Looksmaxxing is precisely what it sounds like – maximising one’s looks. Originating from the incel community several years ago, the term has been around for some time, but it’s only in the past year or so that it’s become a growing mainstream trend.
We can thank influencers for that, with their popular TikToks targeting young boys algorithmically baited in the manosphere. Followers have an incredibly simple goal — to look as scientifically masculine as possible. This includes a strong, sharp jawline, perfect facial symmetry, tall height and smooth skin.
At its core, it’s a bunch of men who have turned the attainment of beauty into a mathematical equation to solve. As one of the most popular advocates explained in an interview:
“Everything is about numbers and measurements…the measurement of your eyes and the distance from your eyes to the outer part of your lips is supposed to be one to one.”
According to this guy, all these ratios and measurements are calculated to get a “harmony score”. If you have the mathematically ideal number, your score is high, and congratulations – you are hot, which to these followers, means everything.
Beauty is power. Pretty is power. We all know that hot privilege is a measurable, scientifically evidenced advantage; and now men want to obtain it too.
The aggressive, Always Be Optimising pressure faced by millennial women has now slid into the manosphere, except somehow, it feels more nefarious. While adherents to the belief that optimising one’s physical prowess and appearance is good insofar as it may give us more years of happiness and health; followers of looksmaxxing seem to view any step toward increasing one’s facial beauty as a basic and necessary requirement to being a man.
In fact, the more extreme the methods of obtaining the perfect Harmony Score, the better. Online, men are now posting videos of themselves taking massage guns and blunt objects to their jawlines in an attempt to “reform” their bone structure and hopefully get a sharper jawline. “Bonesmashing”, again, a pretty self-explanatory term, has been making the rounds across TikTok and Instagram, with followers being told that shattering one’s bones may encourage it to grow back more robust and angular.
This goal of the hypermasculine face has left plenty of people concerned. One doctor said it was “glamorising facial trauma.” According to him, bonesmashing not only fails to improve appearance — “it increases the risk of fractures, dental injury, and long-term complications.”
Remember the influencer quoted above? The guy talking about numbers and measurements? He’s a 20-year old American, internet code-named Clavicular, who has elevated the pursuit of looksmaxxing almost single-handedly. He’s given countless interviews and streams all day long, scoring people on their looks and educating followers on how to obtain the perfect Harmony Score.
He streams from Kick and goes around interacting with the public. This is his content. He goes on dates with young women and livestreams every moment.
Speaking with the New York Times, he acknowledged what his viewers want: a fantasy, or rather, having the ability to live vicariously through him.
“People watch [my videos] because they can’t get girls,” he admitted to the journalist.
He even went so far as to admit that looksmaxxing wasn’t about self-fulfilment. He told the journalist that knowing he could have sex with a woman felt better than doing the actual deed.
“[It’s] going to gain me nothing,” he said of having sex.
At the end of the day, looksmaxxing is really, at the heart of it, about feeling a sense of power, superiority over others, by securing the most traditional, hyper-masculine beauty traits. In some ways, this trend feels like the male-version of the Instagram face, our collective pursuit towards a doll-like, eternally youthful look. Yet while the conversations around plastic surgery and facial transformations among women feel oppressive to our feminist agendas, the looksmaxxing thing feels…dangerous.
Why is it dangerous?
Well, for one, the whole ideology came out of incel communities, and so of course they are the ones who typically adhere to its tenets. Incels blame women for their feelings of inadequacy, and looksmaxxers believe that bolstering their facial features to look more masculine will bolster their status.
Remember, for them, it’s not actually about finding love, or anything genuinely wholesome and good. It’s about feeling like they can obtain any woman they want. It’s the sense of power over others that they crave – the ability to choose any sexual partner they desire.
It also feels dangerous when you have a figurehead like Clavicular openly associating with people like Andrew Tate and openly acknowledging his own power.
“I have such an influence over the movement that I could bring it in any direction I want,” he told the New York Times.
Doesn’t that just sound frightening to you? And he is only 20-years old!