I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to look just a little bit different. I like to go to the gym and shop for new clothes; I’m in a mostly aesthetically-motivated war with my posture and my hair, and I find myself checking my look in every mirror I pass. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that my vanities are a universal experience, but I do think that it’s very human to want your appearance to reflect the way you feel inside. Looking how you feel can validate your self image and can help to attract the kind of people you are likely to get along with, making it a useful social tool.
A significant portion of the content uploaded to social media seems to be directly related to this outward focus. Content creators have elaborate workout routines, diets and skin and hair care, all of which help them to maintain the image that it is their job to project. Videos breaking down these routines get a lot of traction online, offering the idea to viewers that they could also improve their appearance if they were to subscribe to certain regimens. Recently, much of the discussion I have been seeing on this side of social media has shifted towards “looksmaxxing.”
Looksmaxxers, who are primarily men, will wear lifts in their shoes, stand on boxes, batter the bones in their faces and even undergo cosmetic surgery in hopes of being the tallest, best-looking man in any room. Though looksmaxxers often use inaccessible lingo and focus on unorthodox aspects of their appearances – such as the tilt of their eyes, the width of their collarbones and the sharpness of their jaws – their goal of looking better is very understandable. And yet something feels a little off about the single-minded intensity with which looksmaxxers maintain their appearance. It is not enough for a looksmaxxer to look good. He must look better than those around him, a practice known as “mogging,” which is a word derived from the acronym for the phrase “Alpha Male of Group.”
The idea that appearances can be “maximized” to achieve an “Alpha Male” status suggests that for looksmaxxers, appearances have an inherent value. The stated goal of many looksmaxxing influencers is to increase their “sexual market value.” They want to be seen as more attractive by more people so that they have more chances to have sex with the people that they want to. The idea of the sexual marketplace ignores the important role that personal preferences and agency play in determining desire, instead suggesting that there is a direct correlation between the way someone looks and the type of partner that they attract.
Though looks certainly play a role in the way that people partner off, the idea that good looks guarantee better partners is a textbook example of objectification. Through the looksmaxxing lens, sexual partners are seen not as people but rather as prizes for achieving a certain status. Women are referred to as “foids,” meaning “female humanoids,” and the ideals of looksmaxxing heavily imply and often directly state that “alpha males” have a certain degree of right over women. These sexist mindsets arise from looksmaxxing’s roots in online communities of “involuntary celibates,” or “incels,” where men that see themselves as unable to attract sexual partners gather for discussion that often turns toxic.
What is perhaps most interesting about looksmaxxing is that for all of its focus on attracting sexual partners, it doesn’t seem to be about sex so much as it is about power. Unlike the classic playboy, whose vanities are directly tied to a desire to have sex, looksmaxxers seem much more focused on attracting potential partners than they are on actually sealing the deal. They want to be seen as powerful by other men and they want to have power over women, implying that the intensity with which looksmaxxers maintain their appearances arises from a deep-seated sense of powerlessness and insecurity.
In researching this article, I decided to log onto the livestream of the content creator Clavicular, one of the biggest names in looksmaxxing. Clavicular streams all aspects of his life for hours most days on a website called Kick. When I logged on, he was on spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was shirtless, mic’d up and surrounded by young women in a club. He put his arms around a girl and shouted raunchy pickup lines at her. When she finally moved away in disgust, he quickly replaced her with another girl. The whole time, a live chat of viewers’ comments sped by at the bottom of my screen, primarily full of reprehensibly sexist spam. For all the time he puts into his appearance, the most striking thing about Clavicular is how awkward and bad he is with women. Every person I saw him talk to seemed excited to meet him until he started talking, at which point her face would grow more and more uncomfortable until she left.
Looksmaxxing is a practice focused on altering one’s looks by the easiest means possible. Content creators will inject themselves with cocktails of illegal drugs and undergo expensive procedures to maintain a certain look, and these strategies are often effective. I believe that the awkwardness I saw in Clavicular’s stream is symptomatic of this shortcut culture.
For example, even if your primary motivation for exercising is to look better, the discipline and strength that you will build by going to the gym will lead to the development of your personality alongside the development of muscle. Encouraging muscle development through a routine of drugs and peptides, as Clavicular does, skips the journey and trades in its positive side effects for dangerous medical ones. The problem with looksmaxxing is that it focuses on surface-level development while neglecting the insides, often leaving those who practice it as good-looking shells.
