I saw it on Sproul Plaza and it sent a shudder down my spine.
“get your face rated for free,” the sign read. “download the max app — hyperpersonalized looksmaxxing for students.”
Gross.
To those who are blissfully unaware of what the term “looksmaxxing” entails — I envy you. Looksmaxxing has been circulating online for about a decade in misogynistic forums but has grown exponentially within the last couple of years. Looksmaxxing has evolved from propagating in small online communities to making waves in large media corporations. Gua sha, mastic gum, ice rollers, sunscreen, teeth whitening strips — the list goes on. Anything a man can do to optimize his attractiveness by taking steps to make his body the pinnacle of the male form is stamped “looksmaxxing.”
At first glance, you fight the urge to laugh — if you are a woman, at least.
Looksmaxxing appears to be a taste of men’s own medicine. Women have been told for ages to change their bodies to conform to men’s wants. King Henry VIII of England divorced his fourth wife over one of the first cases of catfishing ever reported — an audacious move from a man whose portraits feature a face only a mother could love.
Women are taught nearly from birth that they must conform to the tastes of men. If this twisted wisdom is not passed down from mother to daughter, it is sure to be absorbed in society, where young girls cannot escape the beauty standards pervading modern entertainment and online spaces.
Men have simply realized that they are not immune to this societal pressure. The narrative is no longer solely theirs to control; thus, it dictates how they should appear. From a man’s point of view, women’s desires and the societal pendulum for men have swung from “dad bod” to “Chad.”
Except they haven’t — not really. Men are not undergoing this “looks optimization” for women. They are doing it for other men. Faced with the reality that society has set hard expectations regarding the bodies it deems deserving of attention, men have not pushed to emphasize personality over looks.
Looksmaxxing is a hydra. If you use the term “maxxing” once, it spawns twice more. Looksmaxxing splits into “softmaxxing” — low-commitment grooming methods — and “hardmaxxing,” which entails expensive cosmetic surgeries or dangerous techniques. Any word can have the suffix “-maxxing” added to the end of it, creating the illusion that this term deserves more importance than it has earned.
Braden Peters, known online as Clavicular, is a content creator well known in the looksmaxxing community as someone who abuses the “-maxxing” suffix. Peters is also known for using dangerous and unproven methods to optimize his attractiveness, such as “bonesmashing”: taking a hammer to his face in hopes of attaining a better defined jawbone.
The Bay Area takes this cultural phenomenon to a new level, creating apps to bypass any human interaction that could spark meaningful connection. The advertisement I saw was for “the maxx app”: one of the most recent of the many apps created to capitalize on human insecurities.
I shouldn’t be surprised that this app specifically was born at UC Berkeley. In the microcosm that is campus, there isn’t a moment without pressure. Academic pressure, social pressure, internship pressure, job pressure — these all saturate the atmosphere at the No. 1 public university in the country. Optimization already exists as a plague upon the student body, a means to combat the pressure. With a well of opportunities but a lack of time, it is easy to be swept up in the ideals of optimization. In doing so, we kill the moments needed to spark meaning and human connection.
We can use maxxing as a verb, tacking it onto any common noun to emphasize it. But this ignores the hard work that takes place in moments of silence, of stillness. Optimization — as it is used — is a misleading term. We say “optimization” when we truly mean “bettering ourselves,” and the act of bettering ourselves truly happens when we stumble through challenges, create art and make memories.
Summer presents a unique break. We leave Sproul Plaza and all of the incessant pressure involved in campus life. In return, we are presented with the opportunity not to optimize but to truly better ourselves, taking deep breaths where they are needed, growing meaningful relationships and connections. The hydra of looksmaxxing can’t affect us if we don’t read the mythology that keeps it alive.