Stephen Imeh wished to make historical past. He’d by no means actually dreamt of being an influencer, however in April he seen a possibility to interrupt via.
There have been just about no looksmaxxers—individuals who spend monumental quantities of effort to glow up—who seemed like him, and he wished to alter that. So he made a plan. Imeh posted a exercise video on TikTok, with plans for extra, and up to date his bio to “FIRST BLACK LOOKSMAXXER.”
However as quickly because the 20-year-old Houston-based faculty pupil posted the video, he was bombarded by racist feedback. “I don’t assume even an hour glided by and I used to be getting feedback like, you’re a monkey, you’re an n-word exhausting r,” he says. One other remark prompt Imeh “simply be white,” or “jbw” because it’s recognized in incel circles. None of it made sense to him. “I used to be like, wait, what?”
It wasn’t Imeh’s first encounter with looksmaxxing, the web motion most outstanding amongst younger males that emerged from incel tradition and took off on TikTok in 2023, which promotes maximizing your bodily attractiveness. In 2022, Imeh was a junior at a predominantly white highschool in Texas that solely had “three different Black youngsters,” and he wasn’t becoming in. He determined to seek for self-improvement suggestions on-line. “I googled ‘Methods to look higher’ and the primary factor was looksmaxxing,” he says. Solutions included a tongue train referred to as mewing, figuring out, more healthy consuming habits, even cosmetic surgery. Imeh solely lasted two weeks earlier than he referred to as it quits. “It was kinda cringe.” However as a result of it occurred the yr earlier than looksmaxxing blew up on TikTok, he says, “I didn’t inform anybody about it.”
Within the three years since that have, looksmaxxing has turn out to be extra widespread than ever, and Imeh, at present learning to be a speech therapist, wished to present it one other shot. Possibly he may very well be the face of a Black looksmaxxers pattern, he reasoned. However he felt the ecosystem had turn out to be much more poisonous in his absence. “The neighborhood earlier than, it wasn’t as unhealthy. Nevertheless it spawned a brand new wave of individuals.”
The ordeal in April was a wake-up name. Right now, Imeh posts anti-looksmaxxing content material to his 36,000 followers. “I’m clearly not included on this neighborhood, so why would I preserve attempting to contribute?” His movies poke enjoyable on the motion’s flaws and foolish standing markers, like having the ability to “mog” somebody, which implies you’re the higher wanting particular person in a side-by-side comparability. (That is his fifth TikTok account after being reported by members of SkinnyTok for additionally calling out pro-eating dysfunction content material.) “It’s really easy to rage-bait” looksmaxxers, he says. “I’d put up, ‘That is what I do to get my pores and skin clear,’ then somebody will remark ‘Oh, you’ll be able to by no means get your pores and skin clear since you’re a Black slur, slur, slur,” he says over FaceTime, repeating the phrase half a dozen instances.
Looksmaxxing, which originated in on-line boards like 4chan a decade in the past, suggests {that a} man’s success in life is immediately tied to how good he seems. The aim of the motion is to extend your total “sexual market worth,” and the extra Eurocentric options you might have, the upper you’re on the “bodily sexual seems” scale. On message boards, looksmaxxers use codes to charge different males on their journey. Younger males confer with the method as “ascending,” the place they work to achieve a chiseled jawline, glass-smooth pores and skin, and “hunter eyes” (almond-like contour, deep-set place, low set eyebrows). Those that have earned “Chad” standing are thought of among the many most fascinating of the pack. Lots of the motion’s goals align with the wave of manosphere ideology that’s reanimating American society below the Trump administration, the place hypermasculinity has turn out to be each a efficiency and a weapon of oppression.
