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If you've scrolled through TikTok or Instagram lately, you've likely seen at least one young man with angular cheeks, a perfectly clear face, a chiseled jawline and, of course, washboard abs. This walking Dior ad calls himself a "looksmaxxer." He and others like him belong to a subculture of "looksmaxxing" in which they seek to maximize their physical attractiveness through ever stranger and more clinically questionable means.
Looksmaxxing only became mainstream in the past few years. It represents another trend that originated on obscure incel internet forums before it surfaced in our social media feeds. Along with a host of objectively sexist beliefs about women, the incel community was convinced, ironically, that how you look is the most important factor in finding a girlfriend. As a result, some began to go to drastic lengths to manipulate everything from bone density to biochemistry in pursuit of an arbitrary standard of attractiveness.
Is your canthal tilt — the angle of your outer eye — positive, negative or neutral? Does your face have the correct ratio of midface width to chin length, plus or minus .5? Are you actively mewing? If not, chances are you’re “sub-five.” If these questions sound superficial, you aren’t cut out to be a ‘maxxer.
This obsession with facial structure propelled the subculture into the public sphere due to its comic appeal. Because of this, meme culture embraced looksmaxxing. Some even found genuine interest in “softmaxxing,” a watered-down version of looksmaxxing that promotes exercise, adopting a skincare routine and sleeping well.
But stalwart looksmaxxers are still willing to push their bodies to their biological limits to appear more attractive.
Looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular, for example, says he uses meth to suppress his appetite. Such disregard for personal safety is nowhere more apparent than in the use of synthetic peptides. On TikTok, Instagram and online message boards, users trade peptide injection guides, vendor recommendations and dosing protocols.
Peptides are shorter versions of the amino acid chains the proteins in our bodies are composed of. Unlike standard proteins, which mostly remain inside the cell to perform specialized tasks, our bodies produce these shorter chains to transmit messages between cells and regulate functions, including our growth, immune response and metabolism. By synthesizing similar peptides in a lab, scientists can mimic natural signaling molecules and influence these processes.
Ozempic, for example, is a synthetic peptide that works by imitating the structure of a naturally produced peptide called GLP-1, which increases your insulin production and lowers your blood sugar after you eat a meal. The two peptides are so similar in structure that the body can’t tell them apart. This makes Ozempic an incredibly powerful drug for promoting weight loss and treating type 2 diabetes.
While it's not for everyone, at least the FDA has approved Ozempic. This is more than can be said for the looksmaxxers’ typical go-tos.
Looking a little pale? Try Melanotan II, a peptide that spurs melanin production. Maximizing your gym gains? Reach for BPC-157, a peptide that rapidly repairs tissue damage — and is a banned substance under the World Anti-Doping Agency. Is Ozempic not cutting it for your weight loss? Try Retatrutide, a peptide still in clinical trials with early results suggesting some could lose up to 30% of their body weight in a little over a year. Never mind none of these has been proven safe in the short- or long-term by the FDA or any other global regulatory body. We don’t listen to those squares.
You won’t find them at your local CVS, either. In the United States, the FDA has banned pharmacies from making them. Instead, they’re sold online as research chemicals. Each vial of every wonder-drug, available at the press of a virtual button, arrives with a disclaimer: “NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. RESEARCH USE ONLY.” People inject them anyway, either unaware of or unbothered by risks of contamination, a lack of quality control and nonexistent dosing recommendations.
To worsen matters, many looksmaxxers hope to magnify the effects by “stacking”” multiple peptides simultaneously. But our body’s metabolism is incredibly complex. Manipulating multiple metabolic pathways at once drastically increases the risk of unintended side effects.
Peptides are powerful tools well suited to redefine public health, when used with proper medical supervision. Just ask anyone with diabetes: The discovery of the peptide insulin won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923 and was so revolutionary for treating the condition that all previous medical work in the field became referred to as the “pre-insulin era.” People went from dying of starvation while trying to keep their blood sugar down to living long, healthy lives with diabetes.
Many modern peptides can produce similar results, but as the saying goes, fools rush in. FDA approval is a promise the chemical you’re injecting is tested across multiple populations and long periods of time. The only way to know for sure that peptides are safe is to wait until all the results are out. In the meantime, bypassing a medical professional to inject research-grade peptides you got from the internet looks a lot more like foolmaxxing.
Spencer Schaberg (he/him) is a sophomore studying microbiology.
