Whether or not you're skincare savvy, it's become impossible to avoid anti-aging messaging. As a 28-year-old woman who only just started using retinol, I already feel like I'm behind, and it seems like there's a new product on the market every time I dare scroll through social media. The latest one? An "anti-wrinkle" straw that claims to reduce the chance of developing fine lines on and around your lips.
The straw has been making its rounds on TikTok, with one video from beauty creator Michaela Scott gaining almost five million views on the app. "Does no one else use these?" she says in her video while pointing the straw to the camera.
Michaela then demonstrates how to drink from this "anti-wrinkle straw," which curves at the top and allows you to sip from a hole along the horizontal portion. According to her video, this prevents you from "pursing your lips" as hard as you would when drinking from a regular straw.
But Michaela isn't the first one to showcase this straw on TikTok. In September of last year, Rachel Carlisle's video of her sipping through an anti-wrinkle straw, fully equipped with an extender to fit inside her Stanley cup, blew up with 10 million views. "It looks really odd while using, but, I mean, if I stay looking youthful..." she says in her video. In 2022, Lauren Erro also grabbed five million viewers' attention with a slightly different version of the straw that reportedly had all the same "anti-wrinkle" benefits.
Many commenters on Michaela's video were a bit skeptical. "This is such a tiring way of living," the top comment (with over 100,000 likes) reads.
"Life is way too short," someone else wrote.
Overall, commenters didn't seem eager to run out and buy this straw and were happy to "age in peace."
And one user asked the question that, evidently, many others were thinking, too: "Why are people so terrified of aging?"
Well, first, let's figure out if these straws can actually prevent wrinkles or if they're just a gimmick. To do that, we reached out to Dr. Joyce Park, a board-certified dermatologist who's been practicing for nine years. "We form wrinkles due to repetitive muscle movements over time," she told BuzzFeed, "That's how we get wrinkles from common expressions we make on our forehead, in between our eyebrows, and around our eyes. If you are pursing your lips to drink out of a staw over and over again throughout the day, that can cause perioral wrinkle formation."
So, yes, theoretically, if you're pursing your lips less by drinking through an anti-wrinkle straw, then fewer perioral wrinkles will form. However, Dr. Park clarified that repeatedly sipping through a straw isn't the only thing that can cause wrinkles. "Remember that perioral wrinkles are not only a function of how often you make that expression. Other factors like sun exposure, genetics, and smoking can all play a role in the formation of lines around the mouth," she said.
To get a better idea of how this straw worked, I bought one myself. Granted, it's slightly different from what Michaela had (and not in a Stanley), but its description still claimed to help you "avoid wrinkles around the lips or vertical lines on the lips caused by long-term use of straws."
Honestly, it felt awkward to drink out of, and while I did purse my lips less than I did when drinking out of a regular straw, I couldn't fully adjust my muscle memory to not purse at all. In fact, pursing almost felt necessary to actually get the same suction as you would from a regular straw.
Curious commenters on Michaela's video were also wondering how to clean this thing, so I'll sum it up: It was a huge pain. Getting the straw brush into the curved part meant I had to bend it, and even then, I couldn't get a good scrub on that one section.
My qualms with this straw aside, it's clearly sparking interest in a growing anti-aging market with increasingly younger consumers. When speaking to CNN, Larissa Jensen, a beauty industry advisor at Circana, shared that "this generation is taking on the skincare routine of someone older." The intelligence firm also reported that 70% of Gen Z use anti-aging serums daily.
With a rise in TikTok skincare, it's no wonder young people are in such a rush to grab whatever shows up on their For You pages. Earlier this year, "Sephora Kids" caused a huge stir as teens and tweens flooded the popular store to get their hands on the latest products. With their colorful packaging, brands like Drunk Elephant have massively appealed to young consumers, and reports from Sephora employees suggest the scenes of young shoppers can get a little chaotic. When my coworker, Megan, checked out her local Sephora, she even noticed flocks of teens around the displays.
Dr. Park also confirmed this obsession that younger generations seem to have with anti-aging products these days: "Younger generations are more concerned about anti-aging than ever before!" she told us. "This trend of tweens spending $150+ on anti-aging skincare products is really alarming; they are not at an age where they really need to use expensive anti-aging ingredients. My advice is to focus on age-appropriate skincare."
The anti-wrinkle straw may now be the latest fad in anti-aging technology. Tim McManaman, the founder of the popular anti-wrinkle straw Lipzi, told the New York Times that "tens of thousands of people" have purchased the product. Although he admitted that he "doesn't care much" about lip wrinkles, he added, "There's a lot of people that take it pretty serious."
Ultimately, it's hard to ignore the comment section on Michaela's and many other creators' anti-wrinkle straw videos. In Dr. Park's opinion, there are ways we can reframe this narrative around anti-aging. "I think there has been more of a backlash against the idea of 'anti-aging' through the years because the 'anti' part makes it sound like aging is a negative," she said. "Conversely, aging is a privilege. I think we can focus more on the idea of healthy aging, where we try to maximize the health of the skin for the age that we currently are."
