What is looksmaxxing, and why are so many people talking about it?

A good definition of the term can be found in one of the first articles to describe it: “Enhancing one’s sex appeal through weight lifting, skin and hair treatments and even plastic surgery” (Brennan, 2020).

Although self-improvement is hardly a new phenomenon, the suffix from this term, -maxxing, has taken on a life of its own. Tracing its origin, as well as the way it has attached itself to so many other terms, tells us a great deal about where new words are coming from—and whether we’ll still be using them in a year or two.

An Origin Story

Maxxing seems to have originated in gaming culture in the late 1990s; it appears in terms like min-maxing, in which players attempt to balance good and bad traits or outcomes.

Looksmaxxing itself, however, seems to have bubbled up from online manosphere culture and is most closely associated with misogynistic incel 4chan and Reddit postings dating from the mid-2010s.

The most prominent contemporary advocate of looksmaxxing is the online influencer Clavicular, Braden Peters, who has advocated softmaxxing (improving one’s appearance through better grooming, skin care, or better nutrition). And more controversially, via hardmaxxing, which includes injections of growth hormone, cosmetic surgery, and even bone smashing. Psychology Today has run several posts about the dangers of hardmaxxing.

However, looksmaxxing can also be found in subreddits like r/Splendida, dating from early 2021. This forum was created as “an exclusive space for women to discuss objective beauty. Posts are based on science, research, experiences and anecdotes.” The concept of looksmaxxing, in its various guises, has been pursued by men and women alike.

Maxxing as a Viral Meme

Ideas or memes that spread online are often compared with viruses, which can lurk in a host in a dormant state for long periods before suddenly “going viral.” This analogy seems particularly apt to explain the career of looksmaxxing.

Although the term had existed for several years before this, a LexisNexis search identifies its first appearance in a mainstream publication in December of 2018. The British weekly paper The Sunday Times quoted a man in his mid-thirties as saying, “I will keep on looksmaxxing [because] I want a better life for myself” (Wiseman, 2018).

But the term would not appear in The New York Times until nearly two years later, in an article about British orthodontists. It was also during this period that the term became popular on TikTok.

Tracking the appearance of looksmaxxing in The New York Times proves instructive. Its journalists and opinion columnists have used it 44 times total. Before 2024, the term appeared in just three articles. In 2024, it made five appearances, and then in 2025, there were six sightings. But during the first half of 2026, it appeared no less than 30 times. Clearly, the spring of 2026 was the point at which looksmaxxing went viral and crossed into the linguistic mainstream.

A Productive Term?

Clearly, looksmaxxing is having a moment. But will its viral suffix spread and infect hundreds of other words?

Suffix particles do have a way of becoming a regular part of the language. A good example is -gate, used to denote scandal. It originated in the Watergate affair of 1972-’73, with the eponymous hotel standing in for a variety of misdeeds perpetrated by the Nixon administration.

The term was first used generically—and ironically—in 1973 by The National Lampoon. Since then, however, it has been applied to hundreds of episodes, from the trivial to the consequential.

Similarly, -washing has become a conventional way of describing something done in a secret or duplicitous way. Derived from whitewashing, it was first used in the mid-1980s, when greenwashing was coined—it refers to corporations that falsely portray themselves as environmentally conscious. Since then, virtually all the shades of the rainbow have been used to describe similar behaviors.

If we employ a productivity criterion to evaluate the success of maxxing, it does seem to have spawned many new terms, mostly in the context of optimization. During June alone, outlets like The New York Times, the British newspaper The Observer, and various Substack columns ran stories mentioning birthmaxxing, bodymaxxing, doommaxxing, humanmaxxing, mindmaxxing, and even penis-maxxing and spermmaxxing (don’t ask).

Shortly before the conflict with Iran began in February 2026, the Pentagon tweeted about lethalitymaxxing, and at the Oscars the following month, Conan O’Brien joked about host-maxxing. But whether any of these coinages will stand the test of time is an open question.

A Suffix with Staying Power?

Have we achieved peak maxxing? It’s not at all unusual for a new word or suffix to take the language by storm and then fade into obscurity.

This has been the fate of many similar particles, like -ville to refer to a particular quality (think squaresville or dullsville) or -palooza (derived from lollapalooza) to refer to a special or large-scale event, as in food-palooza or shopping-palooza. Both of these suffixes had their moment in the sun before fading away and are now ironically used as a throwback to an earlier time when they were popular.

And how useful is maxxing, anyway? There’s almost always a simple way to express the same idea. Instead of saying “I’m bookmaxxing,” for example, one can just as easily say they’re binge-reading.

Maxxing may be everywhere right now, but it soon may be only a memory—an ephemeral bit of slang from the mid-2020s.