Can You Manifest a Slimmer Jaw? These Women Think So

13.07.2026, 14:20 allure.com

For 20-year-old Lauren, from Ontario, her best-kept beauty secret isn’t stashed in her makeup bag or hidden in her medicine cabinet—it's in her mind. She has spent years staring at other women's faces on Pinterest, cataloguing features she wants for herself, not as inspiration, but as a tool for visualisation. According to Lauren, having a clear image in her head of the physical characteristics she wants to attain, be it straight teeth or long hair, means she is better able to manifest those desired changes in her appearance. “The image doesn’t have to be a celebrity or model,” she explains. “It’s just whatever I resonate with and aspire to look like.”

The idea that, through the power of belief, we can effectively “think” a goal into becoming reality was instilled in Lauren as a young child. Her mother was a devotee of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, the 2006 best-selling book that helped bring manifesting into the mainstream. But it wasn’t until Lauren’s teenage years, after she stumbled across a video from HotHighPriestess—an internet personality with 1.2 million Instagram followers and a $7-a-week manifestation app called Stella—about how she had manifested her dream body with just her thoughts, that Lauren began to consider whether it might be possible to use this practice to alter her own appearance. She was already deep in the world of YouTube beauty tutorials, so for her, it felt like the next logical step.

At the start, Lauren’s goal was an overall “glow up”: clearer skin, “striking” eyes, healthier hair, better style. She would set aside time—from five minutes to half an hour—to visualise her desired look. The results came gradually, Lauren says, claiming that she saw her skin clear up, her eyes lighten slightly, and her cheekbones become more pronounced within a couple months. The changes didn't seem dramatic to her at first, but she got the sense manifestation was working when people began to compliment her appearance. More specifically, she manifested a “lethal face card,” using the phrase as part of an affirmation. “People then started commenting on my TikTok: ‘Oh my God, you have such a lethal face card’, ‘Your face card is so lethal’,” she says. “That kind of freaked me out.”

Lauren isn’t alone in her belief in manifestation. Almost two decades after The Secret, Roxie Nafousi’s book Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life, published in 2022, sold more than a million copies worldwide. In 2024, the Oxford Dictionary named “manifesting” its Word of the Year. Across social media, there are videos of people claiming to have manifested everything, even their soulmate or dream home. It was only a matter of a time until people like Lauren began applying the method to their physical appearance, with videos of people claiming to have achieved bigger breasts, different eye color, longer hair, and even increased height through thought alone racking up millions of views (which, given the nature of social media, is obviously not a measure of credibility). By focusing on changing immutable elements through mind power alone, the manifestation practices of Byrne and Nafousi—which promote aligning visualization with action—entered the world of magical thinking.

Naturally, an entire cottage industry has emerged around the trend. Self-styled “coaches,” “gurus,” and manifestation experts are profiting from promises that say, with the right mindset, they can teach their followers how to think themselves hot. Some have apps, like HotHighPriestess, while others offer online mentoring sessions; many create or promote beauty subliminals, audio recordings containing hidden, positive affirmations that can now be found all over YouTube and Spotify. “There is a money making machinery behind all of this manifesting content,” notes Anna Schaffner, PhD, a former professor of cultural history at the University of Kent. “The message is often deeply commercial, but couched in esoteric and spiritual language.”

Among these manifestation coaches is Kimberlee, age 26. She promises to help clients achieve physical transformations through one-to-one mentorship sessions priced at $350 for an hour. In most states, that’s more than the cost of an hour-long (out-of-pocket) appointment with a licensed therapist (which Kimberlee is not).

Kimberlee turned to manifesting appearance changes in 2019, during a difficult period in her life. After losing her mother, she’d gained weight. When she tried to lose it, nothing seemed to work. She had already been practicing manifestation in other areas of her life, particularly for financial success, so the idea of using it for weight loss didn’t feel entirely out of reach. “It dawned on me one time: I could actually just manifest this,” she says, claiming the pounds dropped off over the next five months. “I wasn't working out as hard as I used to, I wasn't starving myself like I used to,” she recalls of the period when she was manifesting weight loss. “I was eating just about anything that I wanted to. It felt like [the weight] magically fell off.”

Kimberlee now coaches people in how to attain their own manifestation goals. She’s currently working with a client who is hoping to achieve a smaller nose. “I repeatedly tell her: ‘You have your dream nose,’” Kimberlee says of their sessions. “It’s working, because she tells me there has been some movement—she’s noticing her nose getting smaller.”

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that what these coaches are spouting is resonating with some audiences. According to Spate Data, the “manifesting” hashtag receives 109.9 million weekly views on TikTok, with #glowup and #glowuptips—two common hashtags used alongside manifesting content—each receiving hundreds of thousands of views weekly (117.9K and 305.2K respectively). Some people are also engaging in beauty manifesting as part of their effort to “looksmax,” a trend that was birthed in manosphere spaces; though, it’s important to note, most manifesting is free of the toxic overlay of looksmaxxing.

In our time-strapped world, the idea of a quick fix has never seemed so appealing. But there’s also the fact that, as researchers suggest, humans are “cognitive misers,” meaning we often rely on mental shortcuts to make fast and efficient judgments in new or time-pressured situations. “People are relatively poor at detecting deceptive information from others, because we usually just take them at face value,” says Janet Boseovski, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and co-author of Beyond Body Positive, whose main areas of research include body image and child development.

With this in mind, it isn’t hard to understand how ”unscientific claims—in which influencers or coaches offer quick fixes, or simple strategies—appeal to many people precisely because they offer quick and seemingly simple solutions,” Dr. Boseovski adds. On top of this, says Charlotte Markey, PhD, a professor of psychology and director of the health sciences program at Rutgers University, “A promise like ‘you can think your way into a better face or body’ offers a seductive sense of control in a culture that constantly tells young women they are being evaluated visually.”

These coaches are peddling an illusion, Dr. Markey continues, pointing out that, “At the end of the day, a lot of how we look is genetically determined and constrained by our resources—money, time, other responsibilities.”

Manifesting can be understood as a way of trying to escape these constraints, and is a practice people often turn to in difficult times. For instance, in 2020, as COVID lockdowns began, Google searches for “manifesting” increased by 600%. Post-pandemic, in a time of economic and political uncertainty, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the phenomenon continues to be enormously popular.

Laila, 19, is among those drawn to the idea of manifesting beauty as a faster and more affordable way to reach her aesthetic goals, saving her money she might have spent on treatments and expensive products. After manifesting better grades in school, she decided, at age 16, to shift her focus to achieving a slimmer face, clearer skin, and longer hair. Like Lauren, she says the changes were subtle at first. “You see yourself every single day and you don’t really notice it,” she explains. “Then you look at a photo from a year ago and you’re like, ‘Oh wow.’”

If it’s hard to rationalize how young women like Lauren and Laila are convinced they’re able to change biological traits like face shape or eye color, there are psychological reasons why some people will report seeing results, says Dr. Markey. “Expectation effects, placebo responses, selective attention, and confirmation bias can all shape what people think they notice,” she points out. “Research shows that if we believe something to cause a change (we believe in a placebo), we may look at ourselves and think we look better because we expect to.”

Dr. Markey also thinks it’s not a coincidence that almost all of the people Allure spoke to for this article report seeing changes in their teenage years, a time of immense and fast-paced physical and psychological change. In younger people, “some ‘results’ may also reflect ordinary developmental change over time,” she explains, “since puberty and ongoing maturation naturally change bodies and faces whether or not someone is using manifestation content.”

Laila admits to not being totally certain of the role puberty may have played in her transformation; but she’s convinced that manifestation is, at least, mostly responsible for the changes she saw. She recalls how, in high school, she didn’t have money for expensive products, like high-end shampoo and conditioner: “Still, my hair was really, really long, because I would manifest long hair growth,” she says. “I see ads [for beauty products], and I just feel like it’s a waste of time. You truly only need yourself. People ask me, ‘Oh, what type of product do you use?’ I tell them, ‘Just manifes