Injections, Bone Hammering and the Pursuit of Peak Male Beauty

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve spent any time on social media recently, you’ve probably come across a video of a young, square-jawed influencer calling himself Clavicular. He has become the face of an internet subculture called looksmaxxing, in which men do almost anything — like taking steroids and hormones or bashing their jaws with a hammer — to try to become more handsome. In this episode, Natalie Kitroeff talks with reporter Joseph Bernstein about the world of looksmaxxing and how what might seem like a fringe phenomenon is actually the culmination of a digital culture that rewards physical perfection with status and algorithmic power.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitchrow-F.
0:04.3	This is the Sunday Daily.
0:07.3	There's a corner of the internet where young men spend hours raiding each other's bodies.
0:12.1	They evaluate the length of their midfaces and the distance between their pupils.
0:16.5	They take testosterone and inject fat- dissolving compounds into their jaws.
0:21.5	They hit themselves in the cheekbones with hammers.
0:24.9	They call what they do looks maxing, and their community, which started as a subculture, is now bursting into the mainstream.
0:32.6	Their particular way of speaking popped up at last week's Oscars and has been used by the Pentagon.
0:38.2	They even made it to Saturday Night Live.
0:40.4	No offense, but you're sitting there and gestrogooning like a subhuman beta cuck.
0:45.3	Meanwhile, I'm out here or a maxing like an S-tier gigachad.
0:51.1	The rise of this movement has a lot to do with the ascendance of its biggest star,
0:56.0	clavicular, a 20-year-old influencer whose most deeply held belief is that looks are genuinely all that matters.
1:04.5	Today, I talk with my colleague Joe Bernstein about why the ethos of looks maxing appeals to so many young men and what its resonance says about our culture.
1:14.7	It's Sunday, March 22nd.
1:27.3	Joe, welcome to the Sunday Daily.
1:29.8	Great to be here.
1:31.0	So we are about to embark on a conversation about looks maxing, which we should acknowledge
1:37.0	as a made-up word.
1:38.7	It is an internet meme community turnedturned cultural phenomenon,
1:45.7	inspiring dozens of articles in every magazine and newspaper that you've heard of,
1:51.2	including ours.
	...

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