The internet is constantly reinforcing certain beauty standards for men and women alike. These days, some boys and young men have become preoccupied with a desire for a strong jawline, and are turning to “facial fitness gum” in the hopes of achieving that chiseled look.
A handful of gum companies are marketing their chewing gum products, especially through TikTok, where some users claim their jaw definition is thanks to their gum-gnawing habits. The idea is that gum chewing will bulk up the muscles in your jaw to create a more defined, and seemingly more masculine shape. One such company, Stronger Gum, says on its website that “stronger jaw muscles are not only beneficial for facial appearance but also essential for health.” These are in line with similar “jaw trainers,” silicone products that are meant to be gnashed on for a jaw workout. But when it comes down to the science, there’s little evidence to suggest that chewing gum, or anything for that matter, can make significant and lasting changes to your face shape, no matter how hard that gum is.
“Gum is so easily available and it’s not that hard to commit to chewing it…I get the appeal,” says Sunthosh Kumar Sivam, a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine. “But when I put my facial plastic surgeon hat on, I have some concerns.”
“There are a lot of different reasons why somebody may not have the definition on their jaw that they want,” says Sivam. Neck fat can contribute to a softer jawline, as can loose skin in older adults. Lifestyle changes to lose a little weight can often really change the definition you see in your jawline.
Plus, Sivam says, one flaw in the concept of jaw gum is that people tend to want a bony, jutting appearance in their jaw—chewing gum won’t do anything for that part of the jawline, it will just increase the mass in your jaw muscles. And you’d probably have to chew gum for excessive hours throughout the day, for multiple weeks to actually see any results. Results that would immediately go away once you stopped consistently chewing.
“I don’t think these people, especially young folks, understand the downstream effects of their activities,” says John S. Vorrasi, chair of the oral and maxillofacial surgery department at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The average person should only be putting their teeth together to chew for about an hour to an hour and a half a day,” he says. If you’re prolonging that to four or five hours a day, “that’s well over the threshold of what we’re normally doing, and you’re going to see some inherent side effects with that.”
Side effects for excessive gum chewing will be pretty similar to those for chronic clenching or grinding of the jaw, Vorrasi says. “There are plenty of people that have temporal headaches as a result of overuse of those muscles.” Plus, you could damage the tissues in your jaw joints, and your overworked muscles could spasm and give you closed-lock, or lockjaw, episodes.
When patients have jaw joint pain, “one of our biggest recommendations is to avoid chewing gum at all,” Sivam says. When it gets really bad, “we have to put patients on a special diet where we really limit chewing at all for a couple of weeks, and the pain can be really rough to deal with.”
If anyone has a lingering desire to alter their face shape, the first step would be to make some lifestyle modifications like diet and exercise, says Sivam. Beyond that, to really change your jaw shape you’ll have to resort to cosmetic procedures. Options that can reshape the jaw include getting contoured implants or dermal fillers along the jawline, fat dissolving or removing procedures, or a neck lift.
There are some things our bodies are just not meant to do, says Vorrasi. Anyone who’s really interested should “have that discussion with a professional to talk about ways to get that effect without causing yourself unnecessary harm.”
