Hammers to the face and amphetamines: hypermasculine looksmaxxing invades the web | Way of life

Two years in the past, we have been asking ourselves right here at EL PAÍS if the “normal man” would make a comeback — which means, whether or not we weren’t seeing the return to glory of the man missing in chiseled abs, beneficiant biceps and a sq. jaw, represented in as we speak’s cinema by Hovik Keuchkerian and Josh O’Connor and, classically, by legends like Humphrey Bogart and Marcello Mastroianni. That query stays unanswered. But it now appears clear that the hypermasculine physique stays deeply entrenched. Gigantic, gym-sculpted male our bodies are dominating our screens, notably in hits like Rivals and Emily in Paris and naturally, of their pure environs: motion and superhero films.

“In media, like comics, where superhuman physiques are rather common, this can be taken to the extreme. From the bulging of muscles, some of which don’t exist, to the squareness of the jawline,” writes Anastasia Salter in Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). The guide emphasizes how the much-coveted hypermasculine physique serves to focus on the traits that separate our cultural idea of males from that of girls.

Though historically, aesthetic stress has been linked to girls, evidently it’s impacting increasingly more guys. The Spanish Society of Aesthetic Medicine says that as much as 31% of sufferers who bear such therapies are males. From jaws to penises to peak, the beauty surgical procedure business ceaselessly exploits male insecurities, because it lengthy has finished with these of girls. And inside these makes an attempt, there are two tendencies that may characterize the way forward for how males relate to their very own bodily type.

So-called “softmaxxing” promotes diets, skincare and train routines, a basic and non-invasive method to altering one’s physique. In distinction is “hardmaxxing”, which incorporates surgical procedures (like corrective jaw procedures) and practices like the harmful — and viral — “bonesmashing”, which accurately consists of bashing facial bones to interrupt them, within the inaccurate conviction that it’ll harden one’s options.

The concept that it’s attainable to strengthen one’s jawline and form extra distinguished cheekbones by fracturing one’s bones stems from a sure interpretation of Wolff’s Law, a organic idea theorizing that wholesome bones turn into stronger by exposing them to mechanical stress. But the issue is that the web is filled with boards through which younger males are asking for recommendation on assuaging their aesthetic insecurities from would-be bone consultants who’re open to taking this legislation actually, and with no supervision from medical doctors or specialists. This rising group has a reputation: looksmaxxers, and because the 2010s it has been sharing controversial recommendation to look as enticing as attainable, on message boards which can be rotten with macho, if not explicitly incel, power.

This harmful pattern and the alarm it’s scary within the medical group has arrived to the mainstream press. In The Telegraph, Cameron Henderson writes how it could be simple to suppose that such opinions pertain merely to a marginal and unpleasant group making noise on-line, however the reality is that they stem from a primordial mix of web pathologies: physique dysmorphia and a worldview that has been distorted by nihilist hyperindividualism and regarding misogyny. They additionally symbolize a rising variety of younger Americans following within the steps of [misogynist influencer] Andrew Tate, who worth look and masculinity achieved by hypermasculinity above all, writes Henderson.

Brian Levin, founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, explains within the Telegraph article that there’s a tradition of look that surrounds offended younger males who’re disillusioned and more and more distanced from actuality, and who’re notably lively on on-line message boards and social media. There, they arrive into contact with different people with comparable points. “It is increasingly becoming the medium of social interaction for angry and alienated young men,” he says.

“Social media has been fundamental in the manufacturing of aesthetic ideals that stem from a diversity of influences and which, in the anonymity of the internet, have shed their shame,” Naief Yehya, creator of the Spanish-language guide Sobre la belleza (About magnificence; Alpha Decay, 2025), tells EL PAÍS. The narcissistic attitudes which have exploded on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, he explains, have unfold to the semi-underground of unregulated networks like 4chan and Reddit, and even to streaming platforms (that are topic to lax monitoring) like Discord and Twitch. This has led to widespread acceptance of physique modifications for aesthetic causes. “In these spaces, nothing is too extreme. It’s no secret that Elon Musk was self-conscious about his baldness, and one of his most important investments was hair transplants. Male cosmetic surgery, Botox injections, tanning sessions (as well as self-tanners), Ozempic (and other GLP-1 drugs), massive doses of anabolic steroids, and constant concern over testosterone dominate conversations on far-right social media and websites,” says the cultural critic. “While what little exists in terms of accessible healthcare in the United States is being dismantled, the political class is lining up at cosmetic clinics and pharmacies to become the best version of themselves. In the Trump era, being fat or ugly is akin to being sentenced to oblivion and ostracism.”

Gabriel Dridi is a content material creator who offers standard looksmaxxing recommendation to males. Beginning as an adolescent, he started to bash elements of his face with a hammer for a minute day by day. His objective was to create micro-fractures in his jaw and cheeks. “I got a permanent swelling, but it looked good,” he instructed The Free Press in an article revealed a couple of weeks in the past entitled “The Boys Breaking Their Bones to Be Hotter.” On no small variety of message boards, younger male internauts share their bodily insecurities and their doubts after placing such recommendation into follow. “I started using methamphetamines a week ago because I wanted to get hollow cheeks, but now my heart is doing weird stuff,” says one latest put up on a looksmaxxing discussion board. From one other: “My heart rate has randomly gone up by about 30 beats per minute when I’m just relaxing. I’m a little concerned. Should I see a doctor?”

Looksmaxxers and the far proper

Livestreamer Clavicular, whose actual identify is Braden Peters and whose digital deal with is a reference to the bizarre significance that looksmaxxers assign to the width of their collarbone, tells his followers that to get a chiseled jawline, you possibly can beat your face together with your fist or a hammer to enhance definition. He is amongst those that promote the consumption of methanphetamines to remain skinny. When he spoke to political commentator Michael Knowles, Clavicular known as Sydney Sweeney “malformed.” “Her upper maxilla is extremely recessed. She’s got the eyes of doom with no infraorbital support,” he mentioned. This angle appears immediately out of a guide, one other a type of males who use social media to assault the physique of enticing girls, having felt rejected sooner or later by them. Clavicular is a pal of Tate and of the far proper commentator Nick Fuentes. The three appeared in a video collectively singing the Ye music Heil Hitler on the best way to a celebration. “I am not sorry. I do not apologize for what I did. I would do it again today,” Clavicular later commented. “I would rather have free speech and the ability to make jokes and do content a thousand times over rather than being a little bitch who, you know, has to censor himself.”

As far again as American Psycho, looksmaxxing has been related to misogyny. While its protagonist Patrick Bateman’s nine-step magnificence routine doesn’t appear practically as excessive as we speak — increasingly more males are making use of Vitamin C within the morning, sunscreen all day, and Retinol at evening — the character has turn into a reference for a lot of guys as we speak. Jaap Kooijman, an affiliate professor of media research and American research on the University of Amsterdam, commented throughout an interview with CNN that it’s essential to needless to say the movie, which debuted lengthy earlier than the rise of social media, is “based on the same principle of the outside appearance [and] consumer goods masking being empty inside.”

What accounts for the hyperlink between the intense proper and the looksmaxxers? Yehya has one concept: “The old cult of fascist physical aesthetic has come back in the form of steroids. Extreme-right regimes are obsessed with the neoclassic and Nordic look. The validation of their ideals of racial purity are founded on beauty archetypes whose attractiveness and strength reflect the image of the group in power’s vitality.”

“In context: fascism is, as Walter Benjamin put it, ‘the aestheticization of political life’,” Yehya continues. “Guy Debord conceived as fascism as an increasingly dominant expression of spectacle that goes beyond propaganda to synthesize the idea of the state in the figure of the leader. What counts in public life is the stage, the exploitation of emotions and the aesthetic unfurling, with protagonists who reflect myths and fantasies, and who are assimilated by pop culture.”

By changing political life right into a present, these protagonists tackle roles not of bureaucrats or officers, however moderately, of stars of a spectacle. “The MAGA aesthetic, which can be seen in everything from Mar-a-Lago faces to pronounced musculature and vaguely Nazi tattoos, has become a dominant characteristic in political debate. From Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, with his high school quarterback physique, to White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller, with his studiously produced Joseph Goebbels look, to that little ICE Führer Gregory Bovino with his Gestapo trenchcoat, the stars of the reality TV show that is Trumpian power play their roles in its grotesque choreography of raids, corruption, intimidation and dismantling of civil rights we see today,” he says.

Looksmaxxers have an equally “superficial view of beauty, as if it were a kind of rigid mathematics” with a “single, knowable solution,” Thomas Chatteron Williams writes in The Atlantic. But, he continues, they imagine this makes it “malleable,” that one can rise to a better airplane of attractiveness with sufficient “money, effort, and perhaps a willingness to try methamphetamine.” We would have thought it’s pointless to append this dialogue with the basic “don’t try this at home” — however apparently, it’s price a point out.

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