Looksmaxxing Is a Crisis of Modern Masculinity. The Church Has a Cure. 

In corners of the internet not far from where you’re reading this, young men are discussing beauty tips and ways of “maximizing” their physical appearance. It’s called “looksmaxxing,” and it’s dubious in both origin and ideology.

Looksmaxxing draws from Darwinian, and often demeaning, perspectives about masculinity and attraction—and heightens them. At its best, it looks like men encouraging each other to work out, dress well, and groom their facial hair. At its worst, it shows up as men on looksmaxxing forums ranking each other on brutal scales and encouraging invasive surgeries to fix perceived facial and bodily inadequacies.

Still, it has captured the attention of young men—both inside and outside the church. The tag #looksmaxxing on TikTok has almost 380,000 posts. A crisis of discipleship is happening inside modern masculinity, and it’s time for church leaders to pay attention.

What Does Looksmaxxing Look Like?

Growing up, I always associated the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10) with the detail that Zacchaeus couldn’t see over a crowd of people because he was “small in stature”—a wee little man. If only he’d been able to surgically break his leg, move some bones around, and gain half a foot of height. That would probably fix all his social problems. Surely that would gain him the respect he so desperately desired? Surely that would cure his wandering and aching soul?

This is, in part, the promise of looksmaxxing: If you manipulate your body to become more attractive, more stereotypically masculine, other men will respect you more and women will pay more attention to you.

So yes, men break their femurs to add a handful of extra inches to their height (the recovery takes six months). Or maybe they do something called “bonesmashing,” breaking their jawbones with a hammer so they’ll grow back harder and sharper.

Origins in Online Incel Communities

Young men are online a lot these days. It parches their souls and warps their views.

One example is the growth of incel communities online. Incel is a portmanteau of the words “involuntary” and “celibate,” and it’s a self-diagnosis by young men who feel disenfranchised by their failed efforts to find love and companionship. They struggle to find romantic success, and they blame culture, women, or their looks—often a combination of all three. Terms like “alpha male,” words like “mewing” and “mogging,” and the suffix “maxxing” are all slang that find their origins in online incel communities.

Young men are online a lot these days. It parches their souls and warps their views.

While many men who looksmaxx aren’t actually celibate, the cynicism and “doomer” mentality still come into play. Many see improving their looks as their only hope to convince “shallow” (as they see them) women to pay attention to them. Can you be so attractive that you no longer face the risk of women rejecting you?

Young men in high school or college walking into church are likely not fully aware of incel ideology and perspectives, but they’ve probably heard of “mewing” (flexing your jaw muscles to try to sharpen your jawline) and other pseudoscientific concepts looksmaxxers espouse, like the “PSL Scale” that rates attractiveness on a supposedly empirical 0 to 8 scale. They’re also insecure about how to approach the single, Jesus-loving women in the pews next to them, and influencers on the internet are promising them quick, manly beauty hacks to give them an advantage.

Looksmaxxing Influencers

Braden Peters, who goes by the online moniker “Clavicular,” has more than 300,000 followers on the livestreaming platform Kick and more than a million followers on TikTok. Peters has built a social media empire on teaching young men how to looksmaxx, but he also has plenty of corrupted “wisdom” about life in general. Much of this advice is about how to manipulate women, treating them as nothing more than potential sexual encounters, more numbers in a man’s “body count.”

Peters was recently charged with rape in Massachusetts and was previously jailed for battery as well as for shooting an already dead alligator on a live stream. (Looksmaxxing streams are often wild examples of unrestrained, boyish exploits.) Still, the ideas he presents to young men are sticky. He’s charismatic and has spent time endearing himself to his young, male audience. What he promises, however, is the true draw.

He promises control over the complicated and nuanced world of modern dating and romance. Every young man wonders if he’s impressive enough to date the girl he likes, and looksmaxxing (falsely) promises favor with women if you can make yourself look good enough.

And it’s effective. Watch any stream of a popular looksmaxxing influencer like Androgenic, Brett Maverick, or Clavicular, and you’ll see gaggles of young men stopping them on the street to dap them up, laugh about their recent streams, and thank them for “helping” them.

Discipleship Gap

The popularity of these influencers shows there’s a hole in our discipleship of young men. Destructive beauty practices are nothing new; women have been destroying and manipulating their bodies to fit humanity’s beauty standards for centuries. But often, mothers know they need to have conversations about toxic images with their daughters early and often. In the 21st century, do parents know they need to do that with their sons? Do youth pastors know?

Every young man wonders if he’s impressive enough to date the girl he likes, and looksmaxxing (falsely) promises favor with women if you can make yourself look good enough.

Young men, who often lack robust discipleship relationships with older brothers and fathers in the faith, are vulnerable to looksmaxxing messages. They’re looking for answers—about romance, sex, work, wellness, and the meaning of life—in YouTube videos and podcasts. But what they really need is apprenticeship and fellowship with God-fearing men who will guide them with wisdom, discernment, and truth.

Today’s young men need to see what it means to be a man being remade in Jesus’s image, to be strong and gentle and caring and full of justice—authentically masculine as God created us to be. We need to learn that, yes, stewardship of the body is a godly practice (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Caring about health and fitness honors God. But the tallest men will eventually be pulled down by gravity, and strong arms will weaken and slow. We need to remember the biblical truth that “charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain” (Prov. 31:30). We need to learn that what Zacchaeus was looking for wasn’t the vanity of respect and honorifics or the fleeting status that comes with physical beauty. He was rather looking for a Savior.