DEEP DIVE: The Complicated And Sordid History Of Looksmaxxing. It’s Not What You Think.

It wasn’t too long ago that doctors made an alarming find: colon cancer among young adults is surging. In fact, since 1994, colon cancer has become 50% more common. You’ve almost certainly heard this data by now. It’s been covered by every major media organization. It’s all over social media. Everyone has a theory as to why it’s happening — from diet to environmental factors to the COVID shot, or all of the above. We all recognize that it’s important to figure out what’s going on here, because it’s having a catastrophic effect on many young lives. By the same token, there’s been a lot of discussion about the massive increase in the number of young adults who have been diagnosed with depression, ADHD, autism, and a host of other alleged mental disorders. There’s been a debate — which we’re now winning — about whether it’s a great idea to administer psychoactive drugs to treat any child who supposedly presents with one of these “disorders.” Answer: it’s not a great idea. It’s a horrifically awful idea, as it turns out.

But there’s one trend in the medical field that’s just as stark, and yet it’s rarely discussed by anyone. I’m talking about a trend that’s clearly relevant to the future of civilization and our ability to propagate the species — which is that men are seeking out cosmetic procedures to a degree that would’ve been unheard of and inconceivable just a decade ago. Women are also going under the knife for plastic surgery at unprecedented levels. This is a surge that cuts across both sexes. But the massive uptick in plastic surgery for young men is especially interesting, and especially troubling.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, from 2019 to 2022, the total number of cosmetic procedures performed on men increased by more than 200%. Procedures that are characterized as “minimally invasive” increased by more than 250%. In total, more than 1.3 million cosmetic procedures of some kind are now performed on men every single year — including ab implants, liposuctions, nose jobs, face lifts, and so on. So if you combined the populations of San Francisco and Miami, you wouldn’t have the number of men who are getting cosmetic surgery every year. Just to put things in perspective.

The biggest increase in this period was for “cheek implants,” where demand among men increased by 80% in this period. Then there’s “dermal fillers,” which are “gel-like medical substances injected beneath the skin to restore lost volume and smooth wrinkles.” Demand for dermal fillers increased by 70% among men from 2019 to 2022. Meanwhile, Botox injections went up by 65%. (They’re up 400% overall since 2000). Demand for “sclerotherapy,” which is “used to treat varicose veins and spider veins,” increased by 54% among men. Chin augmentations went up by 32% and lower body lifts by 61%.

What’s more, in addition to liposuction (which remains the single most popular male cosmetic surgery), men are now increasingly seeking out “male breast reduction surgery.” In fact, some medical practices report that demand for male breast reduction has increased by more than 35% in recent years. In fairness, some of these cosmetic procedures are treating actual medical conditions. Most men who get breast reduction are suffering from gynecomastia, which is an enlargement of breast tissue in men. If I had that condition, I’d probably get the surgery too. And there are other procedures, which might be called cosmetic, that are meant to address medical conditions. I wouldn’t put those in the same category as something like cheek implants.

The most concerning part of the story is that this is a generational shift. Young people are driving it. Gen Z — people who are 29 years old and younger — accounted for 37% of “rhinoplasties,” which are nose jobs. They also accounted for 25% of all cheek implants. This is a demographic that, overall, only accounts for around 6% of all cosmetic procedures. So young people are more preoccupied with the appearance of their face, to the point that they’re undergoing surgery to correct the problem. And many more young people are considering surgery. A survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that Millennials account for 58% of men who are interested in getting a cosmetic procedure, while Gen Z accounts for 35%.

To the extent that men were ever interested in these procedures in the past — at least in modern history — it was overwhelmingly because old people were unhappy with how they were aging. Older people tend to have the money to afford these surgeries, so the whole industry was marketed towards them. But now we have a scenario where the demand curve has flipped. Young people are increasingly insecure about their own appearance, and they’re willing to stretch their budgets to do something about it.

If you ask the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, it will tell you that the new demand for plastic surgery is closely related to the fact that young people aren’t starting families anymore. It’s actually close to a real explanation, although, of course, they try to put a positive spin on it.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported:

A new analysis of data by Pew Research Center that shows Millennials are taking a different path in forming (or not forming) families compared to their counterparts, Gen X. The analysis … concludes that Millennials trail previous generations at the same age. “I think a lot of these unique elements to this generation, coupled with the exposure to the internet and the various facets of social media, will create this whole new generation of plastic surgery patients,” said Dr. Ryan Neinstein. … With the waiting for families that is a regular occurrence amongst those ages 27 to 42 comes an increase in education and, therefore, a higher income. According to Ashley Amalfi, MD, the affluence that this younger generation has, allows them to feel like, “‘I can afford to do this, and I want to do this for myself,’ and they’re taking that back and doing what it is that they need to do to feel well about themselves,” rather than waiting around until after they have kids like previous generations.”

Somewhere in that statement is an acknowledgment of the fact that, when young people get married and start families, demand for cosmetic surgery among young people tends to plummet. And indeed, even if you only look at this from a practical perspective, there’s no time to be vain about your appearance, and to wallow in your own narcissism, when you’re trying to raise children. There’s no time for it, even if you wanted to. And yes, even if you’re solely looking at the finances, it wouldn’t make sense. You’d have to be a criminally negligent father to spend $10,000 on a nose job for yourself instead of saving for the future of your own children.

But really, they have the causation backwards here. It’s not the fact that young people, when they have no kids, suddenly want to spend money on themselves in a narcissistic, self-absorbed manner. As an explanation, it doesn’t really make sense. The actual issue is that, when young people become more narcissistic and self-absorbed, as well as more socially isolated, they’re much less likely to start families in the first place. So how did that happen exactly? What caused this transformation?

To answer that question, we have to talk about a 20-year-old internet personality by the name of Braden Eric Peters, who’s better known by his stage name of “Clavicular.” If you haven’t heard of Clavicular, I can guarantee that your children have. He’s pretty hard to miss if you spend any amount of time online. Clavicular shot to fame seemingly out of nowhere. He was a complete unknown as recently as nine months ago. But then, in late December of 2025 (right around Christmas Eve), millions of people were talking about him. The reason? He ran someone over with a Cybertruck — or at least, that was the story. And it was all caught on video. Clavicular was being harassed by some other social media character, who jumped on Clavicular’s truck. And Clavicular, as the narrative goes, calmly hit the accelerator and mowed him down. Watch:

❗️Kick streamer Clavicular ran over a human being with his Cybertruck: “Is he dead?… hopefully.”

Kick has banned the streamer following the incident, which was streamed live.

When reality set in, he started alleging that the person he ran over had a pistol. pic.twitter.com/cOIsNGITz7

— International Cyber Digest (@IntCyberDigest) December 25, 2025

Pretty much everyone took this particular stunt at face value, for some reason. No one asked why the police didn’t file charges or why we never actually see what happens to the guy he hit. Instead, Clavicular gained a legion of new fans — none of whom wondered whether they were being played by a guy who, until five minutes ago, they had never heard of. And conveniently enough, the video was uploaded at the end of December, well outside of any major news cycles. It was a very striking example of how easily people can be manipulated online and how social media stars are generated out of thin air. Really, the PR operation — whoever was behind it — could not have been more effective. Virtually overnight, Clavicular was famous.

More importantly, his whole philosophy — the idea of “looksmaxxing,” which generally means you should go to extreme or unusual lengths to optimize your physical appearance — went mainstream. Here’s how the BBC elaborates on the meaning of “looksmaxxing”:

Looksmaxxing claims to be about the “maximisation” of one’s appearance. The aim of looksmaxxing is becoming the most attractive one can possibly look according to a set of prescribed criteria, with particular importance given to jawlines, eyes and physique (including “hunter” eyes, angled slightly upward toward the temples – a positive canthal tilt). The trend has existed for at least a decade, but has recently been popularised and redefined on TikTok, where it’s reaching a widening demographic of teenage boys algorithmically predisposed to the “manosphere” subculture. … Looksmaxxing attaches “scores” to aspects of male appearance, focusing particularly on jawline, muscularity and skin.

By itself, when it’s defined like that, it’s not hard to understand how “looksmaxxing” would be popular in some circles. It’s a little over-the-top with the score system, sure. But there’s no question that society would be improved, to an immeasurable degree, if more people put some basic effort into their physical appearance. When you go to the airport or a grocery store or some other public place, and everyone’s wearing sweatpants and smells like marijuana, it’s obviously a demoralizing and annoying experience. It’s natural and appropriate to want to be around people who haven’t visibly given up on themselves. Your physical appearance does matter. Not just when you’re single, but when you’re married, too. It’s not really fair to your spouse to lock them down and then immediately devolve into a fat, greasy slob.

The problem is that, as the name implies, “looksmaxxing” is more about a relentless, obsessive fixation on your physical appearance and the appearance of others. It’s an ongoing sense of profound discomfort with things that are completely normal — reminiscent of what the DSM calls “dysphoria.” And it leads to all kinds of unnecessary procedures, like the ones Clavicular has undergone.

Clavicular shows off his transformation just 2 months after undergoing multiple surgeries At 20 years old????

Before vs After pic.twitter.com/N8bo8jU4WC

— Pulcy (@Pulcys) August 4, 2026

Here’s just one side-by-side of the “transformation” he’s been advertising on social media, after multiple cosmetic surgeries. Obviously, there was nothing that needed to be corrected before. He probably looked better, if we’re being honest. His nose was arguably straighter. It’s just totally absurd.

But the point is that, with this mindset, he’s obviously never going to be satisfied with his appearance, no matter how many surgeries he has.

Clavicular got EMOTIONAL after realizing Dr Miami may have RUINED his nose forever and cost him his entire career ???? pic.twitter.com/9ykk6wXiU7

— KickChamp???? (@Kick_Champ) June 11, 2026

And he’s not just doing surgeries, by the way. He’s also popularizing “bone smashing,” which is defined as, “hitting facial or collarbone areas with a small hammer or hard object in a misguided attempt to trigger bone growth through micro-fractures.” As with anything else concerning this guy, there’s always the possibility that this is fake. Is he really sitting around, when he’s not on camera, smashing himself in the face with a hammer? Who knows. His rise to fame was completely contrived. Most everything else about him is contrived. Even his face is now contrived. So there’s no reason to take anything he says, or does, or claims to do, at face value. But if he is doing this retarded bone smashing thing, then again, he’s inflicting irreversible damage on his body in service of a delusion. And he’s doing it with the support of a movement that’s affirming his delusions, every step of the way.

If that sounds strikingly familiar, it’s because this is a preoccupation that, in many ways, echoes the behavior of many people who identify as transgender. There are entire online communities in which trans-identifying people talk about undergoing various surgeries and operations, and they constantly affirm one another, even as they cause very obvious, irreversible damage to their bodies.

In response to Clavicular in particular, the commentator using the name “Raw Egg Nationalist” offered this theory as to what’s going on: “One of my firm beliefs is that the spread of the front-facing camera, designed in Asia to flatter Asian facial features, is responsible for the massive wave of disastrous facial treatments being undertaken by women and increasingly men in the West. We’re seeing a kind of mass psychosis — a fracturing of the self — caused by a camera device that by design distorts the facial features of European people.”

You’ll find various names for this phenomenon in research papers — “selfie dysmorphia,” “Snapchat dysmorphia,” “Zoom dysmorphia,” and so on. There’s no question that, with this rise of smartphones, AI filters, front-facing cameras and social media, young people are seeing close-up shots of their faces (and the faces of other people) more often than ever.

But the problem clearly pre-dates smartphones and AI. I often think about the fact that most humans through history grew up and lived their lives hardly ever seeing what they looked like. Glass mirrors didn’t become popular household items until the late 19th century. Now, with lives dominated by screens, we see ourselves constantly. We are spectators of our own selves in a way that would have been impossible and inconceivable for most humans through history. This constant, minute-by-minute physical (and emotional and mental) self-analysis is literally driving people insane. There’s something very unnatural and inhuman about it. Humans are not capable of coping with this level of self-scrutiny.

That’s why “looksmaxxing” is rooted in a very deep sense of insecurity and inner frustration, which is related to the fact that Clavicular is known for taking hard drugs (sometimes on camera). But if you watch corporate media outlets, they’ll criticize Clavicular from a very different angle. In fact, they’ll miss the point entirely. Instead of addressing “looksmaxxing” on its own terms, these outlets try to smear Clavicular by association. They’ll make political attacks without admitting it. That’s what happened in his viral 60 Minutes Australia interview, for example. Watch:

Clavicular walks out of 60 Minutes interview after being asked if he is an incel and about his relationship with Andrew Tate.

Clavicular: “Do I identify as an Incel? I mean, how could you ask me that question as a follow up after you asked me about my relationships to women. I… pic.twitter.com/4eSU2NmF00

— FearBuck (@FearedBuck) April 13, 2026

Talk about an interview where you just want everyone involved to be banished from the Earth and deported to Jupiter. There are no winners in this interview. There’s no one to root for. It’s extraordinarily bleak content.

And it overlooks something important, which is that, if you go back far enough in history, “looksmaxxing” doesn’t have anything to do with Andrew Tate or incels or whatever. “Looksmaxxing” actually does go back to the ancients. It wasn’t rooted just in narcissism, though, because again, people weren’t constantly looking at themselves. To give just one example, ancient Egyptian men — everyone from laborers to the pharaohs — wore eyeliner. They called it “kohl,” and it was made from ground minerals and soot.

As you can see, it gave people a “cat-eye” look, which was very distinctive among Egyptians (who worshipped cats). But it wasn’t just for decoration. Like any good looksmaxxing technique, it was also a biohack as well. It served multiple purposes: reducing glare from the sun, repelling flies, and even (supposedly) safeguarding the eyes from inflammation, particularly when the Nile was flooding. And there was a religious component too, in that the cat-eye look was seen as a kind of tribute to the gods.

Indeed, the ancient Egyptians had elaborate skincare routines as well. As the legend goes, Cleopatra bathed in donkey milk. They created pastes with clay or ash mixed with olive oil, and rubbed it all over their bodies. Archaeologists found papyrus records dating back to 1500 B.C. that describe how they’d use “a mixture of animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts” to cleanse their skin.

There were also more militaristic examples, like Herodotus describing Spartan warriors combing their hair before battle, while others are working out naked. That’s from Herodotus’ Histories, when he describes the lead-up to the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Later, Plutarch offered this explanation for the Spartans’ custom: “In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men’s discipline, and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore they wore their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths, and particularly in times of danger they took pains to have it glossy and well-combed, remembering a certain saying, that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still, and the ugly more terrible.”

So the ancients, if we’re being honest, could be a little effeminate by modern standards (which, of course, we can’t apply retroactively to ancient times). But none of these behaviors were disordered in the manner of modern “looksmaxxing” because, for one thing, they weren’t causing self-harm. And for another, the so-called “looksmaxxing” back in those days tended to be about maintaining customs and traditions and building social cohesion. It wasn’t solely about improving individual attractiveness as part of a competition. Thousands of years later, along came the Americans — and while early Americans had some standards for looks and dress, once again, it was more about customs and manners than being seen as highly attractive. As a boy, George Washington famously hand-copied a document called “The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation,” which contained dozens of rules covering everything from posture to dress to manners. They didn’t say anything about smashing your bones with a hammer.

The slippery slope into modern “looksmaxxing” began with TV and bodybuilding culture, which was born out of modernity and boredom. After all, people who work on the farm all day have no reason to go to a gym. They wouldn’t have the time, even if they wanted to. But beginning in the early 20th century, in a post-industrial society, that changed. Vince Gironda (“The Iron Guru”) opened a gym in North Hollywood in the 1940s. Decades later, he famously told Arnold Schwarzenegger he was too fat and needed to lose about 30 pounds. Schwarzenegger, as we all know, then leveraged his bodybuilding career into Hollywood stardom. Bodybuilders — men with frankly cartoonish physiques — played well on television and in theaters. They were bankable because millions of people looked up to them, along with professional athletes. It’s part of the reason why, in the 1980s, steroids exploded in popularity. By 1988, one in 15 male high school seniors reported using steroids at one point.

Gym culture can become narcissistic and effeminate after a certain point. There’s nothing wrong with going to the gym. It’s a positive habit, or should be. Men should be getting physical exercise. They should have visible muscles, rather than being weak and flabby. I’m in the gym myself multiple times a week. But when a healthy focus on strength and fitness turns into an obsessive, overwhelming preoccupation with appearance — when a man is spending multiple hours a day, every day, trying to maintain or improve his physical appearance, and it’s appearance that motivates him far more than a desire to be strong and fit — then a healthy habit has mutated into an expression of vanity.

But whether you go to the gym or not, it’s hard not to lapse into vanity in our culture. Our culture seems to be specially designed to make people as vain as humanly possible. Social media and the internet took what TV started and made it much, much worse. We have a generation raised on social media and smartphones that seems to have developed a totally disconnected, disembodied sense of self. For my job, I’m obviously on camera every day. I see myself on video a lot. I’ve even sat in a movie theater, when “Am I Racist?” came out, and watched myself on a giant movie screen for an hour and a half. I’m in the business of “content creation,” as much as I hate that term. And I am the content — or at least I am the person presenting the content. So it’s very easy, in this line of work, for people to become absolutely, almost psychotically narcissistic and egomaniacal. And at the same time, it’s very easy to become disconnected from yourself, as you begin to see yourself as “content,” or worse, a “brand,” rather than a human being. This combination of feeling disconnected within yourself, while also narcissistic and self-obsessed, drives a lot of people in this space insane. So if you’re wondering why so many “content creators” are lunatics. This is why.

And yet, it has occurred to me more and more recently that this entire experience I’m describing — maybe aside from the movie theater part of it — is not really all that unique to “content creators” or people in media. The fact is that everyone is on social media. Everyone takes videos and pictures of themselves all the time. Everyone has made themselves into a public spectacle to some extent. And young people have been doing that — or it has been done to them — practically since birth. Everyone has the out-of-body experience of viewing themselves as content, as a product to be consumed. And so the narcissism and psychosis that used to be confined to people in media and the entertainment industry has broken containment. Now it’s everywhere.

That is just one aspect of the problem. Also, young men today often lack — and sometimes completely lack — masculine male role models. The fatherlessness epidemic is obviously the core of this problem. And if a young man doesn’t have a father to model himself after — or if he does have a father, but his father is weak, absent, and/or unimpressive — then where else will he look for guidance on how to live and conduct himself? There are very few masculine figures on TV, not even cartoonish ones — at least in the important category of white male fathers. For many years now, Hollywood and the networks have cast total buffoons into roles that would have been masculine a generation ago. Consider the common example of sitcom fathers — the character who, in basically every sitcom for 30 years — never does anything right and is completely outshone by his comparatively impressive wife. This, in case it’s not obvious, is a form of propaganda. But it’s also a reflection of our current situation. Of course, young men today aren’t generally watching network sitcoms. Instead, they’re watching influencers like Clavicular, who makes the oafish sitcom dad look like a paragon of masculine virtue by comparison.

The result of all of these factors has been not just narcissism, self-obsession, and a collective feeling of being alienated in our own bodies, but also despondency on a large scale. And nothing exacerbated this despondency and this isolation more than the COVID lockdowns. More than any other modern development, the COVID lockdowns permanently warped the perspectives, goals, and social development of young people. They did so much damage that we’ll never fully be able to assess the extent of it.

One of the casualties of these lockdowns was Clavicular himself. Recent footage of Clavicular’s graduation from middle school surfaced online. This was a remote graduation because children weren’t allowed to interact with one another, or to go outside — all to “protect them” from a virus that posed zero risk to young people. Teachers and parents tried to pretend that children wouldn’t be harmed by these lockdowns. They obeyed the marching orders from the criminals in the teachers’ unions (who just wanted a vacation), as well as the marching orders from the criminals in the federal government (like Tony Fauci). Through it all, parents and teachers pretended that they were doing the right thing.

Here’s what Clavicular’s “graduation” looked like. Look at his demeanor. Look at his parents. Watch:

Clavicular Middle School Graduation Video Resurfaced ???? pic.twitter.com/r5mkbFCOEV

— Clip Champ ???? (@xclipchamp) July 22, 2026

It’s an extraordinarily sad piece of footage, because we know that millions of other children experienced the same profound lack of social connection with anyone, the same frustration with how fake and sterile everything was. Many of these children, after being forced to endure isolation for so long, never recovered. They never became functioning adults. Many of them began identifying as transgender, to the point that transgenderism became a social contagion. But even the children who didn’t deny the reality of their sex nevertheless found other biological realities to deny.

What’s happening today, what we’re seeing with Clavicular and the millions of young men getting nose jobs and cheek implants — and the millions of women, young and old, injecting themselves with Botox and lip fillers and so on — is, you might say, a kind of intra-sex transgenderism. Male-to-male, female-to-female. That’s the best way to describe it. A trans-identified person is someone who hates their God-given body, fundamentally rejects their own selves, and seeks instead to remake themselves not in the image of God but in the foggy, ever-shifting image of some kind of ambiguous ideal they’ve concocted in their own heads. Clavicular is doing the exact same thing. Many people — young and old, but especially young — are doing the exact same thing.

In that light, the trans phenomenon has not disappeared at all, although the trans cult has obviously been defeated at almost every level — politically, legally, and culturally. Instead, in truth, the trans phenomenon has dispersed more widely. It’s taken new forms. And really, we should have expected that this would happen. A generation raised on social media and smartphones, which spent more than a year locked down at home for no reason, was inevitably going to develop this very disconnected, disembodied sense of self that we’ve discussed. What’s now becoming clear is that gender confusion is only one aspect of this disconnect. It’s just one manifestation of a much deeper issue — one pathology among many, most of them still undiscovered. But as the children of the lockdown era become the leaders of this country — which won’t be very long from now — those pathologies won’t remain “undiscovered” for long.