Dear Men: why ‘looksmaxxing’ won’t work, and what you can actually do

The deranged alt-right trend making young men hurt themselves

A friend leaps onto the bed, gleefully opening his laptop. I’m exhausted, but I know that expression. “You have to see this,” he tells me, pulling up iPlayer. “You absolutely having to see this.”

“Why are there little hammers? What’s looksmaxxing?” I ask him after a few minutes, bewildered. My friend grins at me, squeezing my arm reassuringly. This is weird. “Oh, you just have to watch and find out.” On the screen, the awkward, masked young man waves his little hammer around while he talks to the equally confused journalist.

Then the masked man explains. He’s using the little hammer to break the bones in his face to make himself more attractive to women. I’m speechless. My friend is in tears laughing. This is surreal, that weird blend of absurd, tragic, and hilarious. “Why would that work?” I ask aloud. “Why on earth would that work?”

Why hitting yourself with a small hammer won’t make you sexier

Okay, I get it. There are facial features that society typically notes as more attractive. A strong jaw. A smooth brow. High cheekbones. A prominent, shapely nose. But I absolutely promise you, on an anatomical level, that you cannot shatter your way to Adonis.

Your face is not clay or metal. It’s bone, muscle, fat, skin, and tissue. And a lot of it. It’s incredibly complex, which is why a facial massage can take as long as a back massage. Any surgeon will tell you that cartilage, muscle and bone does not heal immaculately by itself from burns, fractures and breakage. You’ll get scarring. You’ll get fused bone and bumpy keloids. Lumps. Indentations. You only need to look at the survivors of car crashes and explosives to know that sharp objects hitting your face does not bring your appearance to a socially agreed optimum. The surgeries looksmaxxing attempt to imitate fail to understand that breaking specific bones in a face under anaesthetic in a sanitary environment and then undergoing specific treatment, stitching, and…