This message comes from the Science of Happiness. Science shows that love is expansive. Academy Award winner Gina Davis explores why people love, how love grows, and how it sustains them. Subscribe to the Science of Happiness wherever you get your podcasts. I think there's still something really ugly on the inside that people are really working with or trying to confront. Oh, maybe I'll just put on a good face and I won't have to deal with it. Maybe, you know, it'll get me all these other things. Like anyone else, I like to look good. I paid a makeup artist to teach me how to blend my concealer. I apply my skincare in a specific order, and only one person on the face of this earth is allowed to cut my hair. I can be particular about my appearance in some ways, but there are a few lines I just won't cross. Like, say, breaking my own jaw to get a desired chin shape, or taking illegal substances to hollow out my cheeks. That's a little much for me. But those severe tactics are not too much for some people who are dead set on looks maxing. By broad definition, looks maxing is the practice of doing everything in your power to achieve a very specific definition of peak physical attractiveness. And that can include things a lot of people might do, like clearing up acne or getting a flattering haircut. But on the more extreme end of the looks maxing spectrum, you'll see folks, especially young men getting cosmetic procedures or undertaking their own, oftentimes unregulated body modification practices to achieve a narrow set of facial or bodily proportions. A guy named Clavicular, perhaps the most famous looks-maxing influencer, recently walked a show in New York Fashion Week and had lengthy articles written about him in the New York Times and GQ. But as looks-maxing is hitting the masses, I'm interested in the deeper questions lurking behind the golden ratio that so many looks maxers would do anything to achieve. To do that, I'm joined by Jason Parham. Last fall, he reported a piece about looks maxing among young men of color and the ways that racism and bigotry shape their experiences in the looks maxing community. Jason, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Thanks for having me, Brittany. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Looks Maxine began on incel message boards in the 2010s, and I've seen it all over social media throughout the 2020s. But in 2026, it's having a full on mainstream moment. When you ask yourself why this trend is taking off now or why clavicular, I think you really You have to consider the social and political climate, right? So studies indicate that young men for whatever reasons are lonely, looking for acceptance. But then when you look at the political arena, sort of the Trump administration is also pushing a narrative of white nationalism. They're essentially saying a certain kind of person belongs in America. and looks maxing is based on the same logic and clavicular sort of like trumpets that agenda for them in a way that a lot of young men just love and want to latch on to because they believe that you know if I change my looks or if I somehow improve my facial structure I will now not be celibate anymore I can have a lot of sex I can go on dates I can get a better job the logic is very sort of like old school American when you think about it it's sort of like the better you look the better you'll do. I mean, and the thing is, is that that's not necessarily untrue, right? Right, which is like the irony. It's not necessarily untrue that, you know, if you look better, you adhere to, you know, like mainstream beauty standards. I mean, people like that tend to, you know, make more money, be more successful. Like, you know, it's not rocket science. I think that's the tricky part. It's like what he's saying is also like there is some honesty to it. I think it's just sort of the extreme method and sort of the groupthink or the hive mind that takes over the sort of fandom around it that I think has become really dangerous. I think maybe a lot of people who might turn to looks maxing are experiencing a lot of pain. It can feel discouraging to come up against beauty standards on a regular. I'm a black woman. I can say this with authority. I'm fact checking right now that it can feel discouraging. To be confronted with these narrow beauty standards over and over again. I'm also like, as a reporter and as a writer and just kind of as a human, kind of interested in the question of beauty. I think when we talk about beauty especially physical beauty we often talking about belonging self collective belonging But we also talking about performance And I think looks dovetails both of those propositions into new extremes A lot of what we're discussing here in terms of certain features being associated with certain racial backgrounds. It almost feels like a white looks-maxer version of Hotep. I'm confused when I get into it because it's so kind of labyrinthine. It's like, what's going on? But people get very granular in terms of certain types of features that are valued versus certain types of features that are undesirable in a way that feels very closely aligned with a belief in eugenics, which, you know, for people who don't know, eugenics is a long debunked as a not true theory, basically based around racial improvement. To put it very plainly, there was a belief in promoting reproduction for people with quote-unquote desirable traits while restricting or eliminating reproduction for those with quote-unquote undesirable traits. What does it mean that that kind of thinking is now being mainstreamed through this kind of platform? I think when you mainstream this sort of thinking through figures who subscribe to certain ideals, I don't know, it's really harmful, I think, to a lot of young men who are looking for that acceptance or belonging or who are trying to really improve their life so they can do better. And I think when it's funneled through the sort of fringe thinking, you know, it gets wrapped up in a lot of misinformation. And so I think a lot of young men are just getting wrapped up in this idea of extreme beauty sport where this is something that will get me what I need. And I'm just going to listen to this guy because it worked out for him. So maybe it will work out for me. But I think that's also partly just influencer culture, too. It's like we're going to believe the guy who has allegedly said he's had success from this because he has a lot of followers and he's getting brand deals and et cetera. And maybe he knows what he's talking about. But I don't know. it's very different across the board, especially if you're a person of color and especially if you're Black. Why did you want to look at Black looks maxers specifically? And what did you learn about this community? It kind of began with a very simple question. I kept hearing about looks maxing this trim that was sort of percolating online across Reddit and TikTok. As you mentioned, it started on message boards and sell message boards in the 2010s. But now it had sort of broken containment and was everywhere across social media. And I was like, what are all these white guys like fixing their faces, you know, trying to like look beautiful? And I noticed, I was like, well, where are all the Black looks maxers? Why are no young Black men part of this movement where, you know, beauty is a certain ideal? And so I just wanted to see how young Black men were sort of navigating this movement from both ends. And so I talked with a young man, Stephen Ima out of Houston, 20 years old, who was really trying to like break into the movement and faced a lot of backlash when he tried to, you know, break in. And then this other kid, Kai Taylor, who was on the opposite end, who's really sort of says it's changed his life. So you saw a range of experiences within that. I mean, it makes me think about the sort of double-edged sword of buying into, I think, beauty ideals for anybody. But specifically for young Black men in looks-maxing communities, there's a lot going on already with that combination. Many of the Black looks-maxers you spoke with reported being the targets of racial slurs and hate speech when they tried to associate themselves with looks-maxers more broadly, like, what is it about looks maxing that has these creators facing racism? I think it partly has to do with incel culture. You know, Stephen, back in 2022, when he first started looking into the trend, he was in high school at the time, 17, 18. And this was before it kind of really got really popular online. And as, you know, as high school as it can be a jungle for a lot of people. And he was sort of looking for acceptance, wanting to belong. And so he was like, well, how can I self-improve? How can I become better? How can I fit in, essentially? And he looked up self-improvement tips online. And the first one was looks maxing. And so he kind of got into it. He kind of tried it out for a few weeks, but it really wasn't his thing. And then he tried it again last year when I talked to him on the phone or we talked over FaceTime. And he was saying in April, you know, he noticed that there was an opportunity because there were no Black Looks Maxxers. And so he posted a video to TikTok a workout video one afternoon in April He changed his bio to first Black looks maxer And within an hour he got comments saying the N calling him monkey incels speak saying JBW or just be white which is a form of hate speech that incels use And so it kind of like really warped his idea of like, oh, I thought I was really part of this community. I thought I could belong. Yeah, I mean, there obviously is a lot wrapped up in the very Eurocentric beauty standard that looks maxing has as like its pinnacle, which is, I mean, like you said, not surprising that there might be some friction there for somebody who's, you know, a black person who's looking to become a looks maxer and enter that community. But the backlash to Stephen, like the self-identified first black looks maxer, that feels extreme. You know, he's following some of the same beliefs, but he's getting a very different response. Looks maxing to me, you know, it's a new trend wrapped in an old idea, meaning that sort of like white beauty ideals are supreme. And this is something I think mainstream America has taught a lot of us or tried to feed a lot of us. And so I think it's not surprising in that way when you think of it like that. Coming up? I think what we're really coming up against is this idea of fighting against the hive mind mentality. And so I think I would really charge people to find better sort of self-definitions of beauty. What does beauty mean to you? How can you achieve that, whether it's physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual? Stay with us. This message comes from MS Now. On their new podcast, MS Now presents Clock It. Washington power players Simone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels discuss how the latest political news and the catchiest cultural moments converge. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. As much time and effort as people put into thinking about looks maxing, it doesn't result in like an interrogation of like why these standards exist and feel so restrictive in the first place. It's a lot easier to get a nice haircut or buy new clothes or new makeup or whatever than it is to like accept something about yourself in the face of society. That feels very notable to me that so much of this, it just feels very surface, even though there is a lot of depth to the strategies and the lengths that people are willing to go to be able to kind of fit into this ideal. It essentially boils down to like men performing for other men. One of the other young black men I spoke to for the story who's on the opposite end of the spectrum of Stephen, Kai Taylor, this young kid out of Dallas, he is sort of a champion of the movement. You know, he identified as an incel, hadn't been on a date until he sort of got into the movement. I think he was saying, you know, hadn't been on a date by 19, suffered from severe acne. And so he was like, I'm going to get into looks maxing. And it kind of like totally turned his life around. And he documented all of this on his YouTube channel. He works at a gym in the Dallas area. And there had been this young woman who would constantly pass him by at the front desk. Then he started getting into the regimen of looks maxing, working out, doing things with his face, etc. And now all of a sudden one day she notices him. Oh, you have beautiful eyes, you know, etc., etc. But to your point, I think he was suffering from loneliness. He was feeling like an outsider. There was a kind of sadness there. And so I think he found hope in it, but a kind of surface level hope. Well, it's tricky because it's conditional. I mean, just like anything about the way that you look or the way that your body works, it's conditional. Like many aspects of wellness or health or beauty culture that we talk about in this show, what people are often looking to do is try to find some sense of control and things that feel uncontrollable, like the emotional aspect of dealing with other people or, like you said, like a lack of belonging or a feeling of loneliness. All of those things are conditional as well, but we're always looking for solutions to try to, like, patch that up. To your point, a lot of young men are just looking for acceptance. And I think they're thinking they can find it this way in a very surface level way, but not really understanding what their identity is and what they actually really want. The one question that's always stuck in my mind about looks maxing is that although it's framed as a practice that's kind of like unique to, you know, mostly young, assumedly cis and straight men, the beauty rituals they engage in aren't so different from what's expected from pretty much all women and many queer men. Like, why is looks maxing such a phenomenon when so many other people are expected to live up to that commitment to beauty standards? Yeah I think the obvious answer just sort of partly due to social media You know today we exist in and across screens Images are I think in some way and I hate to say this as a writer but I think they're becoming the dominant record of this era and this generation. The tech critic Nicholas Carr has one of my favorite quotes. He says something to the effect of, there is only one virtue now to be seen. And we can't deny the sort of ubiquity of the visual and everything that it unlocks. And so we're constantly being entertainment for each other, looking at each other. And so I think that's the sort of the first pillar of it. I think the second pillar of it is it has to do with what we were kind of talking about earlier, where I think this is happening in a moment of real sort of political unrest, where we have an administration that's pushing a certain visual aesthetic of belonging and acceptance in America. And so I think when you have those two things working together, where it's part performance, it's part masculinity, it's part obsession. I don't know. It's really fascinating to watch it unfold. While it does, in the short term, maybe get you a girlfriend, it does get you a better job, it maybe get you some type of like short term success. I think there's still something really ugly on the inside that people are really working with or trying to confront that, oh, maybe I'll just put on a good face and I won't have to deal with it. Maybe, you know, it'll get me all these other things. But yeah, it's tough. There's an idea that one of the young men that you spoke to shares in your piece, and I have been thinking about this so much. He described our culture as experiencing looks inflation, a physique inflation, height inflation. Nobody just wants to be normal. Even for those of us who will never look smacks. I do still think that we are in a moment where we are all feeling looks inflation. Like, in a way, we're constantly expected to look better and younger and fitter, almost regardless of age. Just like people are always, I don't know, looking for ways to, like, alleviate the pressure of, like, money inflation on their wallets. How can people find relief from the pressure of so-called looks inflation? I think the easy answer is to get off the Internet and go touch some grass. but I think what we're really coming up against is this idea of fighting against the hive mind mentality and so I think I would really charge people to find better sort of self-definitions of beauty what does beauty mean to you how can you achieve that whether it's physical emotional psychological intellectual this you know what you're saying makes me think about um it makes I think on an interview I heard a long time ago, a few years ago, I think it was between Tressie McMillan Cottom and her guest was Chloe Cooper Jones, who wrote a memoir called Easy Beauty. And the kind of beauty that we are talking about is easy beauty, which I interpret to be like a kind of obvious and very prescribed beauty, the kind that we are conditioned to value and recognize and replicate. And one of the things I remember her arguing, it was something to the tune of like, there's nothing actually like wrong with beauty, but you know, what kind are we seeking? Right? Music can be beautiful. Nature can be beautiful. The love you have in your heart for someone that you care about can be beautiful. To your point, Jason, it's like there is abundant beauty around us in all of these ways, but we can kind of miss it for all of the easy beauty that is really consuming us. And I think the easy kind of beauty that maybe Chloe Cooper Jones was talking about, there's kind of no soul or conscience behind it, right? I think a lot of the young men are wrestling with that because they themselves feel lost. And so they don't know what it looks like to them. And they look to this mirror, to this sort of Zoolander type messiah that's giving them tips, but it's really not the beauty that they probably actually need. Well, Jason, thank you so much for unpacking this. This is, I think, what the people needed to hear on Looksmaxing in the midst of all this hoopla. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. That was Jason Parham. He's a senior writer for Wired, where he covers internet culture, online dating, and the future of sex. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by... Corey Antonio Rose. This episode was edited by Nina Potthug. Our supervising producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.
