Skims Face Wrap: When Will the War on Round Faces End?

“Is it April Fools?” wrote skincare expert Caroline Hirons in the Skims comments. “Gentle reminder: they’re targeting and profiting off your insecurities with stuff like this,” wrote another. While Akash Chandawarkar, MD, a plastic surgeon, looked on the wrap more favourably, saying it’s “perfect for after facelift, necklift, or submental lipo,” which is hardly surprising given it makes you look like you’ve been bandaged up post-extreme cosmetic surgery.

Nevertheless, the Face Wrap sold out within 24 hours online, which speaks volumes about how complicated our relationship with our faces has become. Even our toxic beauty standards, which normally push one ‘perfect’ aesthetic forward, seem to be confused.

On the one hand, toddler-plump cheeks are being sold to women as the ultimate signifier of youth – hence cheek filler is still booming despite some celebrities having their filler publicly dissolved. On the other, we’re being told to have our buccal fat sliced away so that we permanently look like we’re sucking on a straw. Not to mention, for years we’ve been conditioned to believe that our makeup should be placed high and winged out on our cheekbones to elongate and slim our faces.

Contouring, a makeup technique incidentally also popularised by Kim, is entrenched in the idea that we can use artful stripes of concealer, bronzer and highlighter to narrow our faces and chisel our cheeks and jawbones for a more ‘snatched’ appearance.

TikTok is awash with tutorials such as “Snatched Makeup Routine for Round Faces” or “How to Contour A Round Face For Flawless Makeup” – the implication being that our round faces need to be narrowed, and that a sharp, angular look taps into the current cultural zeitgeist. And perhaps on some sort of dark Black Mirror level it does, given diet culture is back and contouring pressurizes Black women to adopt European features.

Happily there’s a counter movement on social media that celebrates rather than compresses round faces. Jamie Janejira – a multi-hyphenate photographer, filmmaker, writer, model and makeup artist with over 200K followers – is one of the forerunners, eloquently promoting makeup that embraces “soft features”.