We appear to have entered the Age of the Facial. The practice of a man ejaculating on a partner's face has been critiqued, explained, and extolled, and sometimes outright denounced, as when anti-porn activist Gail Dines called facial scenes "vile images" that show that men hate women. At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking that most sexual encounters now end with, in the words of XOJane editor and facial fan Emily McCombs, "a big face-full of splooge." But sex educators and researchers say that while facials may be enjoying a modest rise in popularity, they aren't new — and they definitely aren't cause for panic.

One expert who has seen a rise in the discussion of facials is Debra Herbenick, Indiana University sex researcher and author of Sex Made Easy, who says that while quantitative research on facials has yet to be done, the college students she's talked to are much more familiar with the practice than older women are. Even for them, though, it's not necessarily an everyday thing: while some college students make facials a part of their regular sex lives, most have "have encountered it once or twice," possibly during a hookup. College students also seem to think facials are more common than they actually are, a phenomenon Herbenick also sees with anal sex — in both cases, she thinks porn makes the behaviors look more prevalent.

When McCombs wrote about her appreciation of facials on XOJane, most comments were positive. But one commenter was critical of what she saw as the unquestioned dominion of the facial: "I hate that this has become the standard. [...] porn/etc have portrayed these to where this type of thing is the norm. I feel that anything less than this sexually makes me 'boring.'"

Facials may feel like "the standard," in part because so many people are talking about them, but that doesn't mean they are. Megan Andelloux, sex educator and spokeswoman of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, says she's not sure if facials are really becoming more common, or if it's just media hype that makes it seem like they are. Specifically, she cites vocal anti-porn advocates (like Dines) who decry facials as a degrading outgrowth of pornography.