Most of us take some steps to look our best selves, especially if we are going out in public. Usually those are limited to how we dress and some minimal efforts at grooming. But as with so many things, there are those who take this to an extreme, leading to a phenomenon known as ‘looksmaxxing’, one of the recent trends that have had the suffix ‘maxxing’ added to it to give the cachet of sounding cool and hip.
Perhaps the most viral example of maxxing is looksmaxxing, a cultural phenomenon that originated in the incel (a.k.a. involuntary celibate) community, encouraging boys and young men to take intense, often dangerous, measures to enhance their physical appearance. That includes undergoing intrusive surgeries, using steroids to bulk up, or using a hammer to smash your facial bones in hopes of accentuating one’s jawline. Looksmaxxing promises one sole goal: that by being exceedingly and unattainably hot, men can achieve the utmost confidence, social clout and sexual success.
The article goes on to describe other forms of maxxing, all involving taking some ordinary activity to the extreme, including food, with things like protein and fiber being targeted for maxxing.
On TikTok and Instagram, the protein hysteria reached a fever pitch. Influencers showed off their high-protein diets filled with protein powders, eggs, egg whites, cottage cheese, poultry and red meat. Some also pushed for eating more high-protein snacks, ranging from meat sticks and cold cuts to homemade chicken chips made from seasoned, ground meat. Everyone was hellbent on maxing out on the macro.
…That’s all to say that our food was never intended to be maxxed. Certain nutrients and so-called superfoods were never meant to be heavily prioritized at the expense of other beneficial ingredients. Regardless of how severe the spectrum is, maxxing implies that more is always better. It’s in the name. But that’s not what healthy eating is all about. Per the World Health Organization, a healthy diet is made up of four basic principles: adequacy, balance, moderation and diversity. Maxxing, for the most part, fails to satisfy three of those principles — adequacy, balance and diversity.
It also raises the question of how much food maxxing is necessary in the future to undo the damage of previous maxxing trends. First, it’s protein. Then, fiber, which many U.S. adults aren’t eating enough of already. What’s next? Carb-maxxing to compensate for the lack of carbohydrates in our diets? Or perhaps, raw greens-maxxing?
As the age-old adage goes, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” It feels especially pertinent in a new era of maxx eating.
It seems to me that people are disregarding the health of their future selves by emphasizing short-term gains and ignoring the possibility of serious long-term damage to their bodies. We will not know the real consequences of such actions until these people age and by then it may be too late to repair any damage. We can place some of the blame on so-called influencers who boast that they have become successful by doing all these things and selling products that they claim they used to achieve that look, whether that is true or not.
Blame the influencers or whoever it was that taught these people that looks are everything, not to seek knowledge and understanding and that experts can be safely ignored.
I’m finding the looksmaxxing the most…I suppose, dangerous. These men are lead to believe the incel view of women, which is that women should be subservient and obedient. The men think that, by making themselves look more “handsome”, they’ll access fame, success, and women.
Thus, the plastic surgery market has finally captured male customers: basically, you have surgeons permanently rearrange your face, including every possible bone. Then, some of the surgery is reparative, as when smashing your facial bones with a hammer leads to the inevitable result.
The one that made me really, really sick was a slightly-below-average-height man who was “influenced” to believe that being taller was an instant road to power, dominance, success, money, conspicuous consumption, and women. He actually had surgeons saw his femurs in half and implant a rod between each upper and lower half, hoping that the bone would regrow down and around the rods and so he’d have longer legs.
Imagine the agony, not to mention the money. Months in a wheelchair, re-learning to walk. And, if the surgery wasn’t successful, then…what?
All these maxxings are very, very dangerous. “Influencers” of all kinds need to have their licenses revoked.
I would take some of those claims with a kilo of salt. For years it was “common knowledge” that some Victorian ladies were so desperate to tight-lace their corsets to achieve absurdly tiny waists that they had ribs surgically removed, risking the horrors of 19th century surgical techniques. That claim has finally been utterly debunked.
So… it’s actually cake after all?
When I see things like this I’m skeptical but maybe not in the way you’d expect. I kind of wonder how much of this is actually going on. Expensive elective surgery? When most families can’t afford necessary surgeries? And if you can, let’s face it, you almost certainly live in an area with a better than average education system.
But I’m also skeptical that it’s as presented. I feel like some of this is going to end up being some variety of older folks bemoaning what the kids are doing these days. That’s kind of always been going on. And with a large aging population that frankly has bought into some really stupid ideas, I’m always extra cautious about believing anything that fits the “kids these days!” style narrative.
I find myself lightly laughing at you. I have seen Clavicle shirtless (both him and me) in-person here. He looked reconstructed from a severe accident. I looked like a fat bastard.
Women have been doing surgery-for-pretty for a long time. I live a mile from Beverly Hills one of the whole world’s centers for breast augmentation. Actors who are the prettiest/handsomest and fabrication-est in their small pond come here and find out that they are no longer 9s and 10s but 6s and 7s. Modern models do have teeth and ribs removed in addition to starvation diets.
Now we have the biggest pond. Now it matters what men look like. Welcome to the jungle all y’all heterosexual men 🙂 Men are much more likely to fetishize tham women so this will be going farther.
As someone who is handsome *I know* that my looks have gotten me farther. Humans are what humans do and first impressions matter ridiculously.
I’ve just stumbled over a report of “ballsmaxxing”, which makes Tucker Carlson’s testicular tanning seem almost reasonable.