So I Tried the Jawline Thing…

This column first appeared in the Men’s Health email newsletter. The Optimized Man is a biweekly series from our editorial director as he tries out the latest, greatest, and weirdest health and wellness innovations so you don’t have to. Sign up here to get the next one.

I feel bad about my jawline, and with apologies to Nora Ephron, it is responsible for roughly 70 percent of my weirdness about getting older—and looking it.

The outer rim of my face began to soften and round in my early 40s, around the time MH contributor Garrett Munce wrote his authoritative guide to jawline preservation and optimization. And as my jaw gradually lost its literal edge, I often thought about the end of Garrett’s opening paragraph:

“Batman, Superman, Thor, the Human Torch. I could draw dozens of their faces from memory even before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began making gods out of guys named Chris. The one thing they all have in common? A jaw that looks like a block of granite.”

My jaw was looking less like granite and more like marshmallow. This is what happens in middle age: Your skin produces less collagen and loses some of its snap; the fat in your face thins in some places and shifts in others, and even the bone underneath subtly changes, leaving the entire lower-face support system a little less…supportive. Doesn’t really matter who you are; the clean lines blur. Next stop—wait for it—Jowlsville.

And I thought: Nope. Not if I can help it.

So over the next five years, I went to a bunch of dermatologists to try the latest and greatest in skin-tightening, collagen-building technology. Sofwave. Morpheus8. Ultherapy. I’ve tried them all. Each creates a slightly different kind of controlled injury to your face and jaw, mostly by heating the tissue beneath your skin. Sofwave and Ultherapy use ultrasound to create tiny zones of heat; Morpheus8 uses tiny needles to deliver radiofrequency energy—and yes, it hurts. The basic idea behind all three is the same: Heat or irritate the tissue enough to bully the body into producing more firmness-inducing collagen over the following weeks and months.

I didn’t dislike any of them, and I’m pretty sure each helped me hold the line on my jawline. But I wished I didn’t have to spend three months waiting for something—anything—to happen, you know? Enter Brian Underwood, the grooming and beauty guru for both Men’s Health and Women’s Health, who recently tipped me off to a new skin-tightening treatment called XERF—from Korea, no less.

XERF—pronounced “zerf”—is not a laser. It is a radiofrequency treatment that heats tissue beneath your skin while using bursts of cooling to keep the outer skin from getting too hot. The treatment head looks like a chunky wand that sends energy through the skin, warming things up underneath. That heat is supposed to do two things. First, it can make some of the collagen already in your face and jaw contract, potentially creating some immediate tightening. Then, over the following weeks and months, it is meant to prompt your body to make more collagen—the stuff that helps skin look firmer, smoother, and less saggy.

The published research on XERF is still early—and so far largely limited to animal studies—but it does support the basic idea that the heat can contract and remodel collagen.

I learn all this when I’m lying in front of David Kim, MD, the founder of Soho Dermatology in New York City, who wielded his XERF wand and described the technology before getting to work on my gel-slicked face.

As he slowly moved the device around my jaw and up into my cheeks, Dr. Kim explained that XERF’s distinguishing feature is its ability to use two radio frequencies to heat tissue at different depths. The idea is to create some immediate contraction while also triggering the slower process of collagen remodeling. At the same time, the device cools the surface of your skin with every pulse—which is probably why, even at the highest intensity, the treatment felt less like a cosmetic procedure than like someone repeatedly pressing a warm washcloth against my face.

About halfway through, Dr. Kim stopped and held a mirror up to my face. The half he had treated looked visibly lifted. My jawline looked cleaner and sharper, and my skin was only slightly redder than usual. He then got to work on the other half, and when I left the office that day, I felt as if I’d gotten a facelift without the redness, swelling, surgery, or trauma of someone actually lifting my face.

And then? Then I got on with my life. I worked. I hung out with my kids. I saw friends. I stopped thinking about the specter of jowls and started thinking about what I was going to have for lunch. Life goes on, and I hate that I even think about my jawline. Honestly, with the world the way it is, who cares? But we all have parts of our bodies that we find weird or annoying or marshmallow-like. And if a next-gen Korean wand can help me forget about my softening jawline for a while—without really hurting or leaving me puffed up and beet red?

I’ll take it.