"Looksmaxxing" is teaching men that pretty hurts.
By Brittany Luse, Corey Antonio Rose, Neena Pathak,
NPR
| 02. 27. 2026
Who gets to be "hot" in America? And, at what cost?
Some young men are pushing beauty boundaries with guidance from an online trend that's been making headlines: looksmaxxing. Looksmaxxing celebrates intense fitness & skincare routines, extreme body modification, and notably Eurocentric features as the holy grail of modern beauty, but who gets locked out of looksmaxxing when "Chad" is the gold standard? And how painful is it to pursue perfection that's skin deep?
Brittany is joined by Jason Parham, senior writer at WIRED covering internet culture, online dating, and the future of sex.
JASON PARHAM: I think there's still something really ugly on the inside that people are really working with or trying to confront. Oh, maybe I'll just put on a good face, and I won't have to deal with it. Maybe, you know, it'll get me all these other things.
BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Like anyone else, I like to look good. I paid a makeup artist to teach me how to blend my concealer. I apply my skin care in a specific order, and only one...
Related Articles
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a major focus of news recently, as it should have been, under the appropriately ridiculous name of Hugging Face, “a leading collaboration platform and community hub for machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science.” In July, Hugging Face was hacked. The platform itself responded:
Earlier this week, we detected and responded to an intrusion into part of our production infrastructure. This one was different from anything we had handled before in one important way...
By Gay Pasley, Essence | 09.04.2026
That is what makes the unfolding case of McKenna West so important. It is more than a disagreement about abortion or a dispute over a surrogacy contract. It asks whether an agreement signed before a pregnancy can become authority...
By Anna L. Philippe, Pop Panic | 09.17.2026
What does it mean when education is considered a threat to population? As an education student, I am interested in the ways population panics are essentialized and circulated in formal education settings. Schools can play a major role in shaping...
By Ava Kofman, The New Yorker | 09.15.2026
A WOMAN WHO ACTS AS A SURROGATE, carrying a child for someone else, is said to be going on a “journey.”
Kayla Elliott started her surrogacy journey at the age of twenty-six. She gave birth to a baby girl for...
