Stephen Imeh needed to make historical past. He’d by no means actually dreamt of being an influencer, however in April he seen a possibility to interrupt by.
There have been just about no looksmaxxers—individuals who spend monumental quantities of effort to glow up—who regarded like him, and he needed to vary 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 school 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 arduous r,” he says. One other remark recommended Imeh “just be white,” or “jbw” because it’s identified 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 distinguished 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 children,” and he wasn’t becoming in. He determined to seek for self-improvement ideas on-line. “I googled ‘Learn how to look higher’ and the primary factor was looksmaxxing,” he says. Strategies included a tongue train known as mewing, figuring out, more healthy consuming habits, even cosmetic surgery. Imeh solely lasted two weeks earlier than he known 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 develop into extra standard than ever, and Imeh, at the moment finding out to be a speech therapist, needed to offer it one other shot. Perhaps he could possibly be the face of a Black looksmaxxers pattern, he reasoned. However he felt the ecosystem had develop into much more poisonous in his absence. “The neighborhood earlier than, it wasn’t as dangerous. But it surely spawned a brand new wave of individuals.”
The ordeal in April was a wake-up name. As we speak, Imeh posts anti-looksmaxxing content material to his 36,000 followers. “I’m clearly not included on this neighborhood, so why would I maintain making an attempt to contribute?” His movies poke fun on the motion’s flaws and foolish status markers, like having the ability to “mog” somebody, which suggests you’re the higher trying 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 disorder content.) “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 occasions.
Looksmaxxing, which originated in on-line boards like 4chan a decade in the past, suggests {that a} man’s success in life is instantly 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 could have, the upper you’re on the “bodily sexual seems” scale. On message boards, looksmaxxers use codes to fee different males on their journey. Younger males check 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-about among the many most fascinating of the pack. Most of the motion’s goals align with the wave of manosphere ideology that’s reanimating American society underneath the Trump administration, the place hypermasculinity has develop into each a efficiency and a weapon of oppression.
