Forget Brows: Women Are Now Threading Their Faces

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If eyebrow threading makes you uneasy, honey, you ain't seen nothing yet. Queen of off-kilter beauty extremes (remember vagina steaming?) Gwyneth Paltrow has another treatment for you to think about: The Threading Face-Lift.

In a recent GOOP article, a writer explored the ins and outs of the "under-the-radar" method for anti-aging, which after being approved by the FDA as the "Contour Threadlift" ten years ago, is no longer performed here in the states as the results were, erm, questionable. So what exactly is the draw of giving your face the needlepoint treatment? That would be the fact that's it's scalpel-free and relatively low-cost compared with other, more invasive treatments. But from where we're sitting, it sounds pretty damn painful...

In GOOP's words it consists of "inserting a tiny—sometimes barbed—thread into the face (or knees, or neck, or…) and carefully pulling up the skin." Thanks, but no thanks.

On top of that, back in 2005, Allure did an investigation on the procedure and found some pretty jarring results. Dr. James Stuzin, a plastic surgeon in Coconut Grove, Florida, examined a number of patients who were less than pleased with the results. "I don't see happy people," he explained, finding that patients who loved the results at first were suffering from depressions in their face months later.

In the immortal words of Elle Woods, happy people just don't thread their faces, but if you're interested in learning more, check out the full, GOOP-y exploration here. And if you're a fan of GOOP, don't forget to grab a GOOP promo code before you go shopping.

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Lauren Valenti is Vogue’s former senior beauty editor. Her work has also appeared on ELLE.com, MarieClaire.com, and in In Style. She graduated with a liberal arts degree from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, with a concentration on Culture and Media Studies and a minor in Journalism.