The rise of looksmaxxing: Discipline or digital eugenics?

Clavicular framemogged meme (Credits: Google Images) 

Clavicular walks up to strangers on university campuses with a tape measure and a camera. 

He talks about framemogging, when someone simply looks better “in frame” than someone else. To mog is to dominate visually or to win genetically. 

For some viewers, it’s simply meme culture, but the language is sticking. 

Looksmaxxing, a term born in online male forums, refers to optimizing one’s physical appearance to its highest possible potential: gym routines, jaw exercises, skin care regimens and hair transplants.  

Even bone structure analysis presents itself as a discipline, self-improvement and control. 

“It’s sad,” said John Muise, professor of human rights and English at St. Thomas University. “It reflects a kind of deep insecurity. And it makes people complicit in stigmatizing imperfection.” 

Muise also highlighted what he sees in the rhetoric of the term. 

“It’s unabashedly a form of eugenics,” he said, referring to the obsession with ideal features, straight noses, symmetrical faces and specific eye colours.  

He compares the pursuit of physical perfection to dystopian fiction, a world scrubbed clean of flaws, wrinkles and variation. 

“Any ecosystem without diversity is going to die,” he said.  

On campus, students at STU also feel the shift. 

Rafaella Ortega, a third-year journalism and communications student, first encountered looksmaxxing on social media.

“It’s about looking at really small things on your face and being obsessed with trying to make them look a certain way,” she said. “It’s not even about trying to look good. It’s about the minimum details.” 

She said she doesn’t see empowerment in it. 

“I think it was designed to create insecurities,” she said. “If something makes you insecure, that’s how it goes viral.” 

For Ortega, the pressure isn’t new. She said she has long felt the need to appear “really put together,” adding that sometimes she has to remind herself she has “the right to look ugly.” 

Historically, beauty scrutiny has targeted women. The “male gaze”, the idea that the media frames women as objects of visual pleasure, shaped generations of physical expectations.  

But some argue the gaze is widening. 

Ryan Mackay, a third-year history and digital media student, believes standards for men have intensified in the last decade. 

“Social media has definitely made a large impact,” he said. “Kids are getting access at five or six years old.” 

He sees looksmaxxing less as rebellion and more as reinforcement. 

“It’s competing in a visual marketplace,” he said. “If you don’t follow these routines, you’re not going to get the girlfriend. You’re not going to get the status.” 

Influencers selling confidence in a bottle create what Mackay calls “a need rather than a want.” Self-improvement morphs into self-surveillance. 

Muise worries about that blurring line. If empowerment becomes synonymous with perfection, he argues, “then self-surveillance and self-empowerment are almost the same thing.” 

He said that perfection could be a dangerous fantasy. 

“What are you left with?” he said. “A cold world with no variety. Just an ideal that eliminates everything human.” 

“It’s troubling that we place so much emphasis on what are, ultimately, trivial cosmetic standards,” he said. “It reduces people to dolls, like Ken and Barbie. And not just any versions, but very specific ones. People are far more complex than that.” 

Back online, the language continues to spread, including terms like framemogging, canthal tilt, high value and low value. Even when used ironically, it seeps into everyday vocabulary. 

“Why are we giving power to these people?” Ortega said. “Why are we consuming this?” 

In a culture built on visibility, being seen feels like survival and being optimized feels like control.