Dozens of San José State students gathered to discuss the hot-button issues of looksmaxxing and masculinity in the digital age in the Student Union on Wednesday.
The discussion was hosted by BridgeSJSU, a non-partisan club that brings students of diverse viewpoints to engage in constructive dialogue about current events, according to its Instagram page.
Looksmaxxing is the practice of maximizing one’s physical attractiveness through means as benign as skincare and exercise to those as extreme as ‘bone smashing’ and anabolic steroid use, according to a Feb. 15, 2024 article by The Guardian.
Though the term originated in obscure, male-dominated, incel (“involuntarily celibate”) forums in the 2010s, it entered the mainstream lexicon in recent months thanks to influencers like 20-year-old Braden Peters, better known as Clavicular.
Peters has garnered attention through his extreme methods – such as hitting his face with a hammer to make his bones grow back sharper or taking meth to suppress his appetite – and his viral livestreams, which often show him “mogging,” or standing next to and looking better than, other men.
Prompted by questions projected onto a screen, participants discussed issues ranging from ‘sexual market value’ and male loneliness to eugenics and online beauty trends for women (“Are you cat pretty or bunny pretty?”).
Though no student expressed pro-looksmaxxing views, several expressed sympathy for young, chronically-online men who fall for influencers’ harmful rhetoric and advice.
Samantha Sternstein, a fourth-year communication studies student, said she was worried that boys were being exposed to looksmaxxing content without actively seeking it out.
“Just being on Instagram’s explore page, it’s really, really easy for someone to get into that and that’s scary to think about,” Sternstein said. “I wouldn’t want a child or a cousin or a brother to be involved in that and fall down the pipeline.”
Samar Karandikar, a fourth-year marketing student, conceded there is truth to looksmaxxers’ claim that attractive people enjoy greater privileges in society but said their methods can be counterintuitive.
“A lot of the people like to say ‘Oh, it’s not just about women or having sex or whatever. It’s about your general success. And it’s lookism. And by looking better, you get selected more and you get better opportunities,’ ” Karandikar said. “But by taking all of these steroids and hormone therapy, they’re kind of getting rid of their libido and actual interest in women.”
Clavicular himself has admitted that his chronic use of steroids has made his body stop producing natural testosterone, causing him to become infertile.
Autumn Ricketts, a third-year business administration student, said she suspects men create rituals like looksmaxxing to participate in things they would otherwise consider too feminine.
“If you’re a man, you can’t hold your friend’s hand. But, like, wrestling? ‘That’s not gay at all, bro. That’s super straight,’ ” Ricketts said. “So by making it like, ‘Oh, this is mathematical and scientific,’ now I can be a man and care about my looks because if I didn’t do it like this, if I was just kind of vain and cared about how I look, that’s gay, bro.”
Looksmaxxing communities have fixated on measuring male beauty – from facial symmetry to “canthal tilts” – with pseudoscientific exactness.
Thanh-tam Martin Nguyen, a fourth-year kinesiology student, said he thought the emergence of looksmaxxing was a symptom of a lookist society.
“I remember being like, ‘Oh, I’m so ugly,’ but because I was a kid, I was like, ‘I don’t really care,’ ” Nguyen said. “But as I get older, I’m like, ‘Oh, people treat you differently based on how you look. And that kind of teaches everyone that it does matter a little. But it’s so freeing if you don’t care.”
BridgeSJSU’s next discussion, on the California governor’s race, will be held at 4:30 p.m. next Wednesday in Student Union Room 2B, according to the club’s officers.
