A square-jawed young man faces the camera and tells viewers that they, too, can have the facial architecture of Clark Kent. He runs a finger along his jawline as if it really could cut glass.
Near the end of the video, one of many similar testimonials on TikTok and YouTube, he credits his chiseled appearance to his habit of gnawing on extra-hard chewing gum.
It might come from a brand like Stronger Gum, which claims that its product can sculpt customers’ jawlines within two weeks, or Jawcko, which offers tough gum in flavors like “Muscle Mango” and “Jacked Watermelon.”
A growing number of Gen Z men are seeking out stiff chewing gum from brands that claim their products will build up chewers’ jaw muscles, giving them a more conventionally masculine look. Teenage boys hoping to improve their attractiveness in “looksmaxxing” communities online are encountering an explosion of gum brands that position their products as the facial equivalent of a Spartan workout routine.
“Say goodbye to a weak chin and hello to a jawline that commands attention,” Jawliner, a brand that sells “Facial Fitness” chewing gum, says on its website.
The products are reaching young customers despite their cost. Jawliner has sold more than one million pouches of its gum, which usually sell for $26 and contain around 60 pieces, since the product was introduced in 2022, according to Tiffany Tran, a spokeswoman for the company. She added that 60 percent of those customers were ages 18 to 25.
Antonio Eversgerd, 17, a rising senior in Mandeville, La., ordered a package of hard gum on Amazon after seeing a YouTube video that claimed it would help him grow larger jaw muscles. Several of his classmates and his 15-year-old brother’s friends chew it, too. “It’s all over social media,” he said.
His mother, a cosmetic dentist, made him throw it away. Lately, Dr. Daniela Eversgerd, who often treats temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders, has been getting questions about hard gum from two or three young patients each month, she estimated. Some of them have come in with jaw pain or damaged fillings that she said had most likely been caused by excessive chewing.
“You would have to chew gum for so long, for eight hours a day for years and years, to get the effect that they’re looking for,” Dr. Eversgerd said. “The risks definitely outweigh the benefits.”
The gum has been circulating since around 2021 in online forums populated by “looksmaxxers,” Gen Z’s term for young men who exchange often dubious tips for enhancing their appearances. It got a signal boost this year from the 19-year-old influencer Dillon Latham, who posted about it in January, and the neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman, who mentioned a version called mastic gum in an episode of his podcast in February. (Mastic, a tree resin whose use dates to ancient Greece, has also been swept up in the looksmaxxing cause.)
Hard gum has also become a frequent recommendation in Reddit groups dedicated to “mewing,” an unproven technique for defining the jawline that traveled from incel communities online toward the mainstream.
Carson Teagarden, a 19-year-old fitness content creator in Waynesburg, Pa., decided he wanted to try the gum after scrolling past models’ bulging jaw muscles on social media. “Especially at my age, everyone’s wanting to get girls and look the best they can,” he said. “It kind of makes you wonder, ‘Oh, maybe I need to get a jawline, too.’”
The influencers promoting the gum are often doing so for a profit. Mr. Teagarden said that after he tested Jawliner gum in a recent TikTok video that was viewed over a million times, about 200 people bought the gum through the link he provided on his TikTok Shop page. He said he earned around $5 per order.
Recent articles in The Cut and CBS News have noted the sparse evidence that chewing gum can actually change one’s appearance. Gum companies point to a 2018 study with just 19 participants that suggested that gum chewing could increase bite force, and a 2019 study that found a hard diet changed jaw structure in mice. Dentists interviewed by The New York Times said that any visible effects of chewing hard gum would be, at best, minor and temporary.
The more pressing issue might be the product’s safety, especially for young people whose jaws are still developing. In a statement, the American Dental Association cautioned that chewing dense gum at length could put people at risk for temporomandibular disorders, which cause pain in the jaw joint and muscles.
Online trends like using gum to shape one’s jawline “are rarely backed by scientific evidence and can range from ineffective to harmful when it comes to oral health,” the organization added.
Gum companies say that their products are not just safe but beneficial if used for short intervals. Ms. Tran, the Jawliner spokeswoman, said that the brand encouraged customers to “train” every other day for no more than 10 minutes to prevent injury. Tomas Palomaki, the founder of Stronger Gum, said chewing should be kept to under 30 minutes, and encouraged anyone with TMJ disorders to consult a doctor before trying their products.
Some customers are ignoring those warnings. Dr. Dar Radfar, a dentist in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said that in the past two years, more and more of his teenage patients had been chewing hard gum for up to an hour a day.
Now, when young patients comes into his office complaining of jaw pain, Dr. Radfar’s first question is whether they are chewing gum or doing related jaw exercises. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, I want to strengthen my jawline,’” he said. (He urges them to reconsider.)
Beyond the potential physical downsides, these companies are communicating to young people that their jawlines can, and perhaps should, look like those of fully grown men, said Dr. Kavita Mariwalla, a dermatologist in West Islip, N.Y., who published a paper on how social media can affect perception of self.
Social media’s effects on young women like the ones flooding Sephora in search of skin care products intended for adults are well documented, Dr. Mariwalla said. She sees less discussion of the pressure for young men to look fully developed at a very young age, which has been accelerated by buff TikTok and Instagram influencers.
In April, her 12-year-old son asked if he could try jawline-shaping gum. She balked; her husband started laughing. “He was like, typical Dad,” Dr. Mariwalla said: “‘Don’t worry, kid, you’re going to have a jawline like me.’”
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