Why so many young men are 'looksmaxxing'

Looksmaxxing, once a niche internet phenomenon, has recently gone mainstream. From glossy profiles in The New York Times to a callout from Stephen Colbert and getting parodied on last week’s episode of SNL, stories of young men going to extreme measures to maximize their appearance are ubiquitous. Straight young men are now tracking their jawlines, measuring facial symmetry, adopting complex skincare routines and even abusing illicit drugs to optimize their looks.

No doubt, the practice has captured such widespread attention because on its face (pun intended) it seems both extreme and absurd. Yet, in a moment where opportunity and connection feel scarce, it’s more logical than our cultural gatekeepers may be willing to admit.

We’re not supposed to say it out loud, but looks matter. Even as a kid, I observed that how you look shapes how the world moves around you. And, that when things don’t go your way, you’re the variable that needs adjusting.

When I was about 12, I had a small keloid scar on my ankle. It wasn’t painful or dangerous. It just protruded slightly, was discolored and caught the light in a way that felt wrong. One afternoon, alone in the bathroom, I took a pair of nail clippers and cut it off. There was blood. There was pain. But what stayed with me was the satisfaction. The scar was flatter, less noticeable. I dabbed it with toilet paper, waited for the bleeding to stop, and felt a sense of accomplishment. I had improved upon myself.

Around that same time, I started watching “Nip/Tuck,” a medical drama that centers on a Miami-based plastic surgery practice. As a sheltered kid in Westchester County, the show felt like an instruction manual for the incentives that drove human behavior, but that adults preferred not to name. The show was excessive and grotesque, but it was also consistent. Bodies and faces were treated as solvable problems. “Tell us what you don’t like about yourself,” each episode began. My parents hated that I watched it. I’d run around school mapping the golden ratio over my friends’ faces, saying things like, “Symmetry is beauty.” Once, my mother snapped that I’d gotten all my values from the show. She didn’t mean it, but it stung because it felt accurate in a way neither of us wanted to fully examine.

At 16, after years of begging, I convinced my parents to let me have gynecomastia or “puffy nipple” removal surgery. When I was offered the option to watch the procedure, I said yes. The surgeon made a one-inch incision beneath each nipple and went in with what looked like sewing shears, cutting out the excess tissue. It didn’t feel like self-hatred. It felt procedural. Identify the problem, apply the fix. It took months for sensation to return to my chest, but the outcome felt worth it.

By freshman year of college, the feedback loop seemed solid. Compliments came easily and often. During my first weekend on campus, I hooked up with a skinny blonde who told me I was “hot ethnic.” I wasn’t woke enough to unpack her comment at the time. I only noticed the result. Attractiveness opened doors. Elite education sells the idea that what and how you think matters, but as I got older I learned that wasn’t all that mattered. How you looked still shaped how quickly people warmed to you, how much patience they extended, how generously they interpreted what you said.

We’re not supposed to say it out loud, but looks matter.

Throughout college and most of grad school, this showed up in small, repeatable ways. Free food. Free drinks. People volunteering help before I asked, or making an exception to the rules for me. My friends and I called it “pretty privilege,” only half joking. Important people were willing to give me their time and attention, not because I went to Harvard Law School or got my MBA at age 23, but because they wanted something else from me.

Toward the end of law school, I had spine surgery in my neck. It was necessary and successful, but in some ways I’m still recovering. It was late COVID. I couldn’t exercise. I gained weight. My face shape changed due to tension in my jaw and neck. I didn’t feel like I looked my best, and I noticed that people seemed less accommodating. Interactions took more effort. The casual generosity I’d grown used to felt scarce.

It’s possible this was psychological. It was a strange, stalled period for everyone. But that uncertainty is part of the risk. When your appearance helps you make sense of everything around you, any disruption invites the same question: Did the world get harder, or did I get less attractive?

Now, as a television pundit, the calculation runs quietly in the background. If I were thinner, if my hair were fuller, if one detail were slightly better, maybe I would get more bookings and be a bigger name. The thought doesn’t feel pathological, it feels practical. I notice which inputs produce which outputs. It’s no different than studying my facts before an interview.

People respond to appearance before they respond to intellect. We have all seen it happen.

This is why the current obsession with looksmaxxing feels less ridiculous than bleak to me. In an economy that offers fewer guarantees and fewer second chances, the body starts to look like the last controllable resource. The entry-level job market is the worst it has been in nearly four decades. Studies show that Gen-Z and Millennial men in the United States are lonelier than their peers in other wealthy western countries. And 1 in 3 Gen-Z adults live at home with their parents as a result of high housing costs. You can’t influence the job or housing markets, but you can measure your jaw. You can try to change it. Some looksmaxxers even beat their jaws into shape with a hammer, treating pain as proof that they’re taking responsibility for their outcomes.

When young men film themselves reshaping their faces, chewing rock-hard gum for hours to build jaw definition, or using meth to stay thin, it isn’t about vanity. It’s about reducing uncertainty. When life’s outcomes feel beyond your control, the body offers something concrete to work on.

I recognize that impulse because I’ve lived a milder version of it for years. When things are going well, my good looks feel invisible — a given. When things fall apart, my appearance becomes the first lever I can pull.

The problem isn’t that people believe looks matter. The problem is what happens when appearance becomes the default explanation for everything that does or doesn’t work. Every setback feels personal. Every mirror feels diagnostic. And the more carefully you study yourself, the harder it becomes to accept what was never really under your control in the first place.