Some social media "challenges" make the world better, like the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS. Some, however, make it worse. Case in point, the Kylie Jenner Challenge, which swept Instagram and Twitter last week. Prompted by a picture of Jenner using a suction device called CandyLipz to make her lips artificially plump, hundreds of gullible teens followed suit. Unfortunately for them, things didn't work out quite so well. Here's a gallery of ten people who got messed up by the #kyliejennerchallenge.
- rebecca not black (@highonlaurmani) April 20, 2015
The general goal for the Kylie Jenner Challenge is to achieve some sort of "natural" plumpness - think the Angelina Jolie pout, for example. This girl over-did it to the point where her mouth now resembles nothing more than a prolapsed pig anus. Not a good look, girl, but thankfully the swelling went down before she had to try to eat pizza or anything.
- janine ravelo (@hahajanine) April 20, 2015
One of the biggest issues with the Kylie Jenner Challenge is that not everybody has access to a CandyLipz device that has a soft aperture around the edge. Kids have been making do with shot glasses instead, and the seal created by the hard glass against soft skin is responsible for most of the bruising. In addition, not being able to precisely control the strength of the vacuum can also rupture blood vessels in your lips, creating something that looks like somebody on DeviantArt tried to draw a "sexy Grimace" from those old McDonalds commercials.
Some people are going a step beyond posting pictures and instead sharing video documentary of themselves undergoing the Kylie Jenner Challenge. The results are uniformly painful. On video, you can see just how much saliva that vacuum-sealing your lips produces - when this poor guy pulls the cup off to reveal his bloated mouth, it's practically oozing with wet spittle. Pretty unsanitary, dude.
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When people go to plastic surgeons for lip plumping, they're under the care of a doctor who can precisely measure the amount of extra dermal fillers to make them beautiful. The vacuum-plumping method used in the Kylie Jenner Challenge takes that precision and throws it out the window. You can't even see how big your lips are getting until you break the seal and release the vacuum, which results in cases like this poor girl. Her lips are swollen so huge they look like a pair of jumbo-sized hot dogs.
So one of the biggest problems with the Kylie Jenner Challenge is the amount of time people put their lips under suction. Doing it for a few seconds is actually not bad for your lips - it can create a quick bit of extra pout without any real damage. But many of the people who are trying this at home are going for as long as a minute, and that's when things get a little dicey. Suck air for that long and you're actually causing damage to your tissues, which can manifest in bruising, tingling or pain. And if you do it too much, you can actually permanently slacken and loosen your lips, which is the last thing you want, even if it means Vine stardom.
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It's not just girls who are trying to plump their lips the Kylie Jenner way. A young man named Kevin Coulton from Middleton in Manchester tried to use a glass to plump his lips and the end result was disgusting bruising all over his mouth and chin. He claims that "everyone's doing it," which is kind of a shocking indictment of today's teens. Sure, when I was a kid there was always that creep in the back of the bus who would press 9 volt batteries on his tongue, but typically people were smart enough to not all try it.
When people go to plastic surgeons for lip plumping, they're under the care of a doctor who can precisely measure the amount of extra dermal fillers to make them beautiful. The vacuum-plumping method used in the Kylie Jenner Challenge takes that precision and throws it out the window. You can't even see how big your lips are getting until you break the seal and release the vacuum, which results in cases like this poor girl. Her lips are swollen so huge they look like a pair of jumbo-sized hot dogs.
So one of the biggest problems with the Kylie Jenner Challenge is the amount of time people put their lips under suction. Doing it for a few seconds is actually not bad for your lips - it can create a quick bit of extra pout without any real damage. But many of the people who are trying this at home are going for as long as a minute, and that's when things get a little dicey. Suck air for that long and you're actually causing damage to your tissues, which can manifest in bruising, tingling or pain. And if you do it too much, you can actually permanently slacken and loosen your lips, which is the last thing you want, even if it means Vine stardom.
It's not just girls who are trying to plump their lips the Kylie Jenner way. A young man named Kevin Coulton from Middleton in Manchester tried to use a glass to plump his lips and the end result was disgusting bruising all over his mouth and chin. He claims that "everyone's doing it," which is kind of a shocking indictment of today's teens. Sure, when I was a kid there was always that creep in the back of the bus who would press 9 volt batteries on his tongue, but typically people were smart enough to not all try it.
At this point, if you haven't tried the Kylie Jenner Challenge, you've probably seen a half-dozen people who have. And you know that the end results are going to be hideous at best and deeply painful at worst. So what is making people continue to do them, even as I write this? This poor girl tried to use a plastic vitamin bottle to expand her lips, and she was only too successful. What makes it hilarious is that she's actually shocked at the disaster she's made of her face.
One thing that I noticed after watching approximately eleven million Kylie Jenner Challenge videos (aside from the fact that there are a whole lot of stupid people in this world) is that nearly everybody is shocked when they pull the cup off of their lips. You get the feeling that they knew it would be bad, just not this bad. Lips come out bigger, floppier, redder and more painful than you ever would have imagined. This poor subject's bottom lip looks like the couch from The Simpsons, for God's sake.
One thing that I noticed after watching approximately eleven million Kylie Jenner Challenge videos (aside from the fact that there are a whole lot of stupid people in this world) is that nearly everybody is shocked when they pull the cup off of their lips. You get the feeling that they knew it would be bad, just not this bad. Lips come out bigger, floppier, redder and more painful than you ever would have imagined. This poor subject's bottom lip looks like the couch from The Simpsons, for God's sake.
- queen tyler III (@veggieberg) April 21, 2015
People still aren't sure what it is about full lips that makes them attractive to men. But it doesn't necessarily hold true in the opposite direction. When men try to plump their mouths up, the end result is disastrous. Without enough fatty tissue to expand, the pressure from the cups instead breaks blood vessels all over their mouths, resulting in an expanse of purple bruising. This poor dude looks like he's been huffing on the tailpipe of a '87 Buick LeSabre, not living the high life with the Kardashians.
Let's close with one that's both hilarious and kind of scary. So when you apply the force of a vacuum to a brittle physical object like glass, it puts it under a significant amount of tensile stress. Add in the stress of breaking the vacuum seal and glass tends to shatter all over. This last Kylie Jenner Challenge fail features a woman who not only expands her mouth to obscene size, but also gets showered in shards of glass when a friend tries to remove it. No thanks, dudes. Let's all just be happy with our lips as-is.