The Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge: “Pout” of control?

We all know celebrities start trends that fans love to follow, but sometimes people can take things too far. A prime example of this is the latest  “Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge.” Videos of this have been circulating through social media for a couple weeks.

To perform the challenge which essentially makes lips look fuller, people are sucking on a shot glass or plastic bottle for a couple minutes, and then removing the object, which makes the lips look huge and swollen. This supposedly creates fuller lips that look like Kylie Jenner’s, hence the name. Though having big lips is appealing nowadays, the Lip Challenge can make ones lips look extremely unnatural and bulbous. (Don’t try this at home kids).

While the side effects are usually temporary, some disfigurement may be permanent. The challenge will make lips bigger for a short amount of time, but it can also cause pain, bruising and even scarring around the mouth.

“Not only can significant pain, swelling, and bruising result from these suction techniques, but there is potential risk for scarring and permanent disfigurement with repeated attempts,” said Dr. Dendy Engelman, a dermatologist, about the lip challenge.

Kylie Jenner even spoke out on Twitter about the challenge, “I’m not here to try & encourage people/young girls to look like me or to think this is the way they should look … I want to encourage people/young girls like me to be YOURSELF & not be afraid to experiment w your look.”

This is all fine and dandy Kylie Jenner, but people aren’t doing this to look like you. People are trying to be funny, and some are honestly just curious. This isn’t the first challenge trend that has circulated which can cause health issues. Others include the infamous cinnamon challenge, the milk challenge (drink a gallon in an hour), and other harmful activities that are obviously  painful/discomfortable, but people do them anyways, and post videos of the aftermath.

Fossil Ridge High School sophomore Lindsey Stevens did the Lip Challenge a week ago. “I thought it’d be funny and I wanted to take pictures but it ended up hurting really bad,” said Stevens.

Rocky Mountain High School junior Ashley Yeager also decided to do the challenge to be funny, “I wanted to post a video of it but it ended up badly. My lips were bruised for three days” said Yeager.

The moral of the story is that teens should be finding different ways to have fun. Also, don’t put your lips in a shot glass.

It’s all fun and games until somebody ruins their lips.