Suddenly dives looksmaxxing on everything: a striking word that refers to young men who try to improve their appearance in an extremely targeted manner and sometimes with brute force. At first glance it seems to simply be an extension of the beauty ideal to men, a tempting comparison that is widely made. Sometimes out of satisfaction (‘women have been struggling with this for years’), sometimes from care (‘this is not the equality we should want’). But looksmaxxing is essentially different. It is part of a right-wing conservative project that must be combated ideologically.
Beauty is always political. For centuries, girls and women have been trained and judged against compelling beauty ideals under patriarchy. The body is also a form of capital among gays. Since the 1980s, pressure on boys has been growing, partly due to the mixing of sports with consumer culture. While football players were still thin in the 1970s (think of Johan Cruijff), players like Cristiano Ronaldo are now setting a new ‘fit’ standard. Looksmaxxing, just like the beauty ideal, is about aesthetics and is also driven by an industry that takes advantage of uncertainty. But that’s where the similarities end.
The term has been around since at least 2015, when the phenomenon jumped from incel forums lookism.net and looksmaxxer.com to platforms like 4chan and Reddit. It is now part of the manospherean online subculture in which participants incite each other with outdated ideas about masculinity. It’s impossible to say how widespread looksmaxxing is. The most spectacular excesses, such as breaking your cheekbones or lengthening your legs with screws, now receive massive media attention, but how often this actually happens is unknown. There exists little medical research to, which may indicate a marginal phenomenon. More moderate practices (sports, jawline exercises, fillers) are less noticeable and also exist separately from this scene.
Instead, pseudo-science about ‘perfect’ proportions such as: canthal tiltthe slope of the outer corners of the eyes. Combine this with a profound belief in the manipulability of the individual and you get looksmaxxing, a competition without a prize. Crafty content creators like Braden ‘Clavicular’ Peters, Kareem Shami and Oscar Pate promise ‘male enhancement‘ through paid content, courses, and even exotic men’s retreats. Experienced forum members act as mentors who bro science (fitness tips based on anecdotes, personal experiences and unproven claims), while at the same time fueling feelings of inferiority and anger.
Because with advice comes a hefty dose of reactionary ideology that decries gender equality, hates women deeply and glorifies male dominance and violence. Misogyny is not a byproduct of looksmaxxing, but the means of bringing misogyny to the young man.
Racialized
Research into looksmaxxing platform looksimportant.net shows that people who post contributions there often support far-right discourses. It is their response to a society that, in their eyes, discriminates against men. A recurring belief is that the West is in moral and cultural decline due to feminism and diversity policies. Looksmaxxers are very similar in this regard tradwivesthe women who take to social media to advocate for a return to traditional gender roles. The aesthetic is also explicitly racialized: men who strive for an ‘alpha’ or ‘Chad’ appearance idealize a white, hypermasculine body and legitimize this with ‘evolutionary’ logic about, for example, ‘biological destiny’.
Every blow to the jaw drives racism into the boys’ heads, every broken bone is a reproach to women. The brutality of the often self-performed interventions and the aggression with which people comment on each other’s progress also reflect a downright fascist enjoyment of violence. Remember: the historical appeal of the far right was never just political; identity and aesthetics have always played a role, especially with the Nazis.
The difference between looksmaxxing and beauty ideals also becomes visible when compared to a specific homosexual subculture in which the most masculine male body is glorified. But with this so-called muscle gays that body revolves around desire, pleasure comes first: in exuberant parties, with lots of drugs and endless sex.
Heterosexual manfluencers, on the other hand, preach the opposite of hedonism, asceticism. Their extremely masculine male body is a product of discipline, suffering and deprivation. Desire must be suppressed. It is not without reason that you will also find it in this corner spermmaxxing: abstaining from sex (including masturbation) to improve the quality of your sperm, arising from concerns about declining Western fertility. Again, questionable science and drastic measures, like dipping your testicles in ice water.
‘Good old days’
Looksmaxxing does not symbolize a gone beauty culture but a new front in the battle between democracy and authoritarian forces. It is a sign of an advancing reactionary right-wing extremism, which longs for a mythical ‘good old time’ when women and men still knew their place.
Not paying attention to this ideological context is like looking at tradwives and worrying about whether the cakes they bake are healthy. It’s not about ‘just’ boys who are ‘just’ insecure about their appearance. To combat this, it doesn’t help to compare boys with the girls they despise. We would be better off focusing on exposing the underlying political agenda and celebrating diverse bodies, rooted in pleasure rather than destruction.