Looksmaxxing: Beauty is Pain?

Looksmaxxing is a term that has become everyday language among the younger generation, and while labeled as a ‘trend’ is there really an end to a mean or an addiction? The trend usually is surrounded by men, while does include women, is essentially what the name suggests, maxing out your looks. It is where you not only look at your general attractiveness but you micromanage every detail on your body that you believe can make you reach your top potential attractiveness if you improve those individual details.

This just seems like harmless self-improvement right? Well, everything starts out that way at first. With the trend inspiring men to go to the gym and exercise, it reaches a point where it is not about health or what’s inside but about physical appearance. Which would fall under a different term, softmaxxing. This is where you focus on skincare, fitness, and overall lifestyle improvement. Great, so the end of the Head & Shoulder 3-and-1? Hopefully, yes, but the transition from softmaxxing to looksmaxxing is when the trend follower goes from enhancing their natural features to then falling into the mentality that attractiveness is dictatable. 

You might be thinking ‘dictatable’ is an extreme word but as Lookmaxxing begins to enter mainstream (further than it already has that is), many of these young men and women are subject to not only their own critiques of themselves but the critiques of the internet, who is not known to show mercy. And neither did Braden Peters, who the internet knows as Clavicular, the new and improved face of the looksmaxxing trend. Not only is he the representative face of the trend, but has become the blueprint for how to not just enhance your face but to conform your features to what every girl lusts and every guy envies - these vices sound familiar? 

While we all can’t afford plastic surgery, the extremities of these trends are leading many to resort to ‘bonesmashing’, where they take a hammer to the cheek in hopes that those microfractures will heal thicker, leaving them with a thicker more defined and ideally ‘masculine’ appearance. It is doing repetitive and obsessive facial exercises for each individual part of your face and the idea that you can ‘train’ your jawline with mewing all day. Ultimately the idea is looksmaxxing is living rent-free in your mind all day, leading to an obsession. 

And with softmaxxing, it is mainly for personal improvement, looksmaxxing tends to be more about external validation and improvement. Making mainstream media its main feeder. With many self-identified looksmaxxers dedicating their lifestyles to female attraction, followers on social media, and in turn money. So if looksmaxxing thrives on social media, Braden Peter or Clavicular has from the age of 14 has used social media to create a give and take relationship with his followers. For a man who has taken steroids, methamphetamines, and other health harming extremes to maintain this idolised body and face, what is he telling adolescents about not only self-worth but mortality? 

Clavicular has given no shame to the idea that he doesn’t care about longevity, and it seems like a no-brainer for him to sacrifice years of his life for beauty. And it comes at an opportune time for Clavicular, where all the political noise in the mainstream has led the younger generation to turn to humour as a coping mechanism, many surrounding fighting in a possible world war to justifying many decisions due to pessimism surrounding the ‘future’ they claim we don’t have. 

So if so many adolescents are perceiving no future due to politics and war, their focus turns to prioritising the present over the future. Asking themselves who would want to live in a post-war world anyway? So this immortalised idolisation of Clavicular begins to form. Where we see a man who essentially never ages if he never lives long enough to. Clavicular’s own image of himself is eternally young and an aesthetically curated body and face, that is immortalised through social media and through health-harming extremes. 

While years before, this sort of lifestyle would not have been as normalised or accepted, but Clavicular’s openness to his drug use and self-harm comes at an emotionally vulnerable time in the mainstream. It performs as the perfect escape to a corrupt future, essentially seeking this pure image in terms of aesthetically ironically through corrupt methods. Instead of subjecting your real and ‘flawed’ body to fight someone else’s war, you are essentially conforming your body to be ‘sculpted by the gods’. And this divine creation is corrupted by obsession to play both the divine and the creation, always leaving Clavicular and other looksmaxxers unsatisfied. 

With many young men and women on social media during an uncertain political climate, they become susceptible to quick escapes. And with a lack of beauty and aesthetics surrounding the news, the younger generation crave to see ‘perfection’ and turn to the only thing they can ‘control’- their image. As a society we begin to wonder what really matters to us, and not only do the young generation see social gain for the looksmaxxer but they see financial gain as well, blurring the line of monetising self worth. 

Looksmaxxing has surfaced as a convenient and dangerous time in the mainstream, and it’s silently been there for some time. The evidence of its obsession and inability to satisfy any craving these looksmaxxers are after are in plain sight. From softmaxxing not being able to alter genetic ‘faults’, looksmaxxers take extremes to ‘play god’. Creating a vicious circle of contradictions, where self-improvement becomes the corrupt escape from a corrupt world.

Written By: Sophia Arceo, @sophiearceo

Edited By: Kirsten Baldwin, @teddys_bookshelf