JawGate 2022: Zac Efron Claims A Broken Jaw Is To Blame For His Gargantuan Masseters
We know Zac Efron’s gotten real swole since his High School Musical days, but last spring the swelling seemed to be localized in his jaw when he appeared on Bill Nye’s Earth Day! The Musical causing #JawGate to trend on Twitter. At that time, a friend of Zac’s poo-pooed the rumors that Zac had undergone plastic surgery, to look more like a Cro-Magnon I guess, claiming that would be like “getting a Picasso and having a kid finger paint all over it,” perhaps not realizing that saying someone has a face like a Picasso is not exactly a compliment. Now Zac has addressed the rumors himself in Men’s Health magazine, claiming his face is now swole where it was once flaccid, because he doesn’t skip jaw day at the gym.
Zac (pictured above in 2017, before he entered his Cubist Period) says he broke his jaw in an accident and as a result of the subsequent physical therapy he undertook, his “masseters just grew. They just got really, really big.” Which is bad news for plastic surgeons but great news for Big Bubble Gum. According to Insider:
Zac Efron addressed speculation about possible plastic surgery in an interview with Men’s Health, saying that changes to his face shape were related to a jaw injury and subsequent physical therapy.
Efron went viral in April 2021 after appearing in an Earth Day special with scientist Bill Nye. Images from the event prompted intense online discourse dubbed “Jaw-Gate” in which people speculated about whether Efron had gotten Botox, fillers or implants, another cosmetic procedure, or even dental surgery.
He said it specifically affected muscles involved in chewing called the masseters, which are located on the side of the face from the cheekbone to the lower jaw.
“The masseters just grew,” he said. “They just got really, really big.”
Here’s a recent picture of Zac for comparison.
Oops, wrong snap. I pulled that one out of my personal file labeled Tom Selleck Fan-Fic Inspo. You can see the difference a little better here. This is how he appeared on the Bill Nye special last year, face looking as plump and juicy as an Easter ham.
And here he is looking bit more, shall we say, homosapien, in his recent Men’s Health spread.
You know, I chew an awful lot too, but the only muscles I’ve grown from it have been in my fork shoveling arm. So I’m not sure I’m buying it anymore than I buy how the accident happened in the first place. One might assume it was due to the risky business of hosting his adventure show Down to Earth, but no. It was some other risky business he got himself into.
The actor told Men’s Health he was running through his house wearing socks and slipped, colliding with a granite fountain that broke his jaw. He said that while he worked with a physical therapy specialist to recover, some of the muscles of his face and jaw had to work harder in response to the injury.
Now, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stubbed my toe on the granite fountain that sits in the middle of my living room causing it to swell up, but my physical therapist didn’t prescribe me toe push-ups. He just told me to lay off that old-time rock and roll I love so much.
Pics: Sara De Boer/startraksphoto.com, Twitter