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“Looksmaxxing” is the name young men have given to their quest for physical perfection. Internet forums advise looksmaxxers to perfect their jawlines through “bone smashing” (exactly what it sounds like), take steroids or testosterone supplements, or undergo leg-lengthening surgeries. Some even use crystal meth to stay skinny.
My 8th-grade friends and I could have come up with this had we hated ourselves just a little more.
Looksmaxxers subscribe to a pattern of thought more often upheld by 8th-grade mean girls: that appearance is one’s most important characteristic and can be objectively ranked. That ranking — looksmaxxers have developed a numerical system — controls one’s likelihood of finding a desirable woman, achieving success in the workforce, and having the sort of life Regina George would deem worth living.
Most Hillsdale students aren’t hammering their jaws to get a date. But the internet has a way of watering down the craziest ideas until we accept their more palatable offshoots: here, the idea that in dating, our looks matter more than our hearts.
There’s nothing wrong with seeking to improve one’s physical appearance. But looksmaxxing without the crystal meth is still destructive to the soul. The practice encourages a self-preoccupation that undermines the express purpose of looksmaxxing: dating. The growing online prevalence of looksmaxxing conditions us to accept a flattened and self-destructive idea of attraction.
Though the first looksmaxxer might have been Patrick Bateman in the 2000 movie “American Psycho,” the movement is inconceivable apart from the internet age. The online romantic marketplace puts a greater emphasis on personal appearance than ever before. In social media or dating app profiles, we become a mere series of images and quantifiable characteristics. If one’s desirability is indeed reduced to what a screen can show, it’s understandable some young men would take such drastic action.
But offline, looksmaxxing quickly becomes ridiculous. In the dating world outside the internet, you can’t get away with being a peacock, not forever. Writers for centuries have poked fun at the pathetic man more in love with the mirror than the woman in his life — recall Austen’s Sir Walter Elliot, a man whose “vanity was the beginning and end of [his] character,” objecting to men joining the Navy because it destroyed their good looks.
Plenty of average-looking men win the hearts of beautiful women. They’ve figured out what looksmaxxers haven’t: that attraction reaches beyond physical appearance to apprehend the beauty of the other’s soul.
Attracting a woman in the real world isn’t about “mogging,” or upstaging the next guy, but magnanimity. Set a preening, image-obsessed snob next to a funny, generous, and slightly scruffy guy, and the choice is obvious. Women want the kind of man who will ask them thoughtful questions on dates, laugh at himself, and help her with a heavy box.
Testosterone replacement therapy, looksmaxxers have discovered, is pretty cheap. But love isn’t for sale.
Forget the middle school mean girls and their looksmaxxing sidekicks. Take care of your body, but take even more care of your soul. There’s someone out there who will love you for both.
Caroline Kurt is a senior studying English.
