CW: mention of self-harm practices including extreme dieting and body deformation procedures. Also discussion of misogyny. But there’s a positive message in here, too, I promise.
One thing I really enjoy about my job is the occasions where I get to visit classes taught by my colleagues. It’s fun to see them in action, bringing their special talents and personalities to philosophical questions, some of which I cover regularly, and others that I rarely think or talk about.
This past week, I got to hang out with my colleague Eric’s Ethics Bowl class. Ethics Bowl is an intercollegiate competition in which teams prepare cases based on current issues. By the way, if you click on the link, you’ll see a picture of a bunch of guys all interacting around one guy, the one woman in the group with her head down and taking notes. That is definitely not what it looked like in Eric’s class.
One of the cases on the docket that day was the ethical ramifications of looksmaxxing. I had vaguely heard about this — a set of practices designed to maximize male attractiveness. These practices range from skin care regimens to something called “bone smashing”, which is as bad as it sounds. The putative purpose is to deform one’s jaw line to make it fit some internet-based notion of masculine beauty. Do not try this at home, or any other place. Ever. But of course you all know that.
Back to class: students presented their cases arguing against the ethical permissibility of looksmaxxing, some of them focusing on the physical and psychological harms to individuals, including body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety.
They’re right, of course. Doing a quick search, I found lots of medical sites with articles for parents of boys and young men, explaining the harms of looksmaxxing and offering suggestions for ways to spot patterns that could lead to harms. You can check out a couple of them here and here.
What really struck me, though (metaphorically only, in case you were worried) is what isn’t said in some of the standard arguments against looksmaxxing.
What isn’t said, or at least not said loudly enough to hear, is this: the practices and procedures advocated for boys and men by looksmaxxers are exactly those that girls and women have been subjected to for decades (centuries, actually). What do I have in mind here? Glad you asked– here’s a short list:
- extreme dieting
- other disorderd eating behaviors
- cosmetic surgery on all body parts of all age girls and women to conform to a narrow beauty standard
- purchases of (often expensive) products marketed as necessary for achieving social acceptability
- extreme exercise regimens aimed at achieving specific bodily forms (whose effectiveness is uninformed by scientific evidence)
- continuous life-long engagement in these practices regardless of expense, time, and pain required
There’s a lot-a-lot to say about what is harmful about looksmaxxing. If you want a deeper dive into hegemonic masculinity and its effects on men, check out this great article by an interdisciplinary group of Canadian academics on lookism and self-improvement in the manosphere.
The big takeaway for me, from our class discussion that day, is that the current alarm over looksmaxxing gives us an opportunity to see how it’s yet another symptom of a deeply misogynistic culture. We inhabit a world that has normalized the deformation of girls’ and women’s bodies and appearances to meet a rigid and narrow standard for social acceptability and attractiveness. Now that it’s moved on to apply similar standards to boys’ and men’s bodies, we’re starting to notice how corrosively misogynistic some so-called self-care and beauty practices can be.
This realization can (and should) lead us to reject the abusive norms of looksmaxxing, not just to protect men and boys, but to protect all persons in all kinds of bodies from harm.
And the best lesson I learned that day was the students had already gotten it; this was no news to them. They’re literally on the case. And this was the best lesson I learned in a long time.
