Looksmaxxing? No, Thank You.

In 2026, at Bard High School Early College — a top-rated public school in New York City — global studies teacher Dr. Melissa Turoff was startled to recognize the increasing popularity of “bonesmashing” in her classroom. Bonesmashing is an act of hammering your jaw and cheekbones (with a literal hammer, in most cases) until they break, in hopes of the bones growing back stronger and sharper. Dr. Turoff told the FBomb that she was worried “to see [bonesmashing] being embraced by young men at a competitive high school.”

But Bard High School is hardly the only school that has this problem. Many young boys are obsessed with bonesmashing as part of a larger ideology called “looksmaxxing,” a highly intensive rating system for evaluating physical attractiveness. Looksmaxxing is based on a formula for attractiveness that was developed on incel forums, but now has its own website, looksmaxxing.com. Your body fat percentage, inter-pupillary distance, and canthal tilt (measure of slant of your eyes) are, among other body parts, measured and compiled to form a zero to 10 overall rating. Looksmaxxers go through all sorts of physical pain to achieve as high a rating as possible.

One individual who is perhaps responsible for the spread of this phenomenon more than others is Kick streamer Braden Peters (otherwise known as Clavicular, for his supposedly impressive clavicle). Peters, who has over 1 million followers, has almost single-handedly brought looksmaxxing from the shadows of incel forums to the attention of everyone using the internet, most especially young boys. Clavicular himself boasts about having taken testosterone since he was 14, as well as popularizing bonesmashing as a strategy to sharpen one’s jawline. He has discussed his parents’ failed attempts to stop him from bonesmashing by hiding hammers from him when he was little. Now, as a 20-year-old, he was recently hospitalized for his use of methamphetamine as an appetite suppressant as part of his looksmaxxing efforts.

The purported goal of looksmaxxing is for men to become irresistibly attractive to women. That said, it is all but naive to think boys will begin respecting women as a result of looksmaxxing. Words like “foid” (female humanoid) shape looksmaxxing lingo, illustrating looksmaxxers’ derogatory, robotic, almost inanimate view of women. As New York Times journalist Christine Emba put it, women are seen as “better insulted than engaged with” by looksmaxxing culture.

Maybe a looksmaxxer’s fantasy foid thinks looksmaxxing is attractive, but women and girls most certainly do not. Women are attracted to many different things, and the sharp-jawed, hollow-cheeked, airbrushed looksmaxxing model is more grotesque than it is attractive to many women. In a recent New York Times article, Kate Manne reflects on this idea, defining looksmaxxing as “a culture created by men for other men.” The intensity with which looksmaxxers critique their appearance is, according to Manne, a means to the end of gaining approval of other men.

By inventing their own calculable scale of attractiveness, looksmaxxers are not trying to appeal to women. Instead they dominate a straight woman’s experience of attraction through deciding what women find attractive. It is akin to a restaurant choosing what you eat for dinner. And women are not leaving five-star reviews.