By Jillian Morris

Beauty standards are constantly changing, leading to insecurities. Every time you open Instagram, Facebook, even TikTok, you are bombarded with women deemed “prettier” than you with features that you don’t have. Faces with long eyelashes, perfectly drawn on eyeliner, pink blushed cheeks, and most noticeably full lips. Full lips have taken over our generation, leading to surgeries and “lip plumping” procedures to hit an all-time high in the late 2010s, still trickling into our society today. These procedures cost people hundreds of dollars, making it a lucrative procedure for doctors to offer. 

Lip augmentation has been an established procedure since the early 1900’s but was not popularized until the 1960s. The use of silicone in the syringe was the catalyst that polarized the procedure. Injected by needle syringe, silicone raised many safety concerns which led to the implementation of collagen injections by the late 1990s. Contrary to silicone injections, collagen took longer for results to show, causing much impatience in those receiving the filler. Despite the safety benefits of collagen injections, they were soon replaced by the now commonly used hyaluronic acid solutions. A small needle is injected into the lining of the lips and the solutions are slowly squeezed into the lips. There is typically a bruise left on the lips for the next few days, once those fade you are left with new “filled out” pouty lips. 

One of the most famous faces of lip augmentation is Kylie Jenner. At the young age of 17, Jenner was seen sporting “duck lips” when she was seen years before with relatively thinner appearing lips. With full lips gaining popularity, Jenner was able to capitalize on this newfound attention and created a “lip kit” under the cosmetic brand Kylie Cosmetics. These kits included a matte liquid lipstick and a matching lip lining pencil. For years Kylie faced much public scrutiny for her “fake” lips because she refused to disclose the procedure she had done. The disappearance of Jenner’s paper-thin smile caused a frenzy of lip augmentation in younger generations of girls.

Along with the rise of lip injections and fuller looking lips, we are currently seeing the downfall of the very procedure. Recently there has been an uprise in a “lip flip”; A Botox procedure that relaxes the muscles in the upper lip causing it to lip upward, giving the lip a fuller appearance. On the downside of fillers, they are known to migrate out of the lip line, causing the need for touch ups every so many weeks. Because of this, many people dissolving their lip fillers; Kylie Jenner was spotted with smaller looking lips. Many plastic surgeons are currently unsure how the dissolving of lip fillers and other facial fillers will affect the skin later on in life. Because of this, there has been a rise in “lip plumping” products from several makeup brands in the last few years. These glosses include ingredients that “plump” the lips, leaving them with a tingling sensation and naturally turning them red from the irritation. The brand “Too Faced” has one of the most notable lip plumpers, “Lip Injection Plumping Gloss.” One brand has a variation of six different lip plumping lip glosses all claiming to be better than the last. 

The latest brand to hop on the lip plump trend was NYX with their new “Duck Plump High Pigment Lip Plumping Gloss.” NYX garnered loads of sales and 3.7 out of 4 stars on Ulta’s website. There have been countless TikTok review videos showcasing how powerful this product from NYX is. In these videos we see people with relatively thin lips apply the gloss, within a few seconds their lips are naturally red and swollen, mimicking the appearance of a lip augmentation. As lip plumping glosses like this are on the rise, and the poor long-term wear if fillers, many doctors predict people will opt for a gloss rather than a needle. Trends change every day, as we saw bigger lips on the rise in the 2010s, continuing to rise every day, will we finally see the fall of lip injections?