The Bojin Journal · Cheeks & Smile Lines
Vertical Lip Lines and Lipstick That Feathers
You put on a lipstick you love, glance in the mirror an hour later, and the color has crept up into a set of little vertical lines above your lip like ink into blotting paper. Those fine lines, and the feathering that follows them, frustrate women who never smoked a day and can't work out where they came from. The answer is a small, busy muscle, and once you understand what it's doing, you can teach it to stop.
The drawstring around your mouth
The muscle circling your lips works like the drawstring on a pouch. Every time you purse, that string pulls the opening tight and gathers the skin around it into little pleats, exactly the way a drawstring bag gathers fabric. Sip from a straw, hold a pen between your lips, press your mouth tight while you concentrate, and you're pulling the drawstring. Do it thousands of times over the years and the pleats stop springing flat. They stay gathered into fine vertical lines, even when your mouth is at rest.
Vertical lip lines are gather-pleats from a drawstring muscle that pulls tight all day. The line isn't the cigarette or even mainly the aging; it's the repeated pursing. Loosen the drawstring and keep the thin skin supple, and the pleats sit flatter and catch far less lipstick.
This is also why the lipstick bleeds. Color wicks up the tiny channels the pleats create, worst when the skin is dry and the drawstring is tense and puckered. Fix the channels and you fix the feathering. They're the same problem.
What loosening the drawstring can and can't do
Honest before the steps: a line that's been set over years won't fully erase from a hands-on habit, and I won't pretend it will. What a gentle release does is ease the tension in the drawstring muscle so it stops pulling the pleats so tight, and support suppleness in the delicate skin so the lines look shallower and behave better. The practical payoff you'll actually notice: lipstick that stays where you put it. Softer lines, less bleed, gently and temporarily, built with consistency.
A 5-minute lip-line release
The skin here is thin and moves easily, so use plenty of glide from oil or a rich balm, and keep every stroke light.
- Soften the area first Press a rich balm or a drop of oil into the skin above the lip until it looks satiny. Dry pleats are stubborn pleats.
- Cross the pleats, gently With a fingertip, make light horizontal passes across the vertical lines, coaxing the gathered skin to lie flatter rather than pressing down into each line.
- Release the drawstring itself Small, slow circles around the outer edge of the mouth, easing the ring of muscle that keeps pulling everything tight.
- Work outward toward the cheek A few upward-and-out passes from the corner of the mouth toward the cheek, so the release doesn't stop at the lip edge.
- Seal supple A final layer of balm while the skin is warm, so the area holds its suppleness and gives lipstick fewer channels to travel.
The habit half
The release eases the pleats you have. The rest is noticing how often you pull the drawstring without needing to. Sip from the glass instead of the straw, keep the pen out of your lips, and catch yourself pressing your mouth tight when you concentrate. You can't stop using your mouth, and you shouldn't try. You can stop gathering the same pleats all day long for no reason.
You didn't earn these lines with a bad habit you should feel guilty about. You earned them with an ordinary mouth doing ordinary things. Loosen the drawstring, keep the skin soft, and both the lines and the lipstick learn to behave.
Quick answers
Do I have to have smoked to get these lines?
No. They're often called smoker's lines, but the muscle around your mouth purses for a hundred everyday reasons, sipping from straws and bottles, concentrating, pressing your lips together. Plenty of women who never smoked a day have them, because it's the pursing itself, not the cigarette, that draws them in.
Can a gentle release soften lip lines?
It can ease the tension in the muscle that keeps pulling the lines inward, and it can support suppleness in thin lip-edge skin so the lines look shallower. It won't erase a set line, and no home method does. Softer and less prone to catching lipstick is the honest, useful result.
Why does my lipstick bleed into them?
Color travels up the tiny channels that the vertical lines create, especially when the skin there is dry and the muscle is tense and puckered. Keeping that area supple and the muscle looser gives the color fewer channels to wick into, which is why the release helps the bleeding, not just the lines.
What's the one everyday habit worth changing?
Notice how often you purse without needing to, sipping through straws, holding a pen in your lips, pressing your mouth tight while you focus. You can't stop using your mouth, but easing off the unconscious pursing is the equivalent of not folding the same crease all day.
See the light touch this area needs
The skin above the lip is delicate, and the difference between coaxing a pleat flat and dragging it is easy to see, hard to describe. My free 3-minute video shows the gentle touch it wants.
Watch the free 3-min videoYu-Ting Lan is a Taiwan-based international bojin instructor and the founder of Héhé Studio. She has taught her bojin method to more than a thousand students, from complete beginners to grandmothers, across Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.