The Nuance of Looksmaxxing

I recently was discussing the concept of nuance with a friend at a happy hour. I wouldn’t be the first to believe that nuance is being lost.

The root of so many of our problems nowadays seems to come back to social media and its grasp on us. Nuance is yet another victim.

Social Media Tendencies

In the social media age, we yearn for exactness. When I go online, I want to know the correct answer whether the question is “when did Shakespeare die?” or “how can I start a running routine?” 

Not everything has an easy answer. Not everything can be labeled simply as right or wrong.

Another facet of the social media age is that it’s possible to find an audience for everything, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. 

One could find a group for people who like to crochet while reading geology books on the beach. One might also find a group that likes to burn trees and tip cows while stealing candy from babies. There are so many groups online, yet there are probably some activities we should still discourage as a society.

A New Group Emerges

There is a specific online group that’s come to prominence recently: looksmaxxers (no, you’re not having a stroke; yes, that’s how it’s spelled…I’m pretty sure).

I’ve been wanting to talk about looksmaxxing for a couple weeks now, but I wasn’t sure that it was well-known enough. That is until The Daily did an episode on the topic. If it’s made it that far, I assume it’s pretty well known for better or worse.

On the surface, looksmaxxing sounds absolutely fucking stupid. 

The idea behind looksmaxxing is that the only thing that matters in life is making yourself look as attractive as possible. It’s a subculture obsessed with appearances. Think Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

Practitioners will do whatever it takes to achieve the best possible looks they can (hence the phrase looksmaxx – maximizing your looks). This way of looking at life, like far too many internet ideologies, seems incredibly nihilistic, which I’m certainly not a fan of.

The terminology doesn’t help legitimize anything. It’s a subculture that runs on words like mogging, jawmaxxing, and bone smashing. I promise you these are terms used by the subculture’s practitioners. Well, I’m 100% confident on two of those terms and about 80% on the third, but I won’t say which is which.

The ideas behind the movement are ridiculous.

People will take hammers and tap them against their chins, theorizing that microdamage to the bone will cause it to grow back bigger and appear more attractive. Some even take experimental drugs or worse in order to chase the slightest physical improvement.

Where's the Catch?

It sounds absolutely absurd, yet this is an article about nuance. Where’s the catch?

As I peruse any and all social media content about looksmaxxing, I feel hopeless about the future. Is this what’s appealing to an increasingly wide audience? Why is this a thing?

Then, The Daily walked through the movement in more detail.

Looksmaxxing appears to be targeted at a mostly male audience. A group of men (or boys) congregate digitally to discuss tactics for improving their physical appearance. 

When you consider the beauty standards placed on women, this idea becomes less foreign. These standards have already been forced upon one subset of humanity, why not another?

Evidence suggests that female beauty standards date back as far as 20,000 years ago based on archaeological findings. Now, this group of men are starting to feel a similar pressure. That’s not so unexpected. 

Then, there’s the social media of it all.

Social media is increasingly image based. Sure, there are text-based platforms like Threads or Twitter/X, but they aren’t as popular as image or video-based platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Even the former text-based platforms have plenty of video content.  

Think for yourself, which do you find yourself engaging with more? Text content or image-based content? I certainly engage more with the latter, like it or not.

In an age of image-centered content, physical appearance is king.

Scroll through Instagram right now (or even better, after you finish reading this post). How long will it take you to come across some super model or bodybuilder, someone who’s had some type of enhancement done to their body to appear more attractive? 

Most influencers aren’t as transparent about their goals as a looksmaxxing practitioner, but they all are aiming for the same thing.

Being beautiful online seems to be a surefire way to make money and live an idealized life, and so few people are talking about the downsides of this lifestyle. It’s no wonder a generation raised on social media feels an absurd amount of pressure to fit in with an online population.

There Isn't Always a Right Answer

Considering some of these stances makes me drift from thinking of the movement as absurd to pitying the people who practice it. Looksmaxxing is clearly a symptom of something much bigger.

I have to remind myself that most topics, looksmaxxing included, have this level of nuance. In an internet age, everything attempts to be right or wrong, but that’s hardly ever accurate. 

It’s normal to feel conflicted about most topics. Some parts you might agree with. Others, you might push back against.

Initially, looksmaxxing was laughable to me. I couldn’t imagine how people were falling for this scam. How the hell could anyone believe that smashing a hammer against your face might make you more attractive?

Yet, I’m glad I listened to The Daily’s episode on the topic. It was a much-needed reminder that even a topic as seemingly crazy as this one has much more depth to it. 

Social media is influencing everyone’s lives, especially those who are the most impressionable. Should I laugh at this absurd thing? Or should I pity those who have fallen for a trap laid by big tech billionaires who make a quick buck off of the most impressionable parts of human psychology?

I still don’t feel 100% one way or the other. Learning about the topic only created more friction in my brain surrounding it, which I think is a good thing. If anything, it made me more empathetic toward a group of people, a surely positive outcome.

It’s easy to try and fit things into a box of “right vs. wrong,” but so few things pack away nicely like that.

Instead, we can learn more about topics that interest us, find the nuance, dwell on how the new findings make us feel. It’ll certainly teach us more about the world and about ourselves.

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