Beauty is maxing out on maxxing.
A quick glance at my inbox reveals pitches on scentmaxxing, a note about vaginamaxxing, and dispatches in favor of and staunchly against tanmaxxing (at Allure, we fall firmly in the latter camp). Journelle Skin, the aesthetics arm of lingerie brand Journelle, recently trademarked “Dermmaxxing” as the name of a bespoke treatment comprised of XERF, a fractional laser, radiofrequency microneedling and at-home skin care. Even for the uninitiated, the suffix may be self-explanatory: It’s about optimization at its most extreme. Scentmaxxing, for instance, involves using a frenzy of spritzes of your favorite fragrances, which is rude to anyone standing in a 10-foot radius, and potentially headache-inducing. Tanmaxxing, more dangerously, involves weaponizing the UV index to amplify a tan (read: sun damage), and is often augmented by tanning oils, Sun-In, or the banned peptide Melanotan II.
A chorus of medical professionals and organizations, including the Skin Cancer Foundation, have warned against using Melanotan II and the UV index to get a deeper tan. In an era of extremes, I was reassured by a strong consensus among voices of reason: No, you should not subject yourself to premature aging or put yourself at risk of skin cancer, and you definitely shouldn’t inject yourself with a banned peptide, which can only make things worse. But reaching a sensible conclusion seems so much rarer in the face of a powerful trend that brings self-optimization to a toxic extreme.
These maxxing permutations all hail from the same umbrella term: “looksmaxxing,” which can entail anything from teeth-whitening strips and daily moisturizing to under-the-knife procedures, in the name of self-improvement. The term “hardmaxxing,” on the more extreme end, includes what the internet calls “bone-smashing,” which is exactly what it sounds like. With every iteration, though, looksmaxxing was born in the darker recesses of the internet. (Even the Pope had something to say about it.)
“Looksmaxxing communities are part of the manosphere, a group of male-oriented websites that share a ‘red pill ideology,’” states one study from several Canadian universities, which analyzed thousands of comments on discussion boards in those communities. The term “red pill” is a reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, and “red pill communities support misogyny, embrace traditional gender roles, critique feminism, and suggest that men are victims of misandry [discrimination against men].”
