Boys these days are under the impression that they need an extreme makeover to get the girl. They couldn't be more wrong.
When I was a teenager, I was woefully ignorant of my facial width-to-height ratio. Today many boys measure the space between their eyes and the angle from their chin to their neck, rating themselves from Chad to midtier normie. They are running a spreadsheet of stats on their own looks, following the theory that romance works the exact same way as fantasy-league football.
This part of the manosphere, called looksmaxxing, has even spread to my 16-year-old son's liberal, private Los Angeles high school. Their hero is Clavicular, the 20-year-old looksmaxxing live streamer with nearly one million Instagram followers, who pushes extreme beauty products -- methamphetamines, steroids, and a hammer to break your jaw bone so it regrows stronger -- and who was recently arrested in Florida on a battery charge.
This all seems like a good idea. But I would like to add a warning from someone who did an older version of looksmaxxing.
No, I didn't have leg lengthening surgery, take peptides or even mew, the basic looksmaxxing exercise of pushing your tongue against the roof of your mouth to strengthen your jaw muscles. But I did work out four days a week with a celebrity trainer, text every gram I consumed to a nutritionist and got hair transplant surgery. I wrote about this in a GQ magazine article which was accompanied by professional photographs of my shirtless body.
I have maintained many of these habits and a few of my six pack. And I have come from the future to warn all the young men that this is a bad idea in the long-term. I have returned as the first looksminning influencer.
Though their obsessions with moisturizers and eyebrow grooming seem pretty girlie to someone of my generation, looksmaxxing is rooted in objectification. The idea is that 20% of the men get 80% of the women and they want to attract as many as possible. They are certain that joining this 20% is largely based on your looks.
Even if this is true in today's online dating world, it's dangerously short-term thinking, like buying a memecoin with your sex life.
On average, dating lasts for less than 20% of your adult life. You're with your spouse for more than 60% of adulthood. And looking great is one of the worst things you can do for your marriage.
When I first told my lovely wife Cassandra about my plans to proto-looksmax 11 years ago, she said, "Oh, great. Now I have to get in shape." I had been expecting something more along the lines of "Can I help by incentivizing you with sex?" or "Let's work out right now on this bed!"
Instead, as soon as I started to get a tiny bit of muscle definition, Cassandra became self-conscious, insisting on turning the lights off during sex. Which was also suddenly less often. "This has really backfired on you," she told me.
Even worse than not wanting to be intimate with me, Cassandra didn't want to go out to dinner with me either, because of my carb-watching. I told her that I could go to any restaurant and find something to order. Which just made her angrier.
"I hate those women who are like, 'It's OK. I'll order a salad with no dressing, and I won't drink.' I don't want to go out to eat with that person. That person isn't fun. That person makes me feel bad for eating a steak frites."
When I told my trainer about Cassandra’s reaction, he was not surprised. The wives of some of his clients -- including actors who needed to get ripped for roles as superheroes -- had tried to sabotage them by baking desserts.
After losing weight for his “Guardians of the Galaxy” role, Chris Pratt told an interviewer in 2015 that his then-wife Anna Faris wasn’t happy. “Part of her is hedging her bets that one day I’ll be fat again, and she’ll say, ‘Remember, honey, I always told you I preferred you this way.’”
Orna Guralnik, the clinical psychologist who hosts Showtime's "Couples Therapy," told me that a couple on the upcoming season of "Couples Therapy" dealt with this dynamic. "Her husband was losing weight and she was finding it unnerving. Until she started losing weight," she said. This sounds like the kind of thing that is more likely to happen when you are being taped for a TV show.
But Guralnik also said that "there are plenty of women that are desperate for their husbands to look better," she said. "And when they look better, sex gets better." Likewise, Emily Morse, the host of the Sex with Emily podcast said that as long as you're not obsessing, looksmaxxing can be a plus. "Confidence is attractive. Self absorption is not."
I'm sure that improving your relationship by looking better is possible. But close your eyes and picture a happy fat couple eating cake and watching “Couples Therapy.” Now try to picture a happy thin couple running marathons, eating power gel and smashing their jaws with hammers.
How do you looksmin? Luckily, it's really easy. You're going to want to consume a lot of instant ramen doused with soy sauce so the sodium gives you moonface, hiding any hint of a zygomatic arch. For the rest of your calories, try to drink them so your jaw doesn't get a workout. Don't exercise at all. Not just because of the muscle building, but because you might break a bone, which apparently is a huge advantage to your looks. You want to keep your bones nice and weak so that when your perimenopausal wife frets about bone density, you can, too.
Stay up really late so you wake up with the kind of high upper eyelid exposure that gives you Prey Eyes. Develop a forward head hunch. This might sound like a lot, but it can all be accomplished by getting a desk job.
And don't get complacent with your dad bod. You've got to accessorize with long shorts, football jerseys, ankle socks and high-tops. Have you ever seen a divorced man dressed like this? Of course not. Looksminning has been unwittingly developed in the labs of happily married suburban dads for decades.
Here's something else they know: how to self-mog. If you run across a professional athlete, pose for a photo standing right next to him, beta-smiling in admiration, and post it on social media. Put a framed copy on your desk. Maybe slip it onto your wife's bedside table. And know that, if that athlete is married, you're getting way more action than he is.