“It’s brutally over for you … sorry I can’t imagine any girl staring at you other than for your goofy [looks].”
“Death tier mouth to nose ratio. Death tier philtrum to chin ratio. Death tier nose. Death tier philtrum length. Death tier eyes. Just give up.”
These are just some examples of feedback men have exchanged on “looksmaxxing” forums across the internet. Looksmaxxing, which first appeared on incel message boards before migrating to TikTok, is defined as enhancing one’s appearance within specific criteria of attractiveness in hopes of maximizing one’s perceived social value in society. Under the guise of helping men improve their physical appearance, these communities promote body dysmorphia, encourage harmful DIY physical alterations and enforce rigid, often unattainable standards of masculinity. This, however, is not the first instance of humans being exploited and objectified through dangerous trends in the pursuit of attractiveness.
Women have been victims of this for decades. The new documentary “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” reminds audiences that long before looksmaxxing forums, women’s bodies were already being publicly dissected and ranked. ANTM emerged with the potential to expand the definition of what is attractive — instead, it fed into the rigid beauty standard of the 2000s, when everyone was obsessed with the size 0 and achieving the “perfect” body.
This show, along with eating disorder content on Tumblr and extreme fad diet culture, set impossible expectations of beauty for decades. At its peak, ANTM achieved an audience of over 100 million people, all of whom were bombarded with enough pop-culture body-programming to warp their standards. Beauty is pain, as we have all learned. Today, those same values live on in “what I eat in a day” videos, Ozempic culture and infatuation with Brazilian butt lifts. The message has become more accessible, while the medium by which it has spread — social media — is more damaging than any magazine or TV show ever was.
However, a new demographic is falling victim to such content. Men have conjured up their own judging panels in their heads, now aiming for unattainable perfection in their physical features. Looksmaxxing starts with seemingly innocent acts like mewing, going to the gym or starting a good skin-care routine. It ends with bonesmashing, steroids and cosmetic surgery. Compliments have been replaced with degradation ceremonies, as men voluntarily post photos of themselves to be dissected and scored. The feedback they receive is cruelty disguised as critique: Men are now subject to their own “male gaze” — the same one women have resisted for years, only now, they have brought the wrath upon themselves.
Trends like these feed off insecurity, leading the vulnerable to believe that their appearance will determine their success in relationships, careers and life in general — in other words, that no one will respect you unless you have certain attributes. Where have we heard this one before? Oh, right: eugenics. The belief that physical features translate into your value as a human is not a new invention, but rather one of the most destructive, discredited ideologies in modern history.
Aiming to “improve” genetic quality by breeding “bad” genes out of the human race, eugenics encouraged forced sterilizations and laid the foundation for Nazi ideology. Looksmaxxing follows these principles on an individual level: “Undesirable” traits can be manipulated to “maximize” one’s value as a human being. The PSL scale, which ranks men based on facial features such as eyebrow thickness, nose shape and jaw definition — characteristics associated with Eurocentric beauty standards — quite literally decides who is worthy and who is not by how well they fit within a set of expectations meant for one group of people.
Eugenics told people that human worth was encoded in physical features, which could and should be optimized or eliminated. Looksmaxxing echoes this, merely replacing state intervention with self-intervention. The ideology is now being administered voluntarily — we have allowed these views to permeate mainstream media, unknowingly feeding into the same ideology we claim to have rejected long ago. The consequences have already arrived: heightened discrimination against those who fail to fit rigid beauty standards and a generation who reduces itself and others to a number on a scale.
Despite being marketed as self-improvement, looksmaxxing has delivered on harmful routines to physical health and worsened the body dysmorphia crisis among men. The irony is, quite frankly, disturbing. And it doesn’t help that the world we’ve built makes it nearly impossible to escape from.
Attempts to distance ourselves from these standards are futile, especially on social media and dating apps, which place even more emphasis on aesthetics and appearance. Men who struggle on these platforms are told the problem is their face or bodies, and algorithms pick up on this. Interacting with a single video about skincare or mewing will prompt your feed to shove looksmaxxing content down your throat. We are in a state of constant surveillance — everything is recorded, and if you’re caught in the background of a viral video, good luck handling the comments if you don’t fit the beauty standard. There is no escaping the way you look, and the algorithm makes sure you never stop thinking about it.
The issue occurs not when simply taking care of ourselves, but when looking and feeling good becomes an act for others. Humans are not products to be optimized — we are people meant to live to the fullest, not play as a eugenics experiment for TikTok haters.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Nancy Lama at [email protected].