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Looksmaxxing is the online practice of trying to maximize your physical attractiveness, from skincare and gym routines to hitting your own face with a hammer. On Monday, October 26, it helped make “maxxing” Dictionary.com’s 2026 Word of the Year.
Plenty of people use the word as a joke, but the practice worries doctors. Orthodontists say the trend’s best-known jaw technique doesn’t work, and surgeons warn that its extreme end can break bones and damage nerves. Pediatricians now call it an emerging concern for children.
‘Looksmaxxing’ drove Dictionary.com’s word of the year
Dictionary.com defines maxxing as short for “maximizing,” a way of saying you are doing something to the fullest. It picked the word over a shortlist of “affordability,” “data center,” “odyssey” and “unc,” Euronews reported.
Steve Johnson, Dictionary.com’s director of lexicography, told CBS News that the word “crossed a lot of different domains,” from “tokenmaxxing” with AI tools to “sleepmaxxing.” But one form dominates. “‘Looksmaxxing’ remains the most popular version of the word by far,” he said. Its use rose more than 1,000% since January in the media the dictionary analyzed.
Johnson also described how people treat the idea. “Some embrace it. Some exaggerate it for laughs,” he said in remarks quoted by Euronews. “Others subvert it entirely to describe stepping back from the relentless pursuit of more.”
The trend had already reached the mainstream. Merriam-Webster added “looksmaxxing” in September among about 1,400 new entries, Fox 10 Phoenix reported.
How a gaming term reached incel forums and then TikTok
The optimization sense of the word comes from gaming, Johnson told CBS. “Min-maxing” means building up one strength in a character while accepting a weakness elsewhere. He credited looksmaxxing with giving the word its second “x.”
The appearance version did not start as a joke. Looksmaxxing “emerged from the incel — or ‘involuntary celibate’ — community,” NPR reported in May. A core belief there is that a man’s looks decide his success with women and in life. It sits inside the wider manosphere, the online world where Andrew Tate built his following.
Researchers at Dalhousie University studied one of the biggest looksmaxxing forums, a site with 6 million unique visitors a month. They read 8,072 comments. In their 2025 paper in Sociology of Health & Illness, they found users critiquing each other’s faces down to brow ridges and asymmetries. The forum pushed members toward leg-lengthening surgery and mewing. Men who fell short got labeled failures and “encouraged to self-harm.”
The trend now ranges from the ordinary to the dangerous. Researchers at the University of São Paulo framed it in a 2026 study as “softmaxxing” and “hardmaxxing.” The soft end is grooming, skincare and exercise. The hard end means surgery and do-it-yourself attempts to change bone structure. That study found Google searches for “bonesmashing” up 5,000% on the year before, and about 98% of bonesmashing content came from men.
Orthodontists say mewing doesn’t reshape the jaw
Mewing is the habit of pressing your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, on the theory that it sharpens the jawline over time. It takes its name from John Mew, an orthodontist who “lost his license due to unsupported claims,” according to the American Association of Orthodontists.
The AAO, which represents about 19,000 orthodontists, warned against the trend in a January 2024 statement. “There’s no scientific evidence to support its claims of reshaping the jawline, and the potential risks outweigh any unproven benefits,” said Myron Guymon, then its president.
The group said constant pressure from mewing can loosen teeth, misalign a bite and wear teeth down. It can also change how people speak. The AAO’s advice is to see an orthodontist about any jaw or bite concern rather than follow online trends.
Bone smashing, steroids and peptides can do lasting harm
Bone smashing means hitting your face, often with a hammer or another blunt object, on the belief that tiny fractures heal back into a sharper jaw or cheekbones. Surgeons say the belief is wrong.
“If you get a bleed in a particular area, it could cause airway obstruction, suffocation, blindness,” Dr. Ben Schultz, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with LifeBridge Health, told CBS Baltimore. Scarred bone only ever regains about 80% of its original strength, he said, and it can overgrow into lumps. His advice: “The answer is don’t. Don’t do it.”
Drugs are the other risk. Anabolic steroids “can cause severe, long-lasting, and in some cases, irreversible damage,” the National Institute on Drug Abuse says. Men can develop breast tissue and permanent baldness, and some suffer heart attacks or strokes “even in athletes younger than 30.” In teenagers, steroids can stop bone growth early. NIDA also links them to mood disorders, aggression and depression during withdrawal that can lead to suicide attempts.
Some looksmaxxing content goes further. A 2026 review in Missouri Medicine lists popular “looksmaxxing” injectables. Its authors, doctors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, name trenbolone, a veterinary steroid, and unapproved peptides such as BPC-157 and melanotan-II.
The review says these “lack established human safety profiles,” and it warns of contamination and inaccurate doses.
None of this replaces a conversation with a doctor. Anyone already using steroids or injectables should talk to one before stopping or changing anything.
What doctors tell parents to watch for
The main audience is young. In September the American Academy of Pediatrics’ journal, Pediatrics, ran a piece by Northwell Health clinicians titled “From Mewing to Peptides: Looksmaxxing as an Emerging Pediatric Concern”.
Plastic surgeons see the same demand. An August editorial in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open cited an informal 2025 survey posted on a looksmaxxing website. Of 175 respondents under 24, nearly half (49.1%) said they were interested in aesthetic surgery.
The authors warned that operating on such requests can worsen body dysmorphic disorder. “Physicians have a responsibility to refuse patient requests” that grow out of unrealistic social media standards, they wrote.
Gene Beresin, executive director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, told NPR he has seen a spike in eating disorders and body dysmorphia among boys. “There’s almost no focus on anything other than one’s appearance in terms of your value as a human being,” he said.
His questions for parents are simple. “Do they complain that they’re not looking good enough? Are they comparing themselves to others? Is there a change in their eating habits?” Extreme dieting matters because eating disorders “can be life-threatening,” the National Institute of Mental Health says, and early treatment improves the odds of full recovery.
Interest in looking good is normal, and some worries in these communities, like falling testosterone levels in men, come from real research. The line doctors draw is at injury, drugs and starvation. A pediatrician or family doctor is the right first call.
If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time. For eating disorder support, the National Eating Disorders Association lists resources at nationaleatingdisorders.org.
Clavicular, the trend’s best-known face, is back in court Nov. 24
The movement’s most famous figure is Braden Peters, a 20-year-old streamer known as Clavicular. NPR described him as an enthusiast who promotes bonesmashing and who says he has used crystal meth and steroids to achieve his physique. In April he passed out during a livestream and went to the hospital in Miami, then said he was giving up drugs.
On October 22, Peters pleaded not guilty in Orleans District Court in Massachusetts to one count of rape and one count of providing alcohol to a person under 21, ABC News reported. The charges involve a 17-year-old in 2025. His lawyers say the encounter was consensual.
A judge set bail at $10,000 and ordered him to surrender his passport. His probable cause hearing is set for November 24.