What is Luxmaxing?

If you’re a woman, you’re probably thinking the same thing, same old story. After all, for as long as most of us can remember, female appearance has been scrutinized and picked apart. It’s easy to assume that luxmaxing is exactly that.

But in today’s scenario, the pressure is not falling only on women and girls. Men feel it too – and in the case of Luxmaxing, the burden falls particularly heavily on teenage boys and young men – many of whom are discovering their identity and self-worth at the same moment they are told that their worth can be calculated in angles, symmetry and scores.

Psychologist Dr Candice O’Neill of Ontic Psychology explains that lookmaxing practices can range from standard beauty and skin care routines to more extreme techniques such as ‘mowing’ – a method that claims to alter the structure of your jaw and face through specific tongue positions.

“Because lookmaxing is heavily promoted on social media, it has the potential to indirectly and overtly influence young people’s feelings and behavior about themselves,” she says. “It becomes unhealthy when it leads to a preoccupation with one’s appearance by deviating from normal self-improvement and wellness practices – especially when it involves constant comparisons with others or excessive adjustments in diet and exercise. It can also lead to deep feelings of poor self-worth and self-concept.”

It is widely believed that being obsessed with one’s appearance and trying to make it as ‘perfect’ as possible has become one of the most talked about – and harmful – phenomena in the world. Chasing often unrealistic standards of beauty or cuteness can make you feel inadequate about both yourself and your body, and can have a serious impact on your mental health.

“The psychological effect of a teen in such communities thinking of their value as a number is that they devalue themselves and all the qualities that make them unique,” says O’Neill. “They lose the essence of their personality. Conversely, a high rating can not only give them a sense of belonging but also reinforce their value.

“Yet as psychologists, we view people as whole people with many valuable qualities such as kindness, compassion, and patience.”

O’Neill explains that in this situation, vulnerable teens begin to lose control over their choices, and become dependent on external validation for their sense of worth. This can lead to negative thinking patterns, anxious behavior, and long-term low self-confidence.

Lookmaxing practices are often divided into two categories – softmaxing and hardmaxing. Both fall under the broader lookmaxing trend but vary in intensity, with hardmaxing involving more extreme measures to alter or change your natural appearance.

Here’s a brief description of each:

• softmaxing – This includes organizing specific personal clothing styles as well as daily self-care routines such as fitness, skin care, hygiene, grooming and grooming.

• hardmaxing – focuses on far more invasive procedures, including cosmetic surgery, leg lengthening operations and even the dangerous practice of ‘bone-mashing’, which involves physically breaking bones to reshape your face.

O’Neill explains that, although softmaxing may seem less physically disruptive than hardmaxing, it can still pose serious threats to your health.

“Softmaxing can trigger negative behaviors and feelings about yourself,” she says. “It can create an intense awareness of yourself in comparison to others, which can ultimately lead some people to try hardmaxing methods for external validation. This can create a cycle of reinforcement, making certain patterns of thinking and behavior harder to change.”

She also warns that, beyond these immediate mental health concerns, softmaxing can contribute to long-term issues, including obsessive and compulsive behavior. These patterns can disrupt other areas of life, potentially leading to social isolation and isolation, self-injurious behavior, and disordered eating.

If you don’t already know, if you ever watch a video, or look at an image of an AI-generated face, it usually looks impossibly perfect – more like an aesthetically engineered robot than an actual human. Because these images are generated entirely from algorithms and not reality, they do not represent the majority of people who naturally look this way.

“AI faces have become statistical fictions,” says O’Neill. “The golden ratio – the so-called perfect ‘aesthetic balance’ – actually only applies to a small number of people. However, it is treated as an objective measure of beauty when in reality beauty is a deeply subjective experience.”

She explains that the influence of these images may begin subtle but, over time, become pervasive, occupying an adolescent’s thoughts at a stage when they are susceptible to outside influence, seeking a sense of belonging, and navigating major physical and emotional changes.

“These measures of beauty lead us away from psychological acceptance and toward something unattainable,” says O’Neill. “This discovery can have major consequences for how we feel about ourselves. The process can sometimes go like this – normal feels flawed, flawed feels wrong or unsafe, and differences feel like failure.”

When the goalposts change in dysmorphia

The influence of rating systems and obsessive fitness habits can push someone toward developing conditions like body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and muscle dysmorphia.

O’Neill warns that chasing the so-called ‘perfect’ body can blur the lines between well-being, fitness and beauty, as standards are constantly pushed to unrealistic extremes.

“Take extreme sports or endurance tests, for example,” she explains. “It is common for people trying to reach goal weight or aesthetics to experience a misalignment between how they see themselves and how they actually look. This can make it easier to exceed their self-imposed limits, which can lead to excessive behavior that can have serious physical and psychological consequences.”