{"id":2132,"date":"2026-07-23T04:25:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/23\/beauty-has-lost-the-plot-on-maxxing\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T04:25:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:25:19","slug":"beauty-has-lost-the-plot-on-maxxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/23\/beauty-has-lost-the-plot-on-maxxing\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty Has Lost the Plot on &#8220;Maxxing&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Beauty is maxing out on maxxing.<\/p>\n<p>A quick glance at my inbox reveals pitches on scentmaxxing, a note about vaginamaxxing, and dispatches in favor of <em>and<\/em> staunchly against tanmaxxing (at <em>Allure<\/em>, we fall firmly in the latter camp). Journelle Skin, the aesthetics arm of lingerie brand Journelle, recently trademarked \u201cDermmaxxing\u201d 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<aside aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"PullQuoteEmbedWrapper-sc-efqGLV dYCNhz composition body pullquote centered\" data-testid=\"pullquote-embed-center\">\n<p><span>\u201cAren\u2019t the origins of the maxxing trend antithetical to the fact that the bulk of beauty products are made for, marketed to, and purchased by women?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>These maxxing permutations all hail from the same umbrella term: \u201clooksmaxxing,\u201d which can entail anything from teeth-whitening strips and daily moisturizing to under-the-knife procedures, in the name of self-improvement. The term \u201chardmaxxing,\u201d on the more extreme end, includes what the internet calls \u201cbone-smashing,\u201d 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.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLooksmaxxing communities are part of the manosphere, a group of male-oriented websites that share a \u2018red pill ideology,\u2019\u201d states one study from several Canadian universities, which analyzed thousands of comments on discussion boards in those communities. The term \u201cred pill\u201d is a reference to the 1999 film <em>The Matrix<\/em>, and \u201cred pill communities support misogyny, embrace traditional gender roles, critique feminism, and suggest that men are victims of misandry [discrimination against men].\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u201cDermmaxxing\u201d as the name of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}