Latest / The Morning Edition / 'Looksmaxxing’ is the dark new trend and Australian men are leading it

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'Looksmaxxing’ is the dark new trend and Australian men are leading it · The Morning Edition

0:04
S1: There's been a horrifying trend on the social media platform
0:07
S1: TikTok lately. It involves boys and men trading stories of
0:12
S1: breaking their legs in order to gain extra inches, and
0:15
S1: something called bone smashing, a practice where they hammer their
0:19
S1: faces in order to heighten their cheekbones. These are just
0:23
S1: a couple of the wild self-improvement measures taken up by
0:26
S1: the community, known as looks mixers. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris,
0:32
S1: and you're listening to the Morning Edition from the Age
0:35
S1: and The Sydney Morning Herald today, New Yorker magazine writer
0:39
S1: Becca Rothfeld on where this movement came from and why
0:43
S1: many of its biggest stars are Australian. It's March the 23rd. Welcome, Becca,
0:51
S1: to the podcast.
0:52
S2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited
0:54
S2: to be here.
0:54
S1: Okay, well, first off, I am dying to know why
0:57
S1: you wanted to take a deep dive into this trend
0:59
S1: for The New Yorker magazine. I mean, you have taken
1:01
S1: a very serious look. I was counting at the very serious,
1:05
S1: great thinkers in your piece, and you quote, among others,
1:08
S1: Gustave Flaubert, the critic, Susan Sontag, Karl Marx. So tell
1:12
S1: me why you looked at this so seriously.
1:14
S2: I mean, I think part of the explanation is just masochism.
1:17
S2: You know, I love an internet wormhole. I love I
1:21
S2: almost have, like, a novelistic fascination with weirdos on the internet. Um,
1:25
S2: but I also was getting a PhD in philosophy, and
1:28
S2: I was going to write a dissertation about what it
1:30
S2: means to be a beautiful person. Um, and I almost wish,
1:34
S2: you know, that look, smack saying had been a thing
1:36
S2: when I was doing my work, preparing to start writing
1:39
S2: my dissertation because it's such a good case study in
1:42
S2: the ways that this way of thinking about beauty can
1:45
S2: go wrong. Um, and so I'm just always fascinated by
1:48
S2: people who are sort of putting into practice different theories
1:51
S2: of what personal beauty is.
1:52
S1: Honestly, it's bananas. But let's start, I guess at the beginning.
1:55
S1: So for the uninitiated, tell us what looks maxing is
1:58
S1: and I guess where it came from.
2:00
S2: Good questions. And for everyone who doesn't know about this yet.
2:03
S2: I mean, maybe just turn this off because maybe you
2:05
S2: should remain pure and blissfully ignorant. Um, so this is
2:08
S2: sort of an evolution of incel ideology. Incel is a
2:15
S2: is short for involuntary celibate. It's a misogynistic and racist,
2:20
S2: but sort of primarily misogynistic online subculture that developed in
2:25
S2: the kind of early and mid aughts in online forums
2:28
S2: like Fortune and Reddit. And so the sort of guiding
2:33
S2: premise of the incel forums was your your looks and
2:36
S2: your biology are destiny. And so if you are a
2:39
S2: not a conventionally attractive man, uh, you are consigned to
2:43
S2: romantic loneliness forever because women are hypergamous, which means that
2:48
S2: women try to date the highest status man available and
2:50
S2: they often date above their status. All of this is
2:53
S2: sort of pseudoscientific pop evolutionary psychology. I don't mean to
2:57
S2: be endorsing this. I'm just explaining. Um, so the the
3:00
S2: incels understood themselves as taking the black pill is what
3:03
S2: they called it, which is a reference to the movie
3:05
S2: The Matrix, in which one character offers another, the blue
3:09
S2: pill and the red pill. The blue pill allows them
3:11
S2: to keep living happily in a delusion, and the red
3:14
S2: pill exposes him to the truth. And so the black
3:17
S2: pill is the nihilistic pill. It's people reconciling themselves to, uh,
3:23
S2: a tragic fate of kind of loneliness and social ostracization.
3:27
S2: So the looks maxar's take this kind of basic description
3:31
S2: of the world, this idea that looks are destiny, this
3:34
S2: kind of reductive, uh, insulting caricature of women. They take
3:37
S2: all of this on board, but they think, no, um,
3:40
S2: you can change your looks. It is true that your
3:42
S2: looks kind of determine almost everything about your status in
3:45
S2: the world, but you can intervene and make yourself hot
3:48
S2: and that will change everything about your life.
3:52
S3: By the end of this lecture, you're going to have
3:54
S3: an insane understanding of how to go about maximizing your
3:56
S3: appearance based on what really skinny.
3:59
S4: Screenshot this and bulk up if you're fed up, screenshot
4:01
S4: this and start cutting. Always remember lean how I.
4:04
S5: Fixed my skin, my collagen, my hair, my height, everything.
4:08
S5: It's all in my bio if you want to look
4:10
S5: at it. I kind of just like to refer back
4:11
S5: to the quote like Harry's life. And if you have
4:14
S5: no hair, you have no life.
4:15
S6: Confusion Confusional.
4:17
S5: Scientific looks. Maxing is making a return and I'm here
4:20
S5: for it. Have a good one.
4:26
S2: It will increase your what they call SMB, which is
4:28
S2: sexual market value. It will make you appealing to women
4:31
S2: and all kinds of status benefits will accrue to you
4:34
S2: if you make yourself hot. And so there's a, there's
4:37
S2: a range of different things that you can do to
4:39
S2: make yourself hot. And we could talk about that. And
4:41
S2: some of the, some of the things that marketers have
4:43
S2: done are quite normal and alarming, and some are quite extreme.
4:47
S1: Or deranged as, as the magazine had it in the
4:50
S1: headline of your piece. So let's talk about some of
4:52
S1: the deranged stuff, because it really is extreme, really doesn't
4:56
S1: cut it when it comes to what these men are doing.
4:59
S2: Yeah. So I guess on the extreme scale, the interventions
5:03
S2: range from kind of fanciful but extreme, not scientifically legitimate.
5:09
S2: So one thing that they do is this thing called
5:10
S2: bone smashing, where they take a bone and they smash
5:14
S2: their jaw. They literally hit themselves in an attempt to
5:18
S2: get kind of more chiseled jaw lines.
5:20
S5: And then you're hitting real hard. And what this is
5:22
S5: doing is this is creating microfractures. And according to Wolff's law,
5:26
S5: the bone is going to grow back stronger.
5:29
S2: Another thing that they do is this thing called mewing,
5:32
S2: which is they hold their tongue against the roof of
5:34
S2: their mouth also in an attempt to get a more
5:36
S2: chiseled jawline. Uh, the word mewing comes from kind of
5:40
S2: discredited orthodontist doctor, Doctor Mew, who proposed this method. And
5:45
S2: then some of the things are probably effective, but nonetheless deranged. Um,
5:50
S2: so Clavicular, who is the influencer that the my piece
5:53
S2: kind of centers on and he's kind of the poster
5:55
S2: child of the looks movement. He's kind of recently blown up,
5:59
S2: and it's really just because he's quite extreme and he
6:02
S2: advocates these extreme methods, methods. And so people have a
6:05
S2: real fascination with him. His real name is Brandon Peters.
6:07
S2: He's 20 and he's been he's been doing really extreme looks,
6:10
S2: boxing stuff since like early adolescence. He has said that
6:13
S2: he micro-doses methamphetamines to remain lean.
6:17
S5: For three days. I spammed a combination of Adderall and
6:24
S5: methamphetamine for appetite suppression, and I didn't. I literally went
6:29
S5: on a three day fast, um, and stayed awake the
6:31
S5: entire time. And I lost £5. So that was kind
6:37
S5: of the craziest thing I've done.
6:39
S2: And he takes steroids, which is pretty common in the
6:42
S2: boxing world. Um, and he's taken so many steroids for
6:46
S2: so long that he is avowedly infertile. And he's also
6:50
S2: said that he's not really that concerned with longevity. Like,
6:52
S2: you know, he doesn't care if he dies earlier as
6:54
S2: long as he's as beautiful as he could be during
6:57
S2: his life. A lot of them take just kind of ozempic,
7:00
S2: which is, you know, that's actually vetted by doctors and
7:02
S2: kind of approved. So those are some of the crazier
7:05
S2: things that they do. And they consider all kinds of
7:07
S2: really dramatic cosmetic surgeries, like the limb lengthening surgery is
7:11
S2: kind of the most extreme one, which makes you immobile
7:14
S2: for a really long time and is really painful. And
7:16
S2: you might have to travel to a different country to
7:18
S2: get someone to do it. There's a lot of surgical
7:20
S2: tourism and the community.
7:23
S1: And so I guess, tell us, what is the goal
7:25
S1: for these boys and men of looks maxing? I mean,
7:28
S1: is it just being as attractive as they can be
7:30
S1: according to these sort of standards? And for what purpose
7:33
S1: is it romantic success? Is it job success? Like what
7:37
S1: is this all about?
7:38
S2: So I think that there's what they say it's about.
7:40
S2: And then what we can infer it's actually about sort
7:43
S2: of on the basis of their revealed preferences. So they
7:45
S2: say that this is a rational decision that they're making
7:48
S2: because they have observed that people with higher SMV, which
7:52
S2: is sexual market value, get all kinds of benefits from society,
7:56
S2: their higher status, they get paid more and they have
7:59
S2: their choice of women. There's some evidence to substantiate that.
8:03
S2: People are sort of biased on the basis of looks
8:05
S2: that I did a bit of research about this for
8:07
S2: my dissertation that, you know, people who are better looking
8:10
S2: are likely to be politicians. Of course, you can be
8:12
S2: a politician if you're bad looking. Just look at the
8:14
S2: president and the leadership of the United States right now. Um,
8:18
S2: but so they also say that they're doing it to
8:20
S2: kind of get women or whatever, but they're actually pretty
8:23
S2: uninterested and practice in, in sleeping with women. There's a
8:27
S2: really interesting, uh, profile of clavicular in the New York
8:30
S2: Times where Clavicular tells the reporter that he's kind of
8:34
S2: just more interested in knowing that women would sleep with
8:36
S2: him and he doesn't actually feel any urge to consummate
8:39
S2: any of these relationships. He doesn't really care if he
8:41
S2: does sleep with them, as long as he knows that
8:43
S2: he can. They're much more interested in upstaging other men,
8:46
S2: and their term for this is mocking. Like if it's
8:49
S2: a transitive verb, I mog you or someone mog someone else.
8:53
S2: So they're much more interested in kind of proving that
8:55
S2: they're at the top of the male hierarchy.
9:02
S1: After the break.
9:03
S2: They view the body in very objectified terms. It's very
9:06
S2: detachable from the kind of person behind the body. In
9:09
S2: a way their objectification of women has led them to,
9:11
S2: in turn, objectify themselves.
9:17
S1: What is the relationship here between the the desire for
9:20
S1: the ultimate beauty as however they see it, and the
9:23
S1: sort of racism and misogyny that we see filter through
9:26
S1: this network in the sort of things they say. What
9:28
S1: is the connection there?
9:30
S7: That's an interesting.
9:31
S2: Question. I mean, I think that part of it is
9:33
S2: that they some of the beauty standards that they espouse
9:36
S2: are probably easier for white people to satisfy. Um, I
9:40
S2: haven't looked too far into this. You know, they have
9:42
S2: all these pseudoscientific terms like midface ratio and cancel tilt
9:46
S2: and all this stuff, but I assume that they're sort
9:49
S2: of like a presumption in favour of white like styles
9:52
S2: and ways of looking. They casually use racial slurs in
9:56
S2: their forums all the time and stuff, and that's obviously bad.
9:58
S2: And their misogyny is obviously bad too. And I do
10:00
S2: think that their sort of objectification of women, well, they
10:04
S2: view the body in very objectified terms as very detachable
10:07
S2: from the kind of person behind the body and like
10:09
S2: the agency behind the body. And so I think that
10:12
S2: in a way, their objectification of women has led them to,
10:15
S2: in turn, objectify themselves. And they have this very kind
10:19
S2: of rote physicalist understanding of what personal beauty is that
10:23
S2: I think derives from their very misogynistic, very objectifying assessments
10:28
S2: of women. Also, there's just the fact that they're not
10:29
S2: thinking about the fact that maybe their sexual market value
10:32
S2: is low because they're terrible people and they're spending literally
10:35
S2: all of their time thinking about like peptides and like
10:38
S2: your mid-face ratio, like they're not able to have a
10:40
S2: conversation on a date.
10:41
S1: But, but besides that.
10:43
S7: Yes.
10:43
S1: They're perfect. Yes. Yeah. And this might be too, you know,
10:47
S1: long about a draw, but is there something culty about
10:50
S1: this movement? Like I'm even thinking of some of the terminology.
10:52
S1: I mean, they've got their own lexicon. You've written, you know,
10:55
S1: in this world, a man who becomes beautiful is said
10:57
S1: to have ascended. I mean, that sounds a bit culty
11:00
S1: or a bit, you know, like something like going clear
11:03
S1: in Scientology. Like, is there a culty element to this
11:05
S1: or no. Is that just to the outsider like me?
11:08
S7: I think there definitely is.
11:10
S2: But I think that like, no more so necessarily than
11:12
S2: any other kind of like niche online community. Um, and
11:15
S2: I do think it's kind of threatening to breach containment,
11:18
S2: although I'm not sure to what extent people are taking
11:20
S2: it seriously. I think that people just kind of, uh,
11:23
S2: find it a fun artifact to olgal. Um, but I
11:27
S2: definitely do think that like in some of the more
11:29
S2: extreme looks, maxar's, there is an element of the same
11:32
S2: kind of like mental illness that you would see in
11:34
S2: a cult. Um, people just kind of perennially doing surgeries,
11:38
S2: like unable to, to stop. There's a compulsive element for
11:42
S2: sure to some of the more extreme looks. Maxar's.
11:45
S1: And ultimately I wanted to ask you, I mean, what
11:47
S1: damage do you think is doing and to whom?
11:51
S2: I mean, I think that it's doing damage. I mean,
11:53
S2: the the primary demographic to who it's doing damage is these,
11:56
S2: these men who are sort of destroying their bodies. But
11:58
S2: maybe more importantly, or at least in addition, destroying their
12:02
S2: kind of sensibility, like destroying their ability to have a
12:05
S2: more artistic and fluid relationship to beauty. I think that
12:09
S2: they're obviously doing damage to, to people of color and
12:13
S2: to women whom they casually insult all the time. But
12:16
S2: I kind of think that they represent a tendency to
12:20
S2: try to gamify everything, to optimize everything. I mean, we
12:23
S2: haven't talked about the term itself looks maxing, which is
12:26
S2: short for maximizing like looks maximizing. And so it really
12:30
S2: represents like a very scientific, extractive, acquisitive approach to beauty
12:36
S2: in particular and kind of life in general that I
12:38
S2: think is quite deadening.
12:39
S1: And I've seen some analysis. I know I read a
12:41
S1: piece in The Atlantic where they're sort of saying, well,
12:44
S1: this looks maxing trend. It's actually something that's it's sort
12:48
S1: of revealing this moral crisis that's confronting young men today.
12:52
S1: Do you think that this is what it reveals as well?
12:53
S1: And if so, what exactly is this moral crisis?
12:57
S2: I'm not sure that I would go that far, because
12:59
S2: I think that I mean, it's hard to get data
13:01
S2: on how many what percentage of like men of a
13:04
S2: certain age are vaxxers, but, you know, a vanishingly small percentage.
13:08
S2: Like I'm not, I'm not sure that looks maxing is
13:10
S2: any worse or reveals anything more than kind of these
13:13
S2: earlier trends did like pick up artists, but I think
13:17
S2: that regarding looks versus kind of representative of like, of
13:21
S2: young men in America or globally is a mistake. And
13:24
S2: some of the big looks, Max was Australian, by the way.
13:28
S1: I noticed that. Tell me what you make of that.
13:30
S1: I've seen them. I've seen them with their videos about
13:32
S1: mewing and, you know, chiseling their their jaws and whatnot.
13:36
S1: Why why are so many of them Australian? Becca, tell us,
13:40
S1: what are we doing wrong or right? I don't know.
13:42
S2: I don't know, I don't really know. Um, I mean,
13:45
S2: maybe it's just because like, people in Australia are hotter
13:47
S2: because it's nice outside. So the competition is harder. You know,
13:51
S2: people in America are very pale on the East Coast
13:54
S2: after being inside for so many months.
13:57
S1: That's very funny. Well, it's interesting you mentioned the Australian
13:59
S1: element to it, because I wanted to ask you, is
14:01
S1: there much of a worry in the United States about
14:04
S1: the physical dangers of looks? Because I know here we
14:07
S1: had one endocrinologist at the University of Melbourne, doctor Rahul Barman. Right.
14:12
S1: He said of one fat blasting drug called DNP. It's
14:16
S1: a cautionary tale because it will cause a person to
14:18
S1: lose weight, but it can also be incredibly toxic and
14:21
S1: someone can die from lethal hypothermia from taking it, and
14:25
S1: that due to peptides, cellular promoting properties, there's always a
14:28
S1: concern that it can lead to cancer. And I was like, damn,
14:31
S1: is that discussion happening in the United States as well?
14:34
S1: Are people concerned about the boys? Because some of them,
14:36
S1: some of the people doing it, they're quite young, right?
14:39
S2: They are quite young. I mean, I don't think so
14:41
S2: because I don't think that enough people are sort of
14:44
S2: doing this seriously for it to merit that kind of intervention,
14:47
S2: or if that is true, like that has yet to
14:49
S2: be discovered. But I will say that there's peptides in
14:52
S2: particular are not just being used by people in the
14:56
S2: vaccine community. There are there are like scientifically kind of
14:58
S2: vetted peptides like ozempic. Um, but there's a, there's a
15:03
S2: big craze just sort of among like beauty bloggers even
15:06
S2: and among women because there's not, there's not a ton
15:09
S2: of like discussion between the, the incel adjacent community and
15:14
S2: kind of female beauty bloggers who have long been pushing
15:17
S2: sort of more reasonable things, like using retinoids on your skin,
15:20
S2: using serums, maybe doing other like more minor interventions. But
15:24
S2: now that there's just a huge general peptides craze that
15:27
S2: is a health concern and it's even being promoted, a
15:29
S2: lot of the kind of make America healthy again kind
15:32
S2: of people in America, like people who are followers of
15:35
S2: RFK Jr or people who are vaccine skeptics, a lot
15:38
S2: of those people are quite into peptides and kind of
15:41
S2: believe that the FDA has declined to investigate peptides for
15:45
S2: conspiratorial reasons. And so those people are just injecting stuff
15:48
S2: into their bodies from China with kind of no idea
15:50
S2: what it is. And so there are health concerns about that.
15:53
S1: Yeah. Well, I think it's exploded here to a certain
15:56
S1: degree as well. I think there's one sort of peptide
15:58
S1: cluster of ingredients. It's called the Wolverine stack. It's a
16:01
S1: combination of peptides used experimentally for rapid tissue regeneration and
16:06
S1: injury recovery, mimicking the Marvel character Wolverine's healing abilities. I mean,
16:11
S1: that does not sound necessarily kosher.
16:13
S2: That does not sound good. Yeah. I mean, one of
16:16
S2: the people in the New York magazine piece is kind
16:17
S2: of like, yeah, I just inject them and every now
16:19
S2: and then I kind of have like a heart murmur
16:21
S2: and I'm like, uh, oh, like, am I going to
16:22
S2: kill myself? Because people on the, on the subreddit, um,
16:25
S2: are recommending this peptide cocktail. And then she's like, no,
16:28
S2: it's fine. So I think that there's definitely concerns about that. Um,
16:32
S2: but not as much about like smoking specifically because, you know,
16:35
S2: if I had to guess like the number of people
16:36
S2: who have actually been smashed in America is like probably five.
16:41
S1: Right? Okay. So there's lots of videos online, but it's, yeah,
16:44
S1: it's probably making us feel like more people are doing
16:46
S1: it than are actually doing it. And I guess, Becca,
16:48
S1: just to wrap up, I wanted to ask you about
16:50
S1: what this looks maxing amongst men might be doing to
16:54
S1: their relationships, their romantic relationships with, regardless of, you know,
16:58
S1: who they're wanting to date or not wanting to date.
17:00
S1: Because there was that line in your piece about Clavicular
17:03
S1: you wrote, watching him, I could not shake the feeling
17:05
S1: that he has a smooth mound where his genitals are
17:08
S1: supposed to be, as if he were a giant Ken doll.
17:10
S1: You said he almost had an anti erotic quality, I
17:12
S1: guess because he had done so much to his body.
17:14
S1: It was almost like a plastic feeling, I guess that
17:17
S1: you felt like that came off him. So what's this
17:20
S1: doing to the relationships do you think? Is it having
17:22
S1: any particular impact, perhaps a negative one?
17:25
S2: I mean, definitely like, I mean, I think that as
17:28
S2: I sort of tried to gesture out in the piece,
17:30
S2: sort of erotic charisma is often at odds with kind
17:34
S2: of technical perfection, like the degree to which all of
17:37
S2: the looks maxar's are calculated about their appearance and try
17:40
S2: to sort of gamify everything. It's really anathema to the
17:44
S2: to spontaneity and the aesthetic creativity that I actually think
17:47
S2: goes into the production of erotic charisma. I talk about
17:50
S2: the French concept of Joli led, which means literally pretty ugly.
17:54
S2: And it's like it's the French term for people who
17:56
S2: are kind of technically imperfect, but nonetheless, they have a
17:59
S2: lot of erotic appeal and charisma, and they often become
18:02
S2: like sex icons. Like you think of people with gaps
18:04
S2: in their teeth. And people love that because that's like
18:07
S2: a kind of sexy imperfection. And because the end game
18:11
S2: is to just eliminate imperfection of any kind. The kind
18:14
S2: of end goal is one and just, you know, a
18:16
S2: world in which everyone looks the same. Like there's no, um,
18:19
S2: there's none of the individuality that I think goes into
18:22
S2: kind of eroticism. So I think it's not, it's not great.
18:25
S1: That's right. The unexplained attractiveness in your piece, you point
18:29
S1: to people like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Barbra Streisand, who I
18:33
S1: think there's some amazing quote in your piece about which
18:35
S1: which actor is it said that? Well, I didn't think
18:37
S1: she was pretty, but then I spent a few days
18:38
S1: with her and I couldn't stop lusting after her. Was
18:41
S1: that Omar Sharif? Maybe.
18:42
S2: Yes, yes. Uh, who was a co-star in a movie?
18:45
S2: And they did have an affair, famously. Um, so her
18:48
S2: easily led charisma worked on him.
18:51
S1: There you go. Only the French could have a saying
18:54
S1: that's beautiful. Ugly. Which is meant to be a compliment.
18:57
S2: Yes.
19:01
S1: Well, Becca, it's absolutely fascinating. Never did I, you know,
19:04
S1: think that there'd be a trend that involved this deranged stuff, like,
19:08
S1: you know, smoking crystal meth to stay thin in a
19:11
S1: piece that combines the wisdom of Karl Marx and Gustave Flaubert.
19:14
S1: So thanks, Becca.
19:16
S2: Thanks so much. Thanks for reading.
19:24
S1: Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai
19:27
S1: Wang and Josh towers. Our executive producer is Tami Mills,
19:31
S1: and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.
19:36
S1: If you like our show, follow The Morning Edition and
19:38
S1: leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks
19:42
S1: for listening.