TikTok Says You Can “Give” Yourself Dimples, But Is It That Easy?

Where there’s a will, TikTok’s beauty community will find a way. And what have the app’s users been asking for lately, you ask? How to get dimples — DIY, of course. A TikTok user by the name of @arwaakhu — also known as Arwa — offered a solution to creating the facial indentations on yourself… no genetics required. 

To start, Arwa sinks one finger into each cheekbone for 30 seconds and twists it back and forth in a circular motion. Soon after, she repeats the process with what appear to be lip pencils. The video concludes with Arwa softly grinning at the camera while showing off her newly made dimples. If you’re curious to see her dimple-making process from start to finish, you can take a look at Arwa’s dimple hack video right here.    

Meet the experts:

• Melanie Palm, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist and fellowship-trained dermatologic cosmetic surgeon based in San Diego, California.
• Tracy Evans, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist based in San Francisco.
• Azadeh Shirazi, M.D., is a board-certified dermatologist based in La Jolla, California.

But is it foolproof? According to San Diego-based board-certified dermatologist Melanie Palm, M.D., not entirely. Dr. Palm explains that dimples are “categorized as a unique facial trait,” which means “there is really not a way to non-invasively or minimally invasively achieve this result.” 

Basically, you can really only “get” dimples if you were born with them. You could go the surgical route, which Dr. Palm says would involve “tacking or separating soft tissue, muscle, and connective tissue,” but even those results wouldn’t compare to the natural look.

When it comes to the TikTok technique, Dr. Palm predicts that any artificial dimples would “cause a temporary effect at best.” Tracy Evans, M.D., a San Francisco-based board-certified dermatologist agrees with and finds that the method “is completely false.” 

What’s more, Dr. Evans also believes that the only way you can really “get” dimples is via genes or surgery. Azadeh Shirazi, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist in La Jolla, California, confirms this. Dr. Shirazi says dimples can closely be achieved through a dimpleplasty, a 30-minute procedure “to create dimples on the cheeks.”