Looksmaxing: A New Worrying Trend Among Young Men
In the online world of boys obsessed with the perfection of their face and body, there are no prohibitions, including radical surgical interventions.
Looksmaxing celebrities Johan Drumev and Austin Wayne. Photo: johandrumev; austinwayneofficial / Instagram
The British publication The Times tells about a new trend among young people.
Six in the morning. He wakes up without an alarm clock, because forums have taught him: it is between six and eight o'clock that the cortisol level in the body reaches its peak. The first thing he does is check his profile. Chin projection, depth of under-eye hollowness, skin condition.
He peels off the plaster from his lips, which stayed on all night to ensure they are well-hydrated, and approaches the mirror, where the light is set in a special way: one lamp from above and a soft light from the left, to imitate natural street lighting.
He takes nutritional supplements: zinc, B12, collagen. Then he applies an ice compress along his orbital arches to remove under-eye bags, and for ten minutes, undergoes red light therapy, while simultaneously scrolling through TikTok.
This is not the beginning of a movie star's day, but a typical morning for a modern young looksmaxxer.
As The Times writes, looksmaxxing (from the English 'looksmaxxing' — to maximally improve one's appearance) is an entire philosophy aimed at perfecting one's appearance to achieve the image of a 'hunter-gatherer': a hyper-masculine face with sharp lines, deep-set eyes, and a massive jawline.
The roots of looksmaxxing trace back to the gloomy online forums of the early 2010s, where incels ('involuntary celibates') gathered. They believed they couldn't find a sexual partner because women didn't pay attention to them or didn't consider them worthy. There, the idea was born that a man's fate is determined by his genetics and bone structure. They created a rigid rating system dividing men into 'Chads' (ideal alpha males), 'normies' (average men), and 'genetic dead ends'.
Today, the new micro-celebrities among teenagers are not rappers or footballers, but lean young men who host streams dissecting faces.
For example, streams by 20-year-old Brayden Peters (known by the pseudonym Clavicular) attract tens of thousands of viewers, for whom this is not just entertainment, but an instruction for 'ascending' — moving to a higher degree of attractiveness.