By Rebecca Do
In the onslaught of so-called “brain rot” that I have been subjected to by TikTok and various other social media platforms, nothing has caught my eye (or my mind, and what’s left of it) like the “looksmaxing” phenomenon.
Essentially, “looksmaxing” is the practice of facial exercises, working out and other activities in order to enhance your physical appearance, which is innocent enough at first. Actually, you may be asking yourself: “shouldn’t everybody want to looksmax?”
Well, yes. But not in the way social media puts it.
In this aforementioned onslaught of “brain rot,” we have reverted back to the days in which breeding a perfect race was perceived as an agreeable ideology. We have reverted back to the days in which it is normal to shame people for the cards they are dealt with in life.
It’s not innocent at all; looksmaxing reinforces eugenicist ideas and suggests that there is a correlation between Eurocentric features and desirability/intelligence. Eugenics, as per Oxford Languages, is “the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.” Proponents of eugenics believed that we could create a “perfect human race” through selective breeding, and could cure social ills. However, the practice (obviously) has been deemed unscientific by critics, especially after the Third Reich used the idea to propagate Aryan supremacy during World War II.
And sure, it may seem like a stretch; maybe I’m being an overly cynical, anti-social media critic who just doesn’t understand the concept and implications of wanting to look your best.
The problem is that they don’t want to look their best — they want to adhere to unrealistic beauty standards that just so happen to be inherently, a little racist.
I did some internet sleuthing, and stumbled upon a website called “Looksmax.org”. Linked is a thread that propagates the very thing that makes the act so sinister. Calling people “subhuman” because they don’t look a certain way isn’t just mean, but inherently wrong — there’s no other way around it.
Looking at the thread opens up new doors as to why social media glorifies such practices. To look better, for one. But a big part of it is to hold something above other people. If you can’t beat them, look better than them, I guess.
Some aspects of the aforementioned website include a “Rules” page, in which posting “LGBT content” is banned, a trending tab riddled with racial and homophobic slurs, misogynistic comments/questions and a forum in which men rate each other’s looks (yes, this website is for men only). Isn’t that just lovely?
Sure, this may seem like just a silly little internet fad that will blow over at any minute. But these ideas are dangerous and take precedence over any sort of trend. These ideas are the kind of seeds that are nourished and grow then sprout into an all-consuming prejudiced venus flytrap. This is
And on a more personal, less systemic scale: the more people focus on the way that they look, the more they stray away from wanting to be good people. We become critical, self-indulgent little critters when we’re told the only way to happiness is by looking a certain way and adopting certain features.
Well, what exactly is the moral here?
As cheesy as it may sound, love yourself! Love yourself no matter what you look like or what race you are. Love yourself because you deserve to. Don’t fall into the traps that Twitter, TikTok or any social media platform has set up for you, especially if the ideas lead to deeper, darker conversations that need to be held.
