When you’re browsing your social media feeds and you see the latest beauty hack with tons of likes, you have to take the advice with a grain of salt. Sometimes it’s a no-brainer, like using a spoon to create a dramatic cut crease. And sometimes the tip is easy enough to follow, but there’s no way to know if it really has any benefit. The latest DIY beauty hack making the rounds is a makeup tutorial that begins with an easy skin-tightening technique involving two empty plastic water bottles, and we had to know, can you really firm and tighten your skin at home by simply squeezing your recyclables across your face?
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As reported on by Allure, makeup artist @mercedesbenssz posted an Instagram tutorial that includes the clever tip. Similar to the trendy practice of facial cupping, she suggests using empty water bottles, applying them to your skin while squeezing to create a suction effect and moving them in an upward motion across your face. In her caption she writes: “How to tighten your skin and have clear skin. Drink up (water) pour up (water). Squeezing empty water bottles and moving upward motion to keeping blood flow circulating to tone and firm the skin.”
Genius, right? We reached out to Dover, OH, facial plastic surgeon David Hartman, MD, to find out if there is any real benefit to dragging empty water bottles across your face to increase skin firmness. Before he gave us the 411 on this beauty hack, Dr. Hartman described why our skin loses its elasticity as we age. “Facial skin tightening is a universal desire that can start as early as our 20s. We want tighter skin to address wrinkles, looseness and sagging, all of which can give us a tired or angry look. As we get older, we start to lose soft tissue, further robbing us of the lovely apples of our cheeks, causing a hollowing around our eyes and deflation of our lips. Every decade from our 20s forward, we lose roughly 6 percent of the collagen of our skin, making it thin, crepey and less elastic.”
As far as the water bottle trick goes, Dr. Hartman says this isn’t a “don’t try this at home” scenario, but rather a “don’t waste your time” one. “Do I believe that water bottle ‘cupping’ will have any positive impact on any of those aging processes? No! Rather than ‘sucking face’ with a water bottle, consider treating it in ways that will make a beautiful difference. Opt instead for proven methods like a quality retinol cream, organic acid peels or microdermabrasion treatments that improve the quality of the outer skin. Radio-frequency microneedling can absolutely stimulate the production of thicker, tighter facial skin collagen and fractional CO2 laser resurfacing promotes immediately noticeable skin.”
In addition to in-office procedures, there are also at-home tightening and toning tools you can invest in that are known to deliver visible results. For now, you can put the empty water bottles back into the recycling bin and keep perusing your news feed for the next up-and-coming beauty hack.
