Brotox, hammer blows, facial bodybuilding. when the square jaw of the “alpha male” is attracted to younger men

Sitting comfortably in his dermatologist’s chair, the young man prepares to receive injections of botulinum toxin, marketed as Botox. He is not 30 years old. Before the procedure, she looks into her camera and forces a smile to exaggerate her fine lines. The practitioner intervenes on the forehead, then the needle approaches the crow’s feet. The surgery didn’t take more than a few minutes and already our guinea pig is feeling better…

On TikTok, where these types of videos abound, the #brotox hashtag has nearly 19 million views. The contraction between botox and “brother” (where it comes from “brother” and means “friend”), brotox refers to a fairly new trend: injectables for men. The world’s most popular cosmetic procedure (an annual growth rate estimated at more than 9.5% between 2023 and 2032, according to market research consultancy Precedence Research), Botox is now affecting men. In 2020, an estimated 265,000 men in the United States received the injections, a 182% increase from twenty years ago (1).

Talking about beauty (sorry, “grooming”) with men is no longer taboo, and 50-year-old stars who, like Brad Pitt (with Le Domaine) or Pharrell Williams (with Humanrace), understand well : Previously perceived as “devirilizing,” aesthetic dermatology has also scored points, especially among Gen Z.

obsession jaw line

Aesthetic dermatologist Dr. Stéphane Oroy has been practicing in the beautiful neighborhoods of Paris for over twenty-five years. And the practitioner is categorical: more and more young people pass through the door of his office. He says. “When I started in the profession, my patient base was 100% female. Today I accept 20 to 30% of men. And it’s been less than ten years, I’ve seen patients come who are already over thirty years old.” If his fifty-year-old client prefers discreet injections to “rejuvenate”, young people in turn require transformational interventions, in particular “fillers”, these injections of hyaluronic acid.

One of the growing practices. THE: contour of the jaw (French for jawline). The idea. Inject the product into the outer corner of the jaw to create volume and a protruding corner. On social platforms, the #jawline keyword reveals the craze as a phenomenon, with 1.3 million shares on Instagram and 4.6 billion views on TikTok. Models? Actors like Brad Pitt, Timothée Chalamet, Henry Cavill, Zac Efron, Cillian Murphy or Austin Butler or models like Jordan Barrett or John Cortajarena. Boys, “real ones”, with overdeveloped and conquering jaws. Because for some young men, a very square jawline will mean ‘manliness’ and therefore ‘beauty’.

Stereotypical masculinity

On TikTok, netizens scan their faces from all angles, applying complex theorems such as the “golden ratio” to calculate the angle of the jaw, neck/face proportion, or the distance between the eyes… There’s even a filter to scan your face and see if it matches. with modern ideals (perishable: never happens).

Some even recommend it to achieve the perfect jawline breaking bones, a stupid (and dangerous) technique that consists of punching the jaw to increase its volume… More simply, #mewing exercises (a kind of jaw yoga, more than 1 billion views for TikTok tutorials) or even silicone gums, chew: to get “male masseurs” (masseurs are the chewing muscles, Ed. note.). Here’s what 26-year-old Loan sells through his TikTok account to 270,000 subscribers (@loan.chad). Originally from Lyon, she describes herself as a “beauty and bodybuilding influencer”. If he denies having injections, he still has a very square jaw (and bulging muscles). For its community, Vark advises “level way of thinking”, to help them “perform”.

There are thousands of accounts online that, like his, offer young men “flashy” techniques to “enhance your masculinity” and become a “chad.” In web parlance, a “chad” is an alpha male that all women want. He must have the eyes of a hunter (#huntereyes, 577 million views on TikTok) in order to seduce his prey (women) and dominate his rivals… Ultravirilist cover-ups that author Pauline Ferrari knows well. A keen observer of our digital lives, he has written a fascinating book about male communities, Trained to hate women (Éditions JC Lattès) (2). Behind these stereotypical representations of masculinity in vogue on the nets, he condemns “the trivialization of masculine thinking that implies the proliferation of its term”, recalling that the prefix bro (found in brotox) is very common in the “manosphere”. , this sphere of “men”.

What if this desire for “face beautification” was a response to a world where the lines between the sexes are blurring? Pauline Ferrari thinks so, emphasizing that “in the face of the supposed feminization of society and the fear of the emergence of an alternative masculinity, we are witnessing a reassertion of the traditional form of masculinity.” It’s also the subject of Luz’s latest comic, Testosteronea dystopian story where an unknown virus attacks men’s vigor… Gentlemen, everything will be fine.

(1) Source: American Society of Plastic Surgeons
(2) Taught to Hate Women, How Males Infiltrate Social Media by Pauline Ferrari, Éditons JC Lattès, 300 p., €20. testosterone, by Luz, Éditions Albin Michel, 304 p., €29.90.