A Face Is Not an Engingeering Project

Recently, a friend texted me photos of what looked like his own miniature pharmacy. He proudly took me through his collection of peptides, anabolic steroids, needles and syringes hidden in the back of his closet. These were not drugs prescribed to treat an illness, but tools in a project of self-sculpture.

He showed off the collection casually, like he might a new pair of shoes. I wasn’t shocked; countless other guys I knew were committed to enhancing their looks. Though my behavior was never as extreme, I had also taken part in the phenomenon known as “looksmaxxing,” a social-media-driven movement centered on improving one’s appearance.

I’ve since moved away from this mindset, but still see its influence everywhere, both at school and online. From the outside, looksmaxxing can seem like pure vanity. Having been on the inside, I know that the truth is more complicated.

For many boys, the obsession with appearance is really a desire for connection and control, but pursued in the wrong way. Working on your body can be strenuous, but exercise follows the reassuring logic of input versus output. Improving your confidence carries more risk, like entering social situations that can be unpredictable and embarrassing. Looksmaxxing offers measurable solutions to social problems that cannot be measured.

Humans have always tried to alter their looks. But in many male adolescent circles, appearance has increasingly become a conversational centerpiece. A face is no longer just a face. A body is no longer just a body. Both become sets of variables to measure and compare: facial symmetry, clavicle width, body-fat percentage. To change them, you can “debloat”, start a new diet, alter your hormones, or buy another product. What was once a person becomes an engineering project.

The possibility of a cure is especially appealing during adolescence, a period already filled with questions that cannot be quantified. What do they think of me? Where do I fit in? Will someone like me back? Relationships are uncertain, whereas bodies and faces are physical and therefore measurable.

But there’s an underlying truth that looksmaxxing can never address: you can’t engineer love or acceptance. Neither can be guaranteed. You can’t predict how someone will react when you show vulnerability. For teenagers already struggling with insecurity, that’s a hard pill to swallow. It certainly was for me.

Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, I became increasingly convinced that changing my appearance was the answer to my problems. I believed optimizing my looks would compensate for what I thought I lacked in confidence and social ability. I could create routines, record progress, and apply methods to problems that had once seemed unmanageable and vague.

That feeling of control was immensely reassuring, almost addictive. What made the avoidance difficult to recognize was that it didn’t feel like self-hatred. It felt productive, like I was finally taking control of my life.

But the social muscle atrophies without use. While I was working on myself externally, I was avoiding myself internally. When I believed appearance would do the work for me, there was less reason to put myself in risky social situations. Otherwise, I might have discovered that embarrassment is survivable. Instead, the intense regimens I poured my energy into only deepened my isolation.

None of this means appearance is meaningless. Any strong criticism of looksmaxxing has to acknowledge that looks matter. Psychologists have long studied the “halo effect,” in which a positive impression of one quality, such as physical appearance, positively influences judgments about other, unrelated attributes. A 2000 meta-analysis found that attractive children and adults tended to be judged and treated more positively.

Once that fact is acknowledged, the appeal of looksmaxxing becomes easier to understand. If looking better changes how people treat you, improving your appearance can be a rational form of self-investment. Moderate exercise is healthy and dressing well can make people more comfortable in their own skin. The problem starts when these beneficial activities become extreme, and influence is mistaken for determinism.

The skills necessary for relationships depend on accepting uncertainty, the exact thing looksmaxxing promises to eliminate. Attractiveness may help produce a first impression, but it cannot sustain a friendship, repair a conflict, or create intimacy. Studies show that confidence develops through resilience, like entering situations you cannot fully control. Each time you discover that an uncomfortable interaction did not destroy you, uncertainty becomes less frightening.

The first step towards change is changing the dialogue. In a culture of boys who spend 20 minutes nightly doing neck exercises to improve their facial structure, looks tend to dominate the conversation. I’ve heard countless conversations about whether someone “has potential,” as if the face of a fifteen-year-old were an unfinished architectural project. When we talk about ourselves this way, we reinforce which qualities are worth cultivation.

We can choose to notice other things. Tell a friend when he was brave or genuinely funny. Notice when someone handles a difficult situation well. Compliment an idea, a skill, or something someone created. Doing so gives us reasons to value parts of ourselves that cannot be seen in the mirror.

The promise of self-improvement is ultimately a promise of control: if you optimize yourself enough, you can protect yourself from the unpredictable judgments of others. But the most essential relationships require us to surrender some of that control. I’m still learning how to

live with that compromise, but I now understand that there’s more to be gained from revealing my real, imperfect self than from wasting my adolescence chasing an impossible ideal.

Milan Seeff is a sophomore at Avenues the World School in New York City. He enjoys cooking, exercise, jiu-jitsu, and playing the violin.