When help is harm: Masculinity, self-improvement, and health in the looksmaxxing community


Michael Halpin, Dalhousie University

How does hegemonic masculinity harm men’s health? In this paper, we focus on Looksmax.org, an online community for men who are seeking to improve their appearance or become more attractive to potential partners. Looksmax.org hosts ratings threads, wherein users can post their pictures and have their physical attractiveness “objectively” rated by other members. In other parts of the community, users share tips for “looksmaxxing” (improving physical attractiveness), discuss body alterations (e.g., leg lengthening surgery), and exchange seduction tips. In this community, physical attractiveness is of the utmost importance because it is seen as the biggest determining factor for whether or not a man is single. For this paper, we qualitatively analyzed 8,072 comments posted to Looksmax.org. Our analyses focused on the most popular threads during a 6-month period of data collection that occurred in 2023. Our analysis was guided by analytic abduction. We present our findings in three themes. First, we demonstrate how users of Looksmax.org see physical attractiveness as something that can be quantifiable and objectively measured, which we refer to as a “quantifying gaze.” In this section, we show the extreme precision and nuance that men apply when assessing one another’s bodies in relation to hegemonic ideals. For example, users rate each other on a 10-point scale, deducting full and partial points for minor facial asymmetries, pronounced brow ridges, nose sizes, or uneven ratios between the size of the chin and the upper lip. Second, we show how the Looksmax community encourages users to seek substantial alterations to their bodies so that they can better conform to masculine ideals. For instance, shorter men are encouraged to undergo expensive and painful leg lengthening surgeries, while men with large noses are told to get rhinoplasties. In addition to these surgeries, users suggest a number of body altering practices. For example, some users practice “mewing,” which is pushing the tongue to the roof of the mouth in an effort to develop a more masculine jawline. As we argue, users’ quantitative assessments of masculine bodies are tightly coupled to these interventions, as such interventions are seen as the best means to “objectively” improve one’s appearance. Third, despite situating itself as a forum for self- improvement, we argue that the Looksmax community demoralizes its users. By demoralize, we mean that users learn that they are inadequate as part of their participation in the community. We document many examples of users discussing self-harm because they believe that their appearance made them permanently unattractive, while also detailing users who encourage others to self-harm. We discuss how these findings demonstrate the negative health consequences of hegemonic masculinity for men, and how some online masculine ‘support’ spaces demoralize and harm men.

Non-presenting authors: Meghan Gosse, Dalhousie University; Finlay Maguire, Dalhousie University

This paper will be presented at the following session: