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The dangerous new beauty craze teens are attempting to get lips like Kylie Jenner.

Why? WHY?

Much has been made of the ever-plumper lips of exploited teenager reality star Kylie Jenner, and now the teens of the internet are injuring themselves in an attempt to imitate her look and taking on the Kylie Jenner lip challenge.

Rumours of surgical enhancement have been rife as the formerly modest mouth of the 17-year-old has grown into a full pout over several months.

Jenner has denied plastic surgery and says her protruding kisser is merely make-up, but the Instagram generation has another theory: Jenner’s beestung lips are achieved by sucking the lips into a shot glass or plastic bottle.

Kylie Jenner’s appearance has become doll-like, with her lips particularly changing over the past year. Image via Instagram

So of course, they all did it.

By placing a glass or bottle over the lips to create an airlock, then sucking out the air, challenge-takers are hoping to get dramatically fuller Kylie Jenner-style lips.

The swollen, bruised results have been posted to social media in huge numbers with the hashtag #kyliejennerchallenge. They are not for the fainthearted.

Ouch. One of the painful-looking results of the #kyliejennerchallenge

 

Another set of hugely swollen lips from the #kyliejennerchallenge. Image via Instagram

Countless pictures of teen girls and some boys with huge, bruised mouths surrounded by burst blood vessels and painful-looking marks on the lower half of their faces have appeared on Instagram and Twitter over the past day or two.

It’s another manifestation of the strange and disproportionate-to-their-achievements fascination the Kardashian/Jenner family holds.

A search of the hashtag yields videos of people attempting the challenge with disturbing results. Image via Instagram

“How long are we gonna talk about this lip thing lmao,” Jenner wrote on Twitter last year. “Let’s get our lives together guys and talk about some important sh*t.”

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“Just talk about something new at least. I’m bored,” she ended.

Kylie Jenner lip challenge
Kylie Jenner’s look used to be more natural. Image via Getty Images:

Jenner’s changing appearance also indicates the kind of pressure the youngest of the clan, which includes internet-breaker Kim Kardashian, must surely feel having been part of the most overexposed family on earth.

Her life has been televised on the reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians since she was 10 years old.

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Related stories: Kylie Jenner takes more photos of her lips. Wants us to shut up about her lips.

This year marks the 10th year of matriarch Kris Jenner parlaying her daughter’s looks, relationships, family dramas and pregnancies into lucrative business sponsorship deals, fashion labels and make-up lines. Kylie and her sister Kendall, 19, have had their own fashion line since 2013. Kylie launched a hair extension line, Kylie Hair Kouture last November.

The teen, who just a year or two ago looked like a normal, fresh-faced girl, now looks more like a human Bratz doll.

She’s now looking somewhat different, but says it’s just make-up. Image via Instagram

Nevertheless, Kylie Jenner is a 17-year-old girl, and 17-year-old girls are figuring out who the hell they are.

That can involve lots of experiments, including with their looks, that just shouldn’t start a potentially injurious social media trend.

Jenner has remained tight-lipped (!) on the viral hashtag bearing her name, but medical experts are warning against the DIY lip-plumping method.

“The lips turn blue because blood fills up and they could easily become infected and lose all sensation. It is a really dangerous stunt and I’d advise strongly against anybody trying it,” cosmetic surgeon Pordiis Kjartansdottir told Metro UK.

If you’re feeling brave, check out our gallery of #kyliejennerchallenge fails.