When facial fillers first came into use in the 1980s, they offered a rather crude way to rejuvenate one’s appearance. Made of bovine collagen, early injections didn’t do much but add volume to the face. But over the last decade or so, the advent of new, more-precise technology has given doctors the tools to not merely plump the face, but reshape it altogether: straighten out a brow, strengthen a jawline, boost a receding chin. And while cosmetic fillers might still be most strongly associated with lip plumping—thanks to their unofficial ambassador, Kylie Jenner—they are increasingly finding an audience in men looking for a more “masculine” face.

Take Payton Mass, a 28-year-old exercise physiologist who lives in Los Angeles. He first began getting fillers eight years ago in order to refresh his undereye area and look better rested for photoshoots. But as he continued the treatments, he began adding more male facial sculpting procedures, including fillers, to his jaw, cheeks and lips. “I’m already a really good looking person and I have good confidence, but I wanted to kind of take it to the next level,” he says. 

Another factor? He feels less judgement around men getting these procedures. “I think society has kind of laid back on those stigmas,” he says. “I grew up in Iowa. If you get fillers or plastic surgery in Iowa, people there, even today, would probably look at you a little differently. But out here in California, it’s just the norm. It’s not an issue for men to be getting plastic surgery. I feel like it’s on the rise.”

He’s part of what plastic surgeons say is a growing wave of men who are—somewhat paradoxically—taking advantage the freedom of a new era of masculinity to double-down on an old-school idea of how men should look. 

Facial masculinization procedures have, of course existed for years, not least among trans men. And with fillers now able to tweak faces in both subtle and extreme ways, it’s not surprising that some dermatologists and plastic surgeons have begun to market facial fillers to men, often using social media to showcase before and after shots of soft and strong jawlines the way a gym might flaunt their clients’ muscle-building progress at the gym.

While the ideal aesthetics of male and female beauty are not fixed in place, Dr. Gary Linkov, a New York City-based board certified facial plastic and hair surgeon, says there are specific traits most people read as feminine or masculine. “People don’t always fixate on that, but our eyes just kind of pick it up,” he says.

Fillers have grown in popularity in part because, in contrast to surgical procedures, they offer subtle changes, little to no recovery time, and their effects are only temporary. Beyond those practical values, though, facial fillers are often marketed to men in a way that signals that they won’t challenge traditional masculinity. As Brenda Weber, a professor of gender studies at Indiana University, puts it, “The male body has always been a template for the display of augmentation—think muscles. But typically, the credit for the change has been given to the person with the willpower to change the body,” she says. Surgery, on the other hand, “requires that a body be passive in relation to a surgeon.”  So, as has already been done with traditionally feminine products like eye cream, concealer or shapewear, “the industry has to show why plastic surgery would play into the values of masculinity: by being a smart business choice, a method for personal advancement, or an investment in self.”