What is "looksmaxxing" and Why Does It Matter?

#TransparentTuesdays

“Bro went from sub-5 to PSL god after jawmaxxing and fixing his negative canthal tilt, and now he’s mogging everyone!”

Hi friend,

If the above sentence sounds like absolute gibberish to you… I’m glad. 

As weird as it might sound though, that sentence is actually a legitimate example of how some guys in the “looksmaxxing” corner of the manosphere speak, and I think we need to talk about it. 

Before I dive into the (unhinged and sexist) world of looksmaxxing, I want to start by acknowledging—for those of you who aren’t chronically online, or are just progressive enough that you haven’t personally encountered anyone who talks this way—that it might be difficult to read this email without feeling dismissive, or downplaying the cultural significance of these men and this movement. 

And listen… I understand that everything I’m about to share sounds incredibly stupid, fringe, and unrealistic. 

It would be easy to think that, just because you‘ve never come across these kinds of people, they must represent a very small group of extreme misogynist weirdos, so you don’t need to worry yourself about them.

 You might even find yourself rolling your eyes and wondering why I’m “platforming” these creeps, or giving them any energy at all.

But what you need to understand about this is that this cultural movement is actually incredibly popular and mainstream. 

These concepts might not be salient to the guys in your life (I hope not!), but that doesn’t mean it’s not extremely culturally salient, and worth knowing about. 

As a quick note, if you haven’t seen the recent Louis Theroux Netflix documentary “Inside the Manosphere” yet, I highly recommend starting with that, just to get an overview of how incredibly popular and mainstream certain toxic and extreme misogynistic ideas about masculinity have become, and to understand why it’s so dangerous. 

But for the sake of today’s conversation, here’s the deal: 

“Looksmaxxing” is an online subculture, primarily made up of young right-wing men, which focuses on maximizing physical attractiveness through techniques ranging from grooming and fitness to more extreme and dangerous methods like “bone smashing”.

Born out of the gender-essentialist and misogynistic “manosphere” ideas, the goal of looksmaxxing is, for men at least, to look more conventionally attractive and masculine in order to access the benefits and social privileges afforded to men who fits these types of ideals, in terms of financial success, social status and privilege, and—of course—access to women.

The whole concept of looksmaxxing comes from the (increasingly mainstream) internet community of “incels,” which is made up mostly of sexually frustrated and entitled men who think it’s unfair that women wouldn’t date or sleep with them.

To highlight how popular and mainstream the looksmaxxing movement has become, I’m unfortunately going to have to introduce you to only one of the many popular influencers who reign supreme in this cultural space online.

This dude goes by the internet moniker “Clavicular,” and he is a “lookmaxxing” influencer with 28 million followers on TikTok. (So… not exactly fringe.)

Calivicular is only 20 years old, but he has already accumulated a massive following for his live streaming content, which prominently features unapologetically sexist views and dehumanizing treatment of women, an unironic embracing of silly looksmaxxing lingo, and extreme advice for men on how to “biohack” hotness in order to improve both their social status and their success with women. 

Clavicular, like most looksmaxxing influencers, believe that it’s both important and necessary for men to engage in extreme physical optimization—via surgery, steroids, and preposterously dangerous practices like taking literal crystal meth to get lean—in order to "ascend" and “achieve high-value status,” both of which I take to mean “have worth in the eyes of society.”

He claims that male attractiveness is the key to social power and sexual success, and suggests that any man who doesn’t fit these social ideals is “inherently and biologically” inferior, and thus unworthy and undeserving of things like respect, success, connection, and happiness. 

With this dark and depressing belief as the baseline, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Clavicular doesn’t seem to have any personal limitations or ethical boundaries around what a man can (or should) do to achieve the “superior, hyper-masculine, symmetrical appearance” that he thinks is so important. 

He, like many of his peers, seem to have an “do whatever it takes” approach to conforming their appearance to their own specific image of the masculine ideal, as if this goal is literally the only thing that matters for men. 

And because I believe in total bodily autonomy, I wouldn’t really have a problem if guys like this did whatever they wanted in their own lives, and with their own bodies. 

Wanna “micro-smash” your jaw and cheek bones with a hammer to make them pop? Weird, but… that’s your prerogative.

Wanna take steroids and crystal meth to build your “dream physique?” I mean… go for it, I guess?

But these guys are influencers, which means they make their living by teaching and encouraging other guys to believe in this false and toxic shit, and to engage in these dangerous practices. 

Despite the fact that their “masculine ideal” is very much not what most women report finding attractive, these guys all promote the idea that "looks" translate directly to sexual success, and they nearly always use debunked gender essentialist nonsense to back up their beliefs and convince other people that they’re correct. 

You’ll often find these guys claiming—without a shred of evidence but with absolute confidence that they are repeating objective biological facts—things like:

• Women are born with value because they’re attractive and men will want to sleep with them, but men are born without value and must therefore “create” their own value through financial success and social power. 

• Men’s success in dating will be entirely determined by their “sexual market value” (SMV), which is based on their appearance, financial success, and social dominance. 

• Women are attracted to a very narrow set of facial features and body types, and 80% of women are only interested in the “top 20% of men.”

• Men who are “low value” according to their ideals are destined to a life of misery, failure, and loneliness. 

Now, as a body image coach, I have so much to say about the looksmaxxing movement. 

If you’re familiar with my work on body image issues, this should all sound pretty familiar. 

Sure, these guys are using different language and acting like they just invented something new, but we’re really still just talking about the same old insecurities, body dysmorphia, and low self-worth issues that women have been dealing with and worrying about for decades!

I tend to think of looksmaxxing as a kind of “masculine repackaging” for body dysmorphia. 

It’s just like when brands figured out that men would feel emasculated by buying the same kind of face wash that women use (gasp!), so they repackaged it in a chunky black bottle with an aggressive name and masculine-coded claims on the front, like “Rugged Mountain Face Abrasion.”

But if we can look past the packaging, we’ll see that people believing their appearance is key to respect, success, happiness, and love is nothing new. 

Like…you think men’s innate value and worth is determined by their appearance? Cool, women have been playing in that space for centuries.

Your body image issues are new and interesting, just because you wrapped them in the gender essentialist and traditional-general-role-affirming language of “biohacking” and faux objectivity!

These bros haven’t discovered some kind of secret wisdom about the world. They’re just insecure, and willing to exploit the insecurities of others to make a profit. 

And like so many female “health, wellness, and beauty” influencers before them, these guys are now gaining a massive amount of validation, status, power, and financial success for “teaching” other insecure dudes how to “have value.”

The only “new” thing happening here is that, historically, straight men have been culturally protected from this intense and obsessive level of dysmorphic insecurity, due to the fact that caring about how you look was always coded as feminine.

Since the “masculine ideal” in our culture is defined by one thing(and one thing only—being in opposition to anything coded as feminine—this has always previously meant that straight men were generally exempt and excluded from these kinds of feelings, ideals, insecurities, and expectations. 

So, in that way, I guess Clavicular and his peer group of toxic and misogynist influencers are doing something new. 

By reinterpreting and re-coding body image issues as acceptably and definitionally masculine, they’re influencing and encouraging the upcoming generations of men into feeling like absolute shit about themselves. 

And that is bad for all of us. 

My inner misandrist may be occasionally tempted to feel glad that these terrible guys feel bad about themselves, but the truth is that we still live in a society where men have a disproportionate amount of power, privilege, and protection, and women face a disproportionate amount of harassment, exploitation, and violence at the hands of men.

And the truth is that men who feel bad about themselves—and in particular guys like Clavicular and his ilk who are deeply rooted in this kind of entitled, right-wing, red-pill, misogyny—pose a much bigger threat to women. 

So do I care that these guys feel bad about themselves, for their own sake? That depends on the day (and the guy). 

I do absolutely believe down in my bones that every single person has innate worth and value, and deserves to feel confident being their authentic self in the world.

But content from people like Clavicular doesn’t inspire compassion and empathy from me, it inspires revision, disgust, and most of all fear. 

Fear for all the women who will encounter guys like that (and the hundreds of millions of young men who follow them) throughout their lives. Fear for what kind of world the younger generation of guys who believe these kinds of things will build. Fear of what they will do with their anger and loneliness, and fear about who will end up paying the price for it. 

Because like it or not, people like Clavicular are influencing our culture. Men like him are being held up as role models for millions of young men who are vulnerable to insecurity and shame, and who are seeking a community with which they can identify, belong, and feel seen and valued.

And to a scary degree, the research is already bearing out how these kinds of popular male dudes are influencing the views of the mainstream population, like this recent study showing that Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) were twice as likely as Baby Boomer men (born between 1946 and 1964) to believe wives should always “obey their husbands,” and this other study showing that Gen Z men were twice as likely as Boomers men to say a woman “shouldn’t appear too independent or self-sufficient.”

So while in many ways looksmaxxing is just a trendy, masculinized, right-wing, and linguistically silly spin on body dysmorphia and insecurity… it's also a very dangerous and scary trend that I think we must all be acknowledging and talking about.

Big hug,

Jessi

PS I have two private coaching spots opening up this month, so if you’ve been waiting to work together, go ahead and hit reply or apply for coaching with me here!