn’t fulfill the consumerist itch of young women browsing unnecessary product solutions on TikTok Shop, there’s a gadget for that: anti-wrinkle straws. They’re like regular straws, but look much dumber. Oh, and they supposedly reduce lip puckering to prevent those dreaded wrinkles. There are a few different designs on the market, but the most popular one looks like a hook with a side opening for direct front-facing access. As Cosmetic Connection described it, it looks more like a flute than a straw.
And while Board-Certified Dermatologists have granted they should theoretically work by reducing repetitive contraction of the mouth muscles when sipping, they also qualify it won’t make any discernible difference unless you treat sucking on straws like a full-time job. Perioral lines are more of a concern for smokers and wind instrument players, not someone who drinks the occasional iced coffee. If you don’t already use straws, you certainly won’t benefit from the anti-aging wrinkle straw. Any movement or suction will contribute to wrinkles, just like making any facial expression over a long enough period. If you’re going to spend money on anti-aging, Dr. Scott Walker recommends keeping it simple: daily sunscreen and a nighttime retinoid.
Chin Straps
When I see women pessimistically comment on a beauty routine video, something snarky like “women will never be free,” I always roll my eyes. God forbid women take pride in their appearance, enjoy makeup, or other feminine beauty maintenance. But there’s one situationally appropriate time to invoke this snark: in response to anyone encouraging young women to castrate their chins at night (which is probably a choking hazard) to get snatched, slimmer chins. This sick contraption looks like it was the accidental byproduct of someone’s weird fetish, firstly, with some looking suspiciously like BDSM face masks.
Others are more comparable to something you’d give an injured car accident victim in the hospital or post-chin reconstruction surgery. Women are being sold these chin straps as a DIY facelift: the miracle cure for double chins, jowls, and generally sagging skin. Some have even proclaimed it’s a miracle cure for sleep apnea, snoring, and teeth grinding (spoiler alert: it’s not, and can be dangerous if you have sleep apnea.)
The idea is that the strap lifts up your facial muscles to create a more taut, youthful appearance and sucks in fat underneath the chin to reduce swelling and the appearance of a double chin, like a Kybella procedure. I’ve seen videos circulating on TikTok of morbidly obese women with an excess of 100 pounds unironically adorning chin straps to “cure” their double chin. Out of respect for their privacy, I won’t link them here, but it’s incredibly sad to witness people who need to make lifestyle changes falling for the false promise of quick fixes through gimmicks like this.
Some women reportedly sleep in their chin strap, while others use it for an hour or so while they’re lying in bed. Not only does it not work, but it’s uncomfortable, causes headaches, jaw pain, disrupts sleep, and is really just squishing your face all night (pretty counterproductive for anti-aging). It also blocks normal lymphatic flow and drainage from the face, warns reconstructive surgeon Dr. Michael Bassiri-Tehrani, which is concerning, because “we need lymph flow to remove waste and support immune function of the skin.”
You’re better off sticking with gua-sha, because for the low cost of scaring the shit out of your boyfriend or housemates at night, you can enjoy the rewards of temporarily reduced puffiness and swelling, discomfort and reduced quality of sleep, and negligible improvement (and potential danger) of sleep disorder issues like sleep apnea and teeth grinding. Who could have guessed? So, cross mummifying yourself in your sleep off your anti-aging list and book a lymphatic drainage massage instead for de-puffing. But if you have an honest-to-god double chin from an excess of fat? You likely just need to lose some weight, specifically, fat. There’s no magic cure for that (besides weight loss surgery) except for a good old-fashioned calorie deficit.
The “Morning Shed”
Okay, this one just pisses me off. Like, ruins my day level pissed off. From the creators of the “disgusting, unnecessary chin strap,” we bring you something even more diabolical: the morning shed. The morning shed builds off of the chin sling and takes it to deranged new heights (and layers). A full cocoon of skin, hair, and lip care covering every inch of exposed skin tissue or hair follicle.
We’re talking layers of skin products, face masks, lip stains, adhesives, satin bonnets, heatless curling rods, lash serums. There’s truly no end to the possible layers and combinations of barrier creams, fabrics, tapes, and straps. There is no upper limit to the morning shed. A quick browse through this content will help you realize that ludicrous maximalism and tediousness seem to be the point. Young women encase themselves in frivolous products as a ritual, like a youth-preservation ceremony. The “feeling” that they’re doing something, regardless of any real-world functional or results-driven purpose, seems to be the real driver of this behavior. Sleeping Beauty-maxxing: like a hopeful wish to the universe, “look how much I care—the lengths I’ll go to—let me hold on a little longer.”
This routine was thankfully so over-the-top insane that it trended not as an aspirational new beauty routine, but as dystopian nightmare fuel mirroring everything wrong with modern beauty and consumerist culture. The compulsive rituals. The neurotic consumption. The aging hypervigilance. Content creators delude themselves and their followers into believing that the lengths they’re going to for a modicum of supple skin is worth it, using tacky mantras like “the uglier you go to bed, the prettier you wake up.”
No one in their right mind could sleep comfortably in a morning shed. This routine is so sleep-disruptive that it could probably cure narcolepsy. This trend consists of an array of convoluted contraptions obscuring your mouth, chin, eyes, hair, everything to keep you looking “snatched” and “glowing” but in the meantime, you’re scaring the hell out of your man, you can’t sleep comfortably, and I highly doubt you can feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror and look like a Star Wars goblin who’s desperately trying to hold on to their youth.
An Alternative Approach: What If Mindset Is King?
Perhaps most ironic of all is that these excessive routines built around preserving youth only make you look less attractive. The routines themselves are enough to send someone into cardiac arrest, sure. But more than that, appearing to be over-concerned with aging at such a young age makes you look low value and insecure, and draws more attention to the very thing you’re trying to prevent: your fleeting youth. One of the reasons youth is so alluring is that it signifies beauty, but also a carefree attitude that only really comes from knowing that time is on your side. A feminine enjoyment of the now, not excessive worry of tomorrow.
If you want the real anti-aging life hack, I think it’s that: to just chill out and accept whatever is coming tomorrow. We all want to look the best we can. I’m not against preventative skin care, facials, red light therapy, or sleeping in a face mask. Get Botox to your heart’s content if you really want to. Just don’t let the anxiety of aging rob you of what youth you have left. Aging is, as they say, a privilege not afforded to everyone. It’s gross to recoil from it.