Host: "Looksmaxxing isn't just about diet and exercise or choosing the right outfit. Guys who want to Mog, which is showing other guys up because they're better looking, are willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve what they see as physical perfection. Michael Halpin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, who has conducted research on an online looksmaxxing community that receives 6 million unique visitors per month. He and his co-authors Analyze more than 8000 discussion board comments, and he joins me on the line. Michael, great to have you on the program."

Michael Halpin: "Great to be here. Thank you very much for having me."

Host: "Help us understand how does Looksmaxxing fit into the quote unquote manosphere?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, well, two ways really. So Looksmaxxing is a manosphere community like other manosphere communities for white nationalists, red pillars, men's rights activists, incels. So it is an online community where men meet, they exchange tips. Those tips primarily are on improving their physical appearance. And while they're doing that, they're also talking about women in society in many ways. So arguing that women only pursue men based on their sexuality and that they only pursue the most physically attractive men, which is very similar to other several other manosphere communities. And like other manosphere communities, believing that women, feminists, progressives are waging a systematic war against men and boys, men have been losing their civil rights and women have too much rights, too much agency. Besides that, looksmaxxing is also a practice, and it's a practice done in many manosphere communities. So white nationalist communities, incel communities, red pill communities. And it's this idea that we reap gains from being physically attractive. And so it's in every man's interest to be as physically attractive as possible, to receive the advantages that you get from being physically attractive. So kind of the easiest way to think about it is that it's a manosphere community. There are practices that have left that community and gone into other manosphere communities, and then there's looksmaxxing practices that have gotten very popular and have extended well outside the manosphere. And they're on TikTok, YouTube, people who may not even be very familiar with the manosphere are familiar with some of these looksmaxxing practices, like mewing and bone smashing."

Host: "All right. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But help us understand, obviously, one thing's clear. These are men who are participating in the group. Help us understand a little bit more about the demographics. What's the age group? Is it different ethnicities as well?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah. So we don't have exact data on this because there's some anonymity with all these online communities and the data that I've looked at, the age ranges that we're seeing is boys who are as young as like 13, 14. So they're just, you know, in the midst of puberty, really very popular amongst men who were 18 to 22. So your university age students. So something from junior high to university is a very popular age group. And then all the way up to men who are in their 30s, men who are getting close to their 40s. So some of these men have, say, gone through a divorce and they're looking to looksmaxxing as their thinking to get back on the dating market racially and ethnically. It is also surprisingly diverse. So I think a lot of people have this mischaracterisation mixed characterization of these communities as being predominantly young white men, and that's not the case. We see a lot of black men participating in these communities Asian men, South Asian men. They are quite ethnically and racially diverse."

Host: "Talk about 13 year olds. One has to ask, how does a 13 year old get pulled into something like this?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah. Great question. Great question. So as I mentioned earlier, one of the things about Looksmaxxing is Looksmaxxing is not just a community, it's a set of practices. So things like, you know, this surgery works for you or press your tongue against the roof of your mouth. In this way, you'll be more attractive. And those practices have gone viral in many social media environments. So you can be a 13 year old on TikTok and see a video about bone smashing or a video about mewing. And that brings you to this community. Similarly, someone might get exposure to another Looksmaxxing or another manosphere community, like, say, a men's rights community, or they might look at a white nationalist community because they think it's edgy and like a forbidden thing to do when you're 13 and find exposure to these communities through through that way. The other thing is that, you know, kids who are in young men, boys who are in junior high are absolutely talking about these communities. So these are these are things that, you know, they were popular in junior high. Looksmaxxing was popular in junior highs before professors and media personalities were talking about it. So it's something that's been a part of their culture for a while. Unfortunately."

Host: "You talked about, you know, how young these men are. You mentioned puberty. Adolescence is a time when, you know, is it time for your identity to be created? You know, when we're trying to learn about ourselves, I am curious, are these groups giving men a sort of a path to sort of figure out who they are?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, they're giving them a pass to figure out who they are. And that path, I think, is, you know, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, sure, in a moment. That path is not a good path and it's not a good path in terms of how they see women, how they see race and racism. And it's not a good path in terms of how they see their own body and self-worth. I think one of the things that these Looksmaxxing communities are doing is they're providing some guidance, some instructions for men and boys who maybe feel like they're not getting that information from other resources they're providing answers for, for problems that young men and boys feel that they face, that maybe they're not hearing answers, better answers from other sources. And they take this issue of Lookism very seriously. And Lookism is like a really very real form of bias and discrimination. It's been studied by psychologists, by sociologists. We do unfairly judge people based on if they're physically attractive or not. And they take that seriously. And I think they're one of the few forums in society where you see a discourse around that. And we could probably all be better about engaging with this idea of lookism to provide some kind of counter responses to what manosphere is giving these young boys."

Host: "You talk about, you know, the incel groups, the white nationalists, there is a lot of noise. There's also a lot of conflicting messages within the within these groups as well in terms of the bigger picture of the manosphere, help us understand what connects them all together."

Michael Halpin: "Yeah. I mean, in a nutshell, what connects all these groups in manosphere? They do have some contradictory views, as you know, you know, some groups, it's all about being white. Some groups, they reject section sex, sex and sexuality. Some groups it's about obtaining social status, you know, looking like you're wealthy. And then looksmaxxing is about physical appearance. So they, they seem contradictory or diverse at first glance. The thing that's the thread that unites them all and is, I would argue, is misogyny. So the thing that coheres all these communities together is that they think that women are sexual objects. They think that women are animalistic, that they make decisions about who they date based on biology. Women do not have the same cognitive potential or abilities as men do, and that women have been given too many rights, they've been given too much agency, and we need to heavily restrict women's rights and agency. So no more women going to university, women not working in employment, particularly in fields where men want to dominate and women not being able to seek any sort of resources through divorce or divorce laws. So a really the thing that keeps them together is this idea of constricting women's rights and the idea that women are not agents the same way that men are."

Host: "In a weird way, one could look at it and be like, you know, the the views here are quite black and white. And, you know, in a world where there is so much noise, for a young man trying to navigate the world, this is a place where they can cut that out. How do you how do you view that?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. You know, all these, like, the world is full of complex problems right now. Turn on the news today. There's going to be so many complex problems. We're living in complex and troubling times. Many people are struggling. These communities give people simple answers to these complex questions. So, you know, young men and boys who might be struggling in many ways, they're going to these communities and they're finding a very simplistic, answer to all their problems, which is blame women, blame progressives. And it's summing up, really complicated things in really digestible format. The other thing is, is that these communities end up functioning like an echo chamber. So you think about how you have discussions with people, around your kitchen table at a bar, in university classes, all these other forms. One thing that social media does and, you know, not just the community that I study, but many other social media platforms, is that they penalize or ostracize people with divergent views. So if you're in these communities and you're trying to provide some nuance, or you're trying to provide some contradictory evidence or explanations, you can get banned from these communities, you can get silenced. And what you have left over is just simplistic. People providing black and white answers to complex problems."

Host: "All right. I want to shift gears and have, how about a bigger conversation that looks maxing? You know, when someone goes into, one of these channels, these forums, what are they what are they looking at? Is it, you know, from what I understand, people are uploading photos of themselves opening themselves up to sort of conversation. Helpful, I don't know, but help us understand."

Michael Halpin: "Yeah. I will say, like, sometimes you you do see some helpful advice and encouragement on there, but by and large, it is, negative and hostile content. The communities themselves, the community that I study. So there's looks, Maxine, on TikTok that looks like TikTok and looks Maxine on YouTube that looks like YouTube. The community that I studied, looks very similar to Reddit. It would be, like a, an analogous website. So you, you get into the community, you see a discussion board. There's topics on the discussion board. There's two main discussion boards. One of those is a ratings discussion board. And so in the ratings discussion board, you post your face. So I post my face from like 4 or 5 different angles. And then other users are going to tell me how attractive I am usually on a ten point scale. So they'd be like, oh, you're a four, you're a five, you're a 5.5. And then they would tell me what surgeries I needed, what hormones I needed to take, how I should get on steroids or, you know, shave my head or grow up my beard. And then there's another discussion board, which is just looks, Maxine, tips and ideas. So in that board, men are getting young men and boys are getting, information on where to buy things like anabolic steroids, where to buy hormones, what's black market? Gray market websites. So illegal. Some illegal, some illegal websites, they can buy, drugs and hormones from. Which surgical procedures people have gotten and how they worked for them. So things like rhinoplasty ease jaw surgeries, leg lengthening surgeries. And so all the tips and tricks are in this discussion board."

Host: "Just to be clear, these are not experts in any of these industries. This is, you know, people who have either tried it out and kind of are just kind of laying it out there."

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, I would say that they're like the antithesis of experts. So there's, there's no medical professionals, health professionals that are engaging in these communities. When health professionals and medical professionals find out about them, like the orthodontic community found out about Looksmaxxing a few years ago, they were very concerned and critical of it. Instead, what you have is guys who are, you know, 18, 22, 14, 27 doing things like buying hormones from international black market websites, injecting themselves with those hormones, and then letting other guys know if they worked or not. So in a sense, their expertise comes from treating their body like a petri dish and reporting those results back to the community. And because they, like many of these other communities, think that science is against them, that science is propaganda, they treat this data as more trustworthy than they treat data from studies in academic journals. So they're big consumers of self-experimentation. And that's, of course, one of the harms of these communities is that people are putting products into their body with little knowledge of how it's impacting them, little knowledge of what's actually in that product. And with no medical advice or oversight, providing them any guidance or to look out for any warning signs."

Host: "The physical harm or the or the risk there is, is quite obvious. I can't imagine the physiological harms as well, but one has to ask how is this different? What we're seeing in these in these forms on the internet that's specifically targeting men, different from sort of the societal pressures that women have had to face for hundreds of years."

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, I think in many ways, it's really similar to what women have had to face. And I think that we've, you know, we've arguably normalized a lot of the pressures that young women and girls have to go through. I think. I don't think that we've done a good job on dealing with the kind of popular cultural issues or images about women's bodies, young women's bodies, how women should look, how they're judged on their appearance. I don't think that we've done a good job of that. I think that we have to do a much bigger, better job of that. That said, people are probably aware that that's a problem for young women and girls. They're probably I have a young daughter, like, I'm aware of these issues as a father. I know the conversations that I'm going to have to have with my daughter, you know, moms and dads out there, they, they know about things like body image, body issues, self-esteem, eating disorders, the, the use, excessive use of makeup has become tremendously popular over the last few years and how women are engaged and evaluated over social media. So I think one thing is, is that we do know it is an issue for women and girls. I think the thing is, is it's become an issue for young men and boys. And many people are unaware of that, that young men and boys are getting similar messages, that they're not attractive enough, that they're getting judged based on their bodies. The only thing matters is how good you are and that you should take you should do whatever intervention to your body you can do to make yourself more attractive. So they're getting that negative self-worth message that many women get. And on top of that, they're getting it in really misogynistic, racist communities. At the same time."

Host: "Michael, very quickly, I want to be clear that, you know, this is a very, very small percentage of men when we talk specifically about looksmaxxing. And so I don't want to come across as alarmist, but what does this cultural movement reveal about young men right now?"

Michael Halpin: "Yeah, I think it reveals a few and I totally I agree. Don't be alarmist. It is. We're always dealing with subpopulations. And that's a great thing to think about. I think it reveals a few things. One thing is that I think people are not appreciating that many young men and boys are getting information about manhood development, what it is to be a man in very extremist communities, misogynistic communities and racist communities. And those communities are providing information and education, and they are met with relatively little resistance or counter-response, I think because people are not aware of how popular these communities are. I think the other thing is that it's revealing that young men and boys are having like a lot of body image and self-esteem issues that we haven't been taking seriously, and we need to take more seriously. And on a broader level, I think people, you know, I think younger people are really aware of this. They've grown up in the age of social media. They've they've been judged on their appearance for long periods of time. But is, you know, is, is a wake up call that we need to take. Lookism is a form of prejudice and discrimination. Seriously. And we need to talk about it seriously. Like we talk about other forms of prejudice, bias and discrimination because we might not be talking about it very much in universities and maybe in the media, but these online communities are certainly talking about it. And if that's the only place that's giving people answers and that's the only answer, they're going to get to these problems."

Host: "Michael, we're going to have to leave it there, but really appreciate your insights on this. Thank you so much."

Michael Halpin: "No problem. Thank you very much for having me."