Thread by @Positivteacha

🧵 MEWING: A GUIDE FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS 🧵

Mewing is another trend that can be added to the growing list of crazes gripping the imagination of boys up and down the country. Read on to find out what it is and why we need to be concerned about it...

A huge trend on TikTok, Mewing is the act of flattening the tongue against the upper palate of the mouth in order to ‘improve’ bone structure and give young boys the square, hatchet jawline that they’ve been made to believe is essential to appearing attractive to others.

As someone who resembles a beach ball with thumbs, mewing sounds appealing. After all, it’s a non-surgical, non-invasive technique that will make me more attractive to others. Why would I not want that? 

Well, firstly, it doesn’t actually work: 

medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mewin…

Secondly, mewing is problematic because it teaches men that looks are essential to their being attractive. This is hugely damaging to boys’ mental health, for obvious reasons, but it's also damaging to women and girls...

...After all, it suggests to boys that they can find validation in women finding them attractive. In my experience, men who put so much emphasis on women finding them attractive in order to feel validated, tend to harm women.

Also, the concept of mewing features heavily area on ‘The Manosphere’. Incel and PUA websites tell boys that mewing will enable them to obtain an attractiveness that enables them to dominate, exploit, and take advantage of women they consider to be shallow and inferior.

One final problem with mewing is the mew gesture: boys pointing at their jaw, drawing their finger along the jawline to the mouth and making the ‘shhhh’ gesture to female members of staff. This gesture features heavily on TikTok and is used to signify: ‘Shhhhh. I’m mewing.’

Needless to say, such gestures are rude and stem from a deeply misogynistic culture. A culture so intent on the denagration and subjugation of women, it doesn’t realise the damage it is doing to the very boys and men it claims to advocate for.