What if I told you that, when social structures collapse, young men pay attention to their bone structures?
It's hard to believe, but I've seen it happen. My high-flying friend Henry went to a top university. Two years after graduating, Henry had spent countless hours applying to jobs; most never even told him he'd been rejected. He ended up employed in odd jobs that did not require a degree.
Henry withdrew into himself, so I did not see him for a while. The next time I saw him, he had transformed his sleight frame into a pitbull-like build. When I asked him about his metamorphosis, I found he spoke a new language, but not in the way your unemployed friend starts repeating 'the boy eats the apple' in five different languages after downloading Duolingo. Henry started speaking to me about canthal tilts, phenotypes, and trying to become a True Adam.
If these terms are new to you, let me introduce you to looksmaxxing, the internet's new brand of body dysmorphia for young men. Incel Wiki defines the term timidly as 'any attempt at improving one's appearance.' For most, that means a haircut, but that's softcore for looksmaxxers. How about instead improving your hairline with 'anti-androgenic five-alpha-reductase enzyme inhibitor drugs'? Or, have you heard of Wolf's Law? It supposedly means that hitting yourself in the face will improve your cheekbones. Want to stay lean? Micro-dose meth! These methods sound like jokes, but they are all practiced by looksmaxxers.
Codified in a glossary and rating system (from 'subhuman' through 'mid-tier normies' to 'True Adam'), looksmaxxing is a threshed-out ideology, developed on 2010s incel forums, popularised by 2020s TikTok blackpill edits, and now mainstream in the manosphere.
Superficially aesthetic, looksmaxxing quickly turns eugenic. The Incels Wiki has a section dedicated to British eugenicist Ronald Fisher's ideas, describing how 'Women's mate choice may be maladaptive' as they choose men with 'cartoonishly large muscles, with no selective attention paid to traits like loyalty' so that 'criminal and anti-social men often have more sexual partners and reproductive success,' which is 'leading to the decline of societies.' Logically, women's mate choice must then be controlled to save society from degenerates reproducing.
Unfortunately, looksmaxxing is far from a micro-trend. With 730k+ TikTok followers and consistent millions of views, looksmaxxing's most famous creator, Clavicular, who seemingly watched American Psycho as an instructional video, has brought the ideology to new heights through viral controversies. He made headlines in the UK and the US when he described JD Vance as subhuman and in India when he sang Kanye West's Heil Hitler alongside misogynist influencers like Nick Fuentes, Tristan Tate and Sneako.
The far-right Fuentes, who believes, for instance, women shouldn't vote, has adopted Clavicular as his Nietzschean 'Overman', referring to the concept of Übermensch, the ideal man that overcomes nihilism, which the Nazis appropriated for their ideology of racial superiority. Fuentes' appraisal seems damning, but reveals a shrewdness about Clavicular's appeal to young men as someone aestheticising far-right hierarchy to make it feel aspirational, rather than punitive, and so offer an escape from hopelessness.
I am not being a monomanic Marxist when I suggest that this hopelessness is the product of a late capitalist society that offers little to young men; I'm merely being a good listener. Incel Wiki itself states: 'Demotivated from competing in production of social value, today's men increasingly engage in LDAR (Laying down and rott-)ing, NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training-)ing, or spending all their time looksmaxxing.' Looksmaxxing is then an alternative to being hopeless and idle.
And that holds true for Henry. For him, looksmaxxing was not vanity, but misdirected ambition. Primed for competition, but locked out of the economy, Henry was in requiem of a dream, and looksmaxxing stepped in to re-direct his aspiration from the realm of the labour market to that of aesthetics. It gave him an ideal (Jon-Erik Hexum, Hernán Drago, Vasiliy Stepanov), clear steps to get there (mewing, bone-smashing, etc.), you better win as the winner-takes-all (as women only sleep with the hottest men), and, since anyone can do the steps, if you don't win, you've only got yourself to blame. The rules mirror the ideal free market so closely that it feels like Adam Smith could have written them. Even the terminology echoes capitalism. The final metric is sexual market value (SMV), framing the marketisation of sexual mating.
Ultimately, looksmaxxing gets men nowhere fast. The terse eulogy given to an original lookmaxxer shows how little the community truly cares about its own: 'Zyzz was a popular sex icon in the redpill and gymmaxxing community. He died young of sudden cardiac arrest from consuming too many steroids to make himself look hyper-masculine. He was not a reproductive success.' That conclusion sums up how looksmaxxing ultimately fails to defeat hopelessness. Its Darwinian principles tell men: you either bend or break; there can be no social change.
With such destruction, the government must have some solution?
Well, luckily, there's a bold new men's health strategy that fails to even mention the term 'body dysmorphia,' let alone steps to counter looksmaxxing. Wes Streeting's ministerial foreword instead states: 'Our strategy is designed to encourage men to take charge of their physical health and mental health.' In other words, help individuals change themselves, rather than change structures. Maybe Wes is a closet looksmaxxer.
Of course, the government devising ways to help men is welcome, but the strategy is a huge missed opportunity. Without credible futures, the youth will look for alternatives, with young men increasingly turning to Reform, who will swallow them up, chew them up, and spit them out, like how Trump rewarded the Latino men that swung in his favour with racial profiling from ICE. While State action lags, it is left to us to help young men like Henry use their newfound brawn to punch up, not down.