Influencers who are prominent looksmaxxers prove their success through their appearance and their advice on how people can make themselves look more like them. Some spread lies to further their popularity. Like suspended orthodontist Mike Mew, co-creator of mewing. He convinced millions that the facial exercise where you rest your tongue on your upper palate will drastically improve the sharpness of your jawline. Others firmly fall into the category of internet celebrity. This includes Clavicular, the 19-year-old Kick streamer and TikToker who has dedicated his adolescence to refining his looks and sharing the dubious ways he does that with his hundreds of thousands of followers and numerous personal mentees. While looksmaxxing is open to everybody, its most famous proponents are men.
It is simple to break down the appeal of looksmaxxing. First, it is relatively accessible. Much of it involves at-home routines that, however misguided or dangerous, anybody is capable of trying. Tips range from doing chin tuck exercises and taking particular supplements to combining tools and body parts in ways that they should never be combined.
Linked to that is its memeability, which plenty of looksmaxxing advocates lean into as a means to spread the word. With their chiselled bone structure and piercing gaze, enhanced by a positive canthal tilt (the outer corner of their eyes points upwards), successful looksmaxxers would have an aura of Handsome Squidward about them if they didn’t do everything in their power to prevent themselves from becoming bald. While their pursuit to look like the most distorted version of beauty filters is a serious one, they also know that it offers entertainment value.
As well as this, it gives a toxic sense of community, or rather, hierarchy to those who are dedicated to the cause. There is a certain pride in working hard enough on these “improvements” that you are capable of “mogging” somebody, i.e., dominating them with a vastly superior physical appearance. Looksmaxxing is not about simply feeling good about yourself, but also proving that you are objectively more beautiful in a way that is going to give you major “social currency.”
Social media trends may have intensified our preoccupation with looking good, but they didn’t start it. There is science to back up the existence of pretty privilege (the concept that someone has a better experience in life because of their conventional attractiveness). Studies have suggested that “conventionally attractive” people are more likely to succeed in job interviews, for example, and have faces that are most preferred by babies. It seems like before we are even conscious of a beauty standard, it is being enforced.
It is no surprise that these inbuilt biases have made us susceptible to the various beautifying schemes that the internet has introduced. Just like it is capable of provoking our basest instincts with outrage or greed, viral content amplifies our preoccupation with looking the best we can.
Before looksmaxxing was at its memeable peak, commentators bemoaned the rise of “Instagram face” and the number of women who were altering their appearance with “tweakments” (non-surgical cosmetic procedures), makeup, and Facetune to give themselves a flawless, homogenized appearance that reflected the faces their favorite influencers and celebrities were presenting on Instagram. Looksmaxxing makes overt what Instagram face was more subtle about. Once you start picking apart what your body and comparing yourself to an ideal, there is no point at which you stop.
“Just because you’re already well off, is that a reason to quit? That seems a little ridiculous,” retorted Clavicular in a recent discussion where the interviewer questioned his major plans to continue improving his appearance.
In a way, coming to terms with what we look like takes just as much work as the daily routine of a dedicated looksmaxxer. Body neutrality requires us to block out all the noise that says we have something wrong with us, and that is pretty much inescapable. What is easier is to listen critically to this noise and reject the message. This doesn’t feel so difficult to do when it seems like the only thing looksmaxxers can take pride in is claiming to expand their maxilla bone by a couple of millimeters.
It may be true that we will always have some inherent prejudice against what society deems to be unattractive. However, the social media subcultures that are obsessed with the pursuit of quantifiable physical perfection show us just how futile it is to worry about it. It can be entertaining to watch those on this vain quest for self-improvement, but miserable to follow it. Looksmaxxing is an extreme sport that shows us how ludicrous it is to face our insecurities and give in to them every time.
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