OPINION | The Politics Behind the Positive Canthal Tilt: Why Looksmaxxing Can Never Be Apolitical
Photo Credit: Cassidy Araiza via The New York Times
How far would you go to achieve the “perfect” face, the “perfect” body, the “perfect” partner? In a Miami bar on April 14—a fateful Tuesday evening—Brandon Peters suffered a suspected overdose on livestream. While sitting in a booth with fellow influencers, he seemed to become increasingly lucid, with his head and eyes slowly drooping until the stream cut abruptly. He was quickly rushed to the hospital and later released a statement on X saying: “[...] that was brutal. All the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public.”
However, this is not Peters’ first rodeo. He is transparent about his recreational substance abuse, which he uses to maintain and increase his physical appearance. He openly speaks about using crystal meth to suppress appetite and to achieve “hollow cheeks.” The influencer has also shared his “daily drug cocktail,” which includes an assortment of substances like testosterone, melatonin, and Anavar. If you haven’t already guessed, you may know him better as the streamer and internet personality Clavicular.
Clavicular has gone viral for videos of him “bonesmashing,” where he essentially takes a hammer to his face, attempting to achieve a sharper jawline. His online presence has been a driving force in the re-popularization of the term looksmaxxing, which refers to an online community comprised mostly of men, a large portion of which are incels (the involuntary celibate). These men are fixated on maximizing their appearances to fit a very specific set of beauty ideals pumped out by social media. Ultimately, the goal is to “ascend.” Ascension can be defined as moving up from a base state to a physically “maxxed-out” version of oneself. It is the peak attractiveness an individual can achieve.
Ascension, a convoluted term, also just means when an incel moves up to “bag” or “get laid.” Within the looksmaxxing community, women are viewed as mere checkpoints or objects to use and then dispose of. Clavicular himself says the satisfaction in knowing he can have sex with a woman is better than the act itself. Terms like “foid,” known as female humanoid, or “Stacey,” the top of the female sexual hierarchy, elicit the dehumanization of women in looksmaxxing forums.
It is eerie that people are basing all their value on objective attractiveness, when there is so much more to life than an angle of your face or tilt of your eyes. When you fall into the trap of looksmaxxing, you lose sight of the beauty in human connection and the importance of real-life experience without constant insecurity and idealistic pressure.
Recently, Clavicular was spotted partying at a Miami nightclub with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist commentator, and convicted felon Andrew Tate, both prominent people in the alt-right community. Clavicular received immense backlash, with many questioning his political orientation.
In response, he took to Instagram posting: “No more politics, just mogging.” When asked by a fan on a livestream if he believed looksmaxxing is “inherently right wing,” Clavicular said “no,” claiming that, “at the end of the day, I have such an influence over the movement that I could bring it in any direction I want.” Clavicular calls all politics “jester,” a term that means a joke or waste of time in the looksmaxxing community. What he overlooks is that it is the politics that keep his career going.
Clavicular’s relevance heavily relies on the controversy he generates through his reactionary comments and alignment with the alt-right. This is partly because of the way his audience skews, but also because controversy will always pique the interest of the public eye. That being said, it would be impossible to sway a community birthed from the Manosphere and fostered by defining alt-right characters. Looksmaxxing dilutes real people to measurements and proportions, and treats women as objects. If these core components were to be altered to fit left-wing values, looksmaxxing would no longer be looksmaxxing as we know it today. Therefore, looksmaxxing is inherently an alt-right phenomenon.