June 7, 2025 • 15 mins
Karen breaks down the growing trend of face taping as a non-invasive approach to reducing wrinkles and lifting sagging skin. She explains the difference between aesthetic taping for red carpet-ready lift and overnight wrinkle patches like Frownies that aim to retrain facial muscles. Karen walks listeners through product options, techniques, and safety tips—while sharing her own experiences (and her mom’s timeless advice) about fighting the dreaded “11s.”
Visit our website itchyandbitchy.com to read blog posts on the many topics we have covered on the show.
Visit our website itchyandbitchy.com to read blog posts on the many topics we have covered on the show.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The content of this podcast is provided for general informational
purposes only and is not intended as nor should it
be considered a substitute for professional medical advice. Hello everyone,
(00:22):
this is Karen Nickel, family nurse practitioner, and this is
Itchy and Bitchy, a podcast supervised answers to your many
unanswered health questions. So you all may say, Karen, you
are way behind the times. What rock have you been
living under? Yes, you may be way ahead of me,
but I have recently noticed this big craze called face taping.
(00:46):
If you have already heard about face taping, you may
want to go ahead and stick around keep listening, because
it appears there is a lot to learn about this
practice to reduce facial lines and wrinkles. Let me start
by explaining that there are two different types of face taping.
One is when clear tape is applied so that it
(01:10):
is ideally not seen, and it's applied to the temples, cheeks,
and jawline on both sides of the face, and they
are connected behind the head with an elastic band in
order to gently lift the brows and cheeks and jowls.
It's basically a non surgical as needed facelift. This is
(01:33):
often used in the theater or for red carpet events.
Celebrities and drag queens have been employing this technique for decades.
You have to be pretty good at hiding the tape
and the elastic when using this method. Got to be
pretty practiced at it. I thought about using this option
back in the day when I was performing as an
opera singer, and I have no idea why I even
(01:58):
considered it, because, especially compared to now, I really wasn't
saggy back then. Not sure what I was thinking. Well,
I never bothered doing it, so there you go. Performing now, however,
would be a whole different story. I'll tell you that
I'd be thinking about getting good at that little technique.
There are all kinds of products online. I'm telling you.
(02:23):
Back in the day when I was thinking about doing it,
I probably would have had to run to the hardware
store and pick me up some string and some who
knows what tape and made it happen. But now there
are all kinds of products online. If you go to
Amazon and type in invisible facelift tape, you will find
(02:44):
dozens and dozens of these products, each with a picture
of a model who looks to be eighteen or nineteen
years old and who have never contemplated a sag or
a jowl. The products range in price from ten dollars
to twenty five dollars for a pack of I don't
(03:06):
even know a bunch. They also have ones you can
use for your neck. Yes, you can pull the skin
back on your neck, make it look nice and smooth,
and supposedly many of these products are waterproof, so you're
okay to break out in a sweat. You'll have nice
tight skin even if you're sweaty. But I wouldn't dive
(03:27):
into a pool or else. All is likely to be revealed.
So if you have a red carpet event or a
photo shoot or something of that ilk and you want
a non surgical facelift, this is out there for you.
The only warning I want to share is that constantly
doing this type of taping of your face is also
(03:48):
not a good idea. Pulling on your delicate facial skin
on a daily basis long term isn't recommended. While temporarily
taping can give you a lift to look, doing it
repeatedly can make your face look more saggy when it
is not taped. So we always pay a price, don't we. Okay, Well,
(04:13):
on that note, On that happy note, the second face
taping option is up next after this quick break Welcome Back.
(04:39):
The other taping technique is one in which a gentle
tape is applied to the areas of the face that
crease with movement, with the thought that preventing the face
from wrinkling will make it appear smoother. This type of
taping is usually applied at night or if you're not
out and about, because yus, it's applied in very obvious
(05:02):
areas of your face. Even clear tape would likely be noticed.
But hey, if you don't care if people see you
a tape on your face, that's okay too. I'll start
by talking about a product called Frownies. It is considered
the original wrinkle patch and it is a simple flesh
(05:24):
colored adhesive that claims the same skin plumping benefits as botox,
only without the needle. People are absolutely going wild about
them on Instagram, some of whom report that they are
looking less angry every day, believe it or not, and
have almost no elevens. Those are those lines between the
(05:47):
eyes when they awaken. Frownies have been around for much
much longer than good old Instagram. They've been around for
one hundred and homs thirty six years. In fact, in
eighteen eighty nine, Margaret Croson invented frownies along with her
(06:09):
daughter Alice, who was a concert pianist and a model.
Alice furrowed her brow in concentration while playing the piano,
and with all that furrowing going on, she began to
develop the elevens between her eyes, so the need for
frownies was born. Margaret put adhesive on weighted paper and
(06:31):
used a perforating tool to cut the paper into small
patch shapes. During the nineteen thirties and forties, Margaret, the mother, Alice,
her daughter, and eventually Alice's daughter Peggy, grew the business
by traveling the country, sharing their wrinkle eradicator patches with
Broadway performers, makeup artists, and Hollywood stars. They were smart
(06:56):
women going to performers first. For these wrinkle producers. Frownies
first came into the public eye in the nineteen fifty
film Sunset Boulevard, when Silent film star Glorius Wanson was
seen getting ready for her close up wearing the patches.
What a windfall, I think that's about the first time
(07:19):
I first started wearing them. I'm just kidding. I wasn't
even born then, but I did use them for a while,
but I didn't stick with it, unfortunately, and no pun intended.
I was trying to take care of my elevens between
my eyes, which unfortunately developed early in my life. As
a matter of fact, my mother, who was an antithesiologist
(07:42):
so she knew a thing or two, kept saying to
me throughout my teenage years, Karen, if you keep frowning
like that, those lines will stay there permanently. And I said, yeah, Mom, Sure,
sure Mom, and proceeded to devop permanent frown lines. I'm
(08:04):
sure she's still laughing at me from above. I'm sure
of it. Okay, Mom, you were right about so many things.
You stop laughing now. Okay. You apply them to your
forehead and between your eyes every night. They essentially tape
your skin taut, preventing wrinkle formation as you sleep. Many
(08:26):
users claim to see smoother, less wrinkled skin in the morning.
You know, I might give them another try. I know, Mom,
I know you're laughing. I know, I know, but I
might give them another try. And they're very cost effective
one hundred and forty four patches for twenty five bucks.
Dermatologists are quick to point out that you have to
(08:48):
use them nightly for results. Once you stop using them,
you will lose the dermal support, and once you lose
that support, the skin contracts and voila, the wrinkles reappear.
So continuing on with the second type of taping that
has the goal of preventing wrinkles from worsening and the
(09:08):
goal of retraining the muscles, you want to apply tape
directly on the wrinkled areas to smooth skin and slightly
limit movement in areas most prone to creasing. These areas
may include around the mouth to prevent excessive lip pursing
while speaking, crows feet to limit excessive squinting, and the
(09:31):
forehead to limit brow lifting and frowning. You're basically splinting
your face. As I mentioned earlier, If you apply tape
directly to wrinkles, the tape will likely be visible, so
people often opt to do this at night while they sleep.
Face tape will not make your wrinkles vanish permanently. I'm
(09:54):
sure that's no surprise to you. It provides a temporary
benefit with immediate smoothing and lifting that is purely cosmetic.
Though it won't erase lines that are already there, it
can be used as a tool to help prevent the
new ones from forming. Since we can develop lines in
(10:15):
our face while we sleep, especially if we're side sleepers
and our face is smushed up against the pillow, Taping
your face overnight may reduce sleep creases if you do
use face tape during the day. It can also be
used to restrict certain facial movements in an attempt to
(10:35):
train facial muscles to contract less forcefully, with the idea
of reducing the formation of dynamic wrinkles caused by repetitive
facial expressions. That's where I'm in big, big trouble. Too
many facial expressions entirely, entirely to many. There's probably not
(10:58):
much to do about changing that. I'm afraid at this
point in my life. There's not a lot of risk
if you decide to do skin taping, as long as
you use the right tape. The biggest concern is using
tape that is not skin friendly, if you use something
that weakens the top layer of the skin, like if
you run out to your garage and start using duct
(11:20):
tape not a good idea. If you use something like
that that weakens the top layer of skin with repeated use,
you can wind up with irritation and possibly contact dermatitis,
especially in really sensitive areas of the face, like around
the eyes and mouth. When shopping for face tape, you
should look for something that is safe for your skin
(11:42):
and designed to be used on your face. Medical grade
silicone is a good option because it is skin friendly,
removes gently, peels off gently, not like ripping off a
band aid, and it's reusable. You can just wash it
with soap and water and dry it out and reuse it.
(12:03):
You can buy a roll of silicone tape and cut
the amount you need and the shape you need, or
you can buy silicone tape that is pre cut and
especially packaged for use on your face. Opting for a
face tape kit can also be smart because the tape
included is often clear and discrete and is designed for esthetics,
(12:25):
and the tape is sometimes infused with active ingredients for
the skin, like peptides or niacinamide. You can also use
kinesiology tape for face taping. Kinesiology tape is that tape
that you see on athletes like on their shoulders and
knees and pretty much everywhere lots of joints, and you
(12:46):
may have had kinesiology taping if you've gone to a
physical therapist and they've taped you. You can also use
that kind of tape for face taping. Some dermatologists recommend
using kinesiology tape that is designed for children because the
glue is gentler, and usually it's made out of cotton
instead of nylon, and that cotton is more breathable. In
(13:09):
terms of tape placement, there are a gazillion that might
be an exaggerator, but there are a lot of YouTube
videos on how and where to place face tape, but
it is key that you place the tape so that
it follows the lymphatic system and the muscle structure of
the face. If you just google the words face lymphatic system,
(13:32):
you'll find some useful diagrams to guide you. But to
give you an idea, some key areas are on the
naso labial folds, the outer corners of eyes, around the cheekbones,
and on the sides of the forehead. It's very important
not to stretch the tape. You know, when we use
kinesiology tape on the joint, we do put that stretch
(13:54):
on it. It's important to do that on a joint.
But on the face. You do not want to put
that star stretch in the kinesiology tape because it can
stress the muscles and do more harm than good. So
no stretch on the kinesiology tape when you're putting it
on the face. So I hope that was helpful. It's
(14:14):
helpful for me. I might go try to do something
for my elevens and just listen to my mother cackle
from above, cackling at me while I put tape on
my forehead. Thank you all for listening. Wherever you listen
to this podcast, please leave a review and rate the podcast.
Your reviews and ratings really, really really do matter. Also
(14:37):
make sure you follow the show so that it will
be automatically downloaded. That totally matters. I encourage you to
visit our Facebook page IMB Podcast, where you can give
us a like and leave comments or questions for me.
Our website is Itchy andbitchy dot com, where there are
blogs and some of our subjects available for you to read.
(14:58):
As always, thanks to Forrest winsle my Son, our producer
and composer of our theme music, and the person who
does all the behind the scenes work to make this
podcast possible. Thank you so much. Forrest Forest has completed
his first immensely successful year at Peabody Music Conservatory. So
proud of him, so very proud. Remember that your health
(15:22):
is in your hands.
The content of this podcast is provided for general informational
purposes only and is not intended as nor should it
be considered a substitute for professional medical advice. Hello everyone,
(00:22):
this is Karen Nickel, family nurse practitioner, and this is
Itchy and Bitchy, a podcast supervised answers to your many
unanswered health questions. So you all may say, Karen, you
are way behind the times. What rock have you been
living under? Yes, you may be way ahead of me,
but I have recently noticed this big craze called face taping.
(00:46):
If you have already heard about face taping, you may
want to go ahead and stick around keep listening, because
it appears there is a lot to learn about this
practice to reduce facial lines and wrinkles. Let me start
by explaining that there are two different types of face taping.
One is when clear tape is applied so that it
(01:10):
is ideally not seen, and it's applied to the temples, cheeks,
and jawline on both sides of the face, and they
are connected behind the head with an elastic band in
order to gently lift the brows and cheeks and jowls.
It's basically a non surgical as needed facelift. This is
(01:33):
often used in the theater or for red carpet events.
Celebrities and drag queens have been employing this technique for decades.
You have to be pretty good at hiding the tape
and the elastic when using this method. Got to be
pretty practiced at it. I thought about using this option
back in the day when I was performing as an
opera singer, and I have no idea why I even
(01:58):
considered it, because, especially compared to now, I really wasn't
saggy back then. Not sure what I was thinking. Well,
I never bothered doing it, so there you go. Performing now, however,
would be a whole different story. I'll tell you that
I'd be thinking about getting good at that little technique.
There are all kinds of products online. I'm telling you.
(02:23):
Back in the day when I was thinking about doing it,
I probably would have had to run to the hardware
store and pick me up some string and some who
knows what tape and made it happen. But now there
are all kinds of products online. If you go to
Amazon and type in invisible facelift tape, you will find
(02:44):
dozens and dozens of these products, each with a picture
of a model who looks to be eighteen or nineteen
years old and who have never contemplated a sag or
a jowl. The products range in price from ten dollars
to twenty five dollars for a pack of I don't
(03:06):
even know a bunch. They also have ones you can
use for your neck. Yes, you can pull the skin
back on your neck, make it look nice and smooth,
and supposedly many of these products are waterproof, so you're
okay to break out in a sweat. You'll have nice
tight skin even if you're sweaty. But I wouldn't dive
(03:27):
into a pool or else. All is likely to be revealed.
So if you have a red carpet event or a
photo shoot or something of that ilk and you want
a non surgical facelift, this is out there for you.
The only warning I want to share is that constantly
doing this type of taping of your face is also
(03:48):
not a good idea. Pulling on your delicate facial skin
on a daily basis long term isn't recommended. While temporarily
taping can give you a lift to look, doing it
repeatedly can make your face look more saggy when it
is not taped. So we always pay a price, don't we. Okay, Well,
(04:13):
on that note, On that happy note, the second face
taping option is up next after this quick break Welcome Back.
(04:39):
The other taping technique is one in which a gentle
tape is applied to the areas of the face that
crease with movement, with the thought that preventing the face
from wrinkling will make it appear smoother. This type of
taping is usually applied at night or if you're not
out and about, because yus, it's applied in very obvious
(05:02):
areas of your face. Even clear tape would likely be noticed.
But hey, if you don't care if people see you
a tape on your face, that's okay too. I'll start
by talking about a product called Frownies. It is considered
the original wrinkle patch and it is a simple flesh
(05:24):
colored adhesive that claims the same skin plumping benefits as botox,
only without the needle. People are absolutely going wild about
them on Instagram, some of whom report that they are
looking less angry every day, believe it or not, and
have almost no elevens. Those are those lines between the
(05:47):
eyes when they awaken. Frownies have been around for much
much longer than good old Instagram. They've been around for
one hundred and homs thirty six years. In fact, in
eighteen eighty nine, Margaret Croson invented frownies along with her
(06:09):
daughter Alice, who was a concert pianist and a model.
Alice furrowed her brow in concentration while playing the piano,
and with all that furrowing going on, she began to
develop the elevens between her eyes, so the need for
frownies was born. Margaret put adhesive on weighted paper and
(06:31):
used a perforating tool to cut the paper into small
patch shapes. During the nineteen thirties and forties, Margaret, the mother, Alice,
her daughter, and eventually Alice's daughter Peggy, grew the business
by traveling the country, sharing their wrinkle eradicator patches with
Broadway performers, makeup artists, and Hollywood stars. They were smart
(06:56):
women going to performers first. For these wrinkle producers. Frownies
first came into the public eye in the nineteen fifty
film Sunset Boulevard, when Silent film star Glorius Wanson was
seen getting ready for her close up wearing the patches.
What a windfall, I think that's about the first time
(07:19):
I first started wearing them. I'm just kidding. I wasn't
even born then, but I did use them for a while,
but I didn't stick with it, unfortunately, and no pun intended.
I was trying to take care of my elevens between
my eyes, which unfortunately developed early in my life. As
a matter of fact, my mother, who was an antithesiologist
(07:42):
so she knew a thing or two, kept saying to
me throughout my teenage years, Karen, if you keep frowning
like that, those lines will stay there permanently. And I said, yeah, Mom, Sure,
sure Mom, and proceeded to devop permanent frown lines. I'm
(08:04):
sure she's still laughing at me from above. I'm sure
of it. Okay, Mom, you were right about so many things.
You stop laughing now. Okay. You apply them to your
forehead and between your eyes every night. They essentially tape
your skin taut, preventing wrinkle formation as you sleep. Many
(08:26):
users claim to see smoother, less wrinkled skin in the morning.
You know, I might give them another try. I know, Mom,
I know you're laughing. I know, I know, but I
might give them another try. And they're very cost effective
one hundred and forty four patches for twenty five bucks.
Dermatologists are quick to point out that you have to
(08:48):
use them nightly for results. Once you stop using them,
you will lose the dermal support, and once you lose
that support, the skin contracts and voila, the wrinkles reappear.
So continuing on with the second type of taping that
has the goal of preventing wrinkles from worsening and the
(09:08):
goal of retraining the muscles, you want to apply tape
directly on the wrinkled areas to smooth skin and slightly
limit movement in areas most prone to creasing. These areas
may include around the mouth to prevent excessive lip pursing
while speaking, crows feet to limit excessive squinting, and the
(09:31):
forehead to limit brow lifting and frowning. You're basically splinting
your face. As I mentioned earlier, If you apply tape
directly to wrinkles, the tape will likely be visible, so
people often opt to do this at night while they sleep.
Face tape will not make your wrinkles vanish permanently. I'm
(09:54):
sure that's no surprise to you. It provides a temporary
benefit with immediate smoothing and lifting that is purely cosmetic.
Though it won't erase lines that are already there, it
can be used as a tool to help prevent the
new ones from forming. Since we can develop lines in
(10:15):
our face while we sleep, especially if we're side sleepers
and our face is smushed up against the pillow, Taping
your face overnight may reduce sleep creases if you do
use face tape during the day. It can also be
used to restrict certain facial movements in an attempt to
(10:35):
train facial muscles to contract less forcefully, with the idea
of reducing the formation of dynamic wrinkles caused by repetitive
facial expressions. That's where I'm in big, big trouble. Too
many facial expressions entirely, entirely to many. There's probably not
(10:58):
much to do about changing that. I'm afraid at this
point in my life. There's not a lot of risk
if you decide to do skin taping, as long as
you use the right tape. The biggest concern is using
tape that is not skin friendly, if you use something
that weakens the top layer of the skin, like if
you run out to your garage and start using duct
(11:20):
tape not a good idea. If you use something like
that that weakens the top layer of skin with repeated use,
you can wind up with irritation and possibly contact dermatitis,
especially in really sensitive areas of the face, like around
the eyes and mouth. When shopping for face tape, you
should look for something that is safe for your skin
(11:42):
and designed to be used on your face. Medical grade
silicone is a good option because it is skin friendly,
removes gently, peels off gently, not like ripping off a
band aid, and it's reusable. You can just wash it
with soap and water and dry it out and reuse it.
(12:03):
You can buy a roll of silicone tape and cut
the amount you need and the shape you need, or
you can buy silicone tape that is pre cut and
especially packaged for use on your face. Opting for a
face tape kit can also be smart because the tape
included is often clear and discrete and is designed for esthetics,
(12:25):
and the tape is sometimes infused with active ingredients for
the skin, like peptides or niacinamide. You can also use
kinesiology tape for face taping. Kinesiology tape is that tape
that you see on athletes like on their shoulders and
knees and pretty much everywhere lots of joints, and you
(12:46):
may have had kinesiology taping if you've gone to a
physical therapist and they've taped you. You can also use
that kind of tape for face taping. Some dermatologists recommend
using kinesiology tape that is designed for children because the
glue is gentler, and usually it's made out of cotton
instead of nylon, and that cotton is more breathable. In
(13:09):
terms of tape placement, there are a gazillion that might
be an exaggerator, but there are a lot of YouTube
videos on how and where to place face tape, but
it is key that you place the tape so that
it follows the lymphatic system and the muscle structure of
the face. If you just google the words face lymphatic system,
(13:32):
you'll find some useful diagrams to guide you. But to
give you an idea, some key areas are on the
naso labial folds, the outer corners of eyes, around the cheekbones,
and on the sides of the forehead. It's very important
not to stretch the tape. You know, when we use
kinesiology tape on the joint, we do put that stretch
(13:54):
on it. It's important to do that on a joint.
But on the face. You do not want to put
that star stretch in the kinesiology tape because it can
stress the muscles and do more harm than good. So
no stretch on the kinesiology tape when you're putting it
on the face. So I hope that was helpful. It's
(14:14):
helpful for me. I might go try to do something
for my elevens and just listen to my mother cackle
from above, cackling at me while I put tape on
my forehead. Thank you all for listening. Wherever you listen
to this podcast, please leave a review and rate the podcast.
Your reviews and ratings really, really really do matter. Also
(14:37):
make sure you follow the show so that it will
be automatically downloaded. That totally matters. I encourage you to
visit our Facebook page IMB Podcast, where you can give
us a like and leave comments or questions for me.
Our website is Itchy andbitchy dot com, where there are
blogs and some of our subjects available for you to read.
(14:58):
As always, thanks to Forrest winsle my Son, our producer
and composer of our theme music, and the person who
does all the behind the scenes work to make this
podcast possible. Thank you so much. Forrest Forest has completed
his first immensely successful year at Peabody Music Conservatory. So
proud of him, so very proud. Remember that your health
(15:22):
is in your hands.
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