If I told you I was planning to tape my mouth shut at night, you’d have questions. “Why?” would likely be the first. Am I practising my own kidnapping? Or perhaps prepping for the next instalment of ? As cool as that last scenario would be, neither is true.
Mouth-taping is, in fact, one of the latest trends to go viral on TikTok, whereby people literally fasten their lips with adhesive before going to sleep. I won’t lie and say my interest in the trend was driven by anything more than vanity. Just search “mouth tape” on TikTok, and I can guarantee you’ll be inundated by dozens of posts in which influencers claim that simply applying a piece of tape over your mouth at night can enhance your jawline.
“I started sleeping with [mouth tape] because I’m vain and there’s studies behind mouth taping where if you’re a mouth breather, your jaw is not as defined,” a TikToker by the screen name said in a recent video. She went on to share two pictures of her side profile, one showing a rounded jawline and the other a more defined jawline. “This is what I used to look like a month ago,” she said, comparing the two images.
In fact, the mouth-taping trend predates TikTok by about 100 years. It was first developed in the mid-1900s by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Pavlovich Buteyko, as a way to improve a person’s health by encouraging them to breathe through their nose as opposed to their mouth. But overall health isn’t the reason the practice has blown up in re.