Warped rise of ‘looksmaxxing’ where men smash faces with hammers, break legs & pay for ‘hunter eyes’ to ‘get girlfriend’

A DISTURBING trend is urging young men to take extreme measures to improve their looks – all so they can get a girlfriend.

From smashing their own faces with a hammer to chisel a better jawline to having leg extension surgery to be taller, experts fear the twisted craze of “looksmaxxing” could turn deadly – and also harm young women.

First emerging in the early 2010s, “looksmaxxing” was a phrase used on disturbing misogynistic online forums.

The term quickly spiralled from self-improvement to a desperate desire for teenage boys to fit in by undergoing life-altering and permanent surgery.

In the last few years, it has spiked in popularity on social media platforms – with users widely sharing stories of how they got their “good looks”.

Videos showcasing an influencer’s “before and after” transition can rack up millions of views within days – enticing others to follow in the trend.

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Now thousands of young men consider themselves “looksmaxxers” and can be found across both TikTok and Instagram.

The basic principle of “looksmaxxing” is to improve your looks to help attract love interests – and a draconian spin-off has now emerged known as “hardmaxxing”.

Hardmaxxing comes from warped forums which recommend extreme measures to help others become “more attractive”, from Botox injections and steroids to expensive surgery.

These forums are also being blamed for a worrying number of suicides among young men who feel they don’t look attractive enough, an expert told The Sun.

Michael Halpin, Associate Professor of Sociology at Dalhousie University, said: “I observed a teenager stating that he was going to take his own life if he did not reach 6ft in height.

“While other users were told they were too ugly for ‘looksmaxxing’ and they should consider suicide.

“They are told they need to looksmax if they want to look better or ‘normal.’”

Self-titled “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular, 20, whose real name is Braden Peters, has helped to develop his own disturbing technique to improve his looks – “bone smashing”.

He details how to get the perfect jawline by using a hammer – and claims his technique is supported by science.

He will film himself in the mirror using a hammer-style tool and repeatedly hitting himself with it under the guise of improving his jawline.

His other self-proclaimed top tips to look better include starving yourself of food and injecting testosterone.

Clavicular has over 790,000 TikTok followers and 420,000 Instagram followers making him the biggest name in the “looksmaxxing” space.

His social media content revolves around him showing off his style on modelling trips, hanging out with bikini-clad women or posing topless after trips to the gym.

But some of his videos regularly fall into the realm of “the manosphere” – the subject of Louis Theroux’s new documentary looking at the growing subculture of internet misogynists and their poisonous beliefs.

Clavicular has been filmed partying with Andrew Tate – a notorious figure in the manosphere – and with white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes.

Another influencer known as AndrewMaxxer hails himself as the internet’s “number one looksmaxxer” and boasts over 170,000 followers.

He has posted videos of him taking a hammer to his jaw as well as recommending his followers constantly chew on lumps on chewing gum to help develop a stronger and more defined jaw.

Facial plastic surgeon specialist Joshua Rosenberg said young men using blunt force trauma on their faces has “no basis in any scientific reality”.

He told The Sun: “This is just facial trauma disguised as medical care, and there’s no world where facial trauma leads to better aesthetic outcome.

“It doesn’t exist. My advice would be stop. Period. There’s nothing about this that is going to work.

“It’s not wrong to get an idea about how you want to look but to create a DIY framework for achieving it – that is insane and it makes no sense.

“We cannot make you whole once you’ve injured yourself in an extreme form of DIY beauty enhancement.”

Another form of “looksmaxxing” is paying for “hunter eyes”, characterized by a deep-set, narrow, almond-shaped appearance around the eyes.

Hunter eyes are often associated with male models who tend to have been born with the uniquely-shaped style of eyes.

For those who don’t genetically have them, they can spend thousands to create them through surgery.

This can include canthopexy to correct a negative canthal tilt, injecting Botox to lower the eyebrows or using filler to reduce eyelid exposure.

Dr Zoya Diwan, Aesthetic Doctor and dermatology specialist, urged those hooked on “looksmaxxing” to remember: “Your face is not a project to ‘fix’.”

She believes the trend is most harmful when it’s viewed as a competition among men to look better than their peers.

Dr Zoya says: “At its core, wanting to look your best is completely normal.

“However, the trend has grown rapidly on social media because of algorithm-driven platforms that reward extreme transformations, rigid beauty standards and comparison culture.

“When ‘optimising’ your looks becomes framed as a competitive hierarchy, where your worth is tied to facial angles or bone structure, that’s when it shifts from healthy self-improvement into something more psychologically risky.”

At the start, “looksmaxxing” saw men share tips on how to improve their appearance through particular hair styles, grooming products or even just certain camera poses.

Discussions soon ramped up in intensity and saw users recommending dangerous stunts to one another to improve their looks.

Dr Rosenberg also says the rise in young men taking part in “looksmaxxing” activities is a worrying trend.

He said: “You take certain men’s natural insecurity of being young, and then supercharge it with really bad social media-generated information that has no basis in scientific reality.”

Dr Zoya has her own reservations about what “looksmaxxing” is doing to young men’s mental health.

“Instead of building confidence, extreme looksmaxxing often reinforces the belief that you are ‘never enough’,” she believes.

“Long term, this can seriously impact mental health and identity development, especially in adolescents whose brains are still developing.”

Dean Robertson, founder of website Looksmaxxing, insists young boys wanting to look better is a positive attitude to have.

He says the main goal is to increase confidence, boost social and career outcomes and improve dating success.

And he claims the reason people are so interested in the trend is down to the pressures of social media.

He told The Sun: “Fifteen or twenty years ago, most people met through friends, work, school or nights out – you were competing with whoever happened to be in the same room.

“Now you’re being compared to thousands of people on a screen, often in seconds. That changes behaviour.

“When attraction is reduced to profile pictures and quick swipes, it’s natural that some people start analysing what actually makes a difference.

“Looksmaxxing is basically an analytical approach to appearance – looking at facial structure, body composition, grooming, and style – and asking what can realistically be improved.”

“We’ve built an image-driven world. Young men are responding to that reality.”

Mr Halpin says the main issue with looksmaxxing as a subculture is how it appears to be rooted in a fear of rejection.

He said: “Young men and boys feel like they are judged based on their appearance – particularly their face — all over social media.

“If you are not attractive it can be difficult to get any attention so ‘looksmaxxing’, and other manosphere communities are really focused on lookism.”

He views “lookism” as a form of discrimination where attractive people are gifted better opportunities in life over unattractive people due to how they are perceived.

“They think that looks are the be all and end all, and that how you look determines your life chances,” Mr Halpin said.

It isn’t just the men directly targeted by the idea of “looksmaxxing” who are being affected.

Experts also have concerns over what the trend means for young women.

Dr Zoya warns: “Trends like this don’t exist in isolation. For young women, being positioned as part of a ‘male gaze’ rating system reduces them to aesthetic validation tools rather than whole individuals.

“It reinforces harmful gender dynamics and unrealistic standards on both sides.”

Mr Halpin shares the same concerns, saying: “The community routinely treats women as sexual objects or as animals.

“There is a belief that women are hypergamous in relation to physical appearance, meaning that they will always go for the most attractive man possible.”

Across social media, influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers are racking up millions of views from impressionable audiences such as Clavicular.

Looksmaxxing is a worrying trend which shows little sign of slowing down.