In her essay, 'The Captivating Derangement of the Looksmaxxing Movement', Becca Rothfield discusses and critiques the online subculture of pursuing physical perfection. The modern movement of ‘looksmaxxing’ created by Calvicular, a social media influencer and twitch streamer, is well-known for his excessive use of making his appearance utter perfection and the overindulgent ways in which he is willing to make himself look perfect. ‘Looksmaxxing’ is a practice that deliberately enhances one's physical appearance to achieve maximum attractiveness through increasingly extreme practices, ranging from skincare and fitness to hormone injections and cosmetic procedures. Looksmaxxing has spread throughout the social media realm and has made its way for those who are willing to partake in this phenomenon to better their physical attractiveness. The author points out how this fails to comprehend the true meaning behind beauty as there are numerous other factors that play a part such as whether one has social, verbal and expressive cues that play a part in how we really view attractiveness. Looksmaxxing has turned into an obsessive almost stifling formula in which people are willing to put themselves into harm's way in order for one to become the precipice of attractiveness. This essay provides an entry point in understanding how media reshapes perception, identity and embodiment.
McLuhan's argument that the ‘medium is the message’, provides a lens to understand this mediated effect on individuals who engage in looksmaxxing. It can be understood that our environments are surrounded and mainly concentrated with media platforms and society dominated by media awareness is going to shape the perception of the people. He also illustrates that there are different levels of media that people are able to participate in and how media extends human senses far beyond what the surface-level visuals they view. This relates back to looksmaxxing as from McLuhan’s teachings, this phenomenon is not just a trend but a catalyst of the new digital media domain where social media brings about a sense of competition and comparison amongst people and restricts inner qualities of people, focusing on the external, physical aspects of the body. The body can also be seen as the medium because the way people treat their bodies is a way to measure and objectify and within this meaning, identity is reduced to visual data only.
McLuhan uses the example of electric lightning to explain that the medium without context is just lightning, meaning it is only information. Thus, it is the context within the medium that provides the actual impact, as is the case in social media platforms. These platforms through their material, curate forms of self that are influenced by the material that viewers watch and engage with. Lookmaxxing is an example of a kind of curtating of identities where people tend to perceive beauty through the content that they are exposed to. The concept of physical appearance has a new meaning as viewers normalize having chiseled jaws and going to any lengths to achieve it so they are considered beautiful.
Another aspect that McLuhan explains is the concept of human sensorium which is the balance and hierarchy of the senses. Visual and auditory senses help people establish a sense of reality, but the paradox is that electric media has the potential to create an artificial sense of reality. Media targets our entire sensorium and thus reshapes it where individuals develop an identity that may not be true if there was no viewing of such media. Looksmaxing is a classic example of such distorted reality which has changed the depiction of beauty standards. The body becomes a curated image which can be edited and optimized to the standards that have been set for society through such social media trends. Rothfield notes that such practices have made racism, cruelty, use of slurs and other un-imaginable acts of discrimination to become acceptable as people like Clavicular, get fame through being at the top of news feeds and dominating algorithms (2026).
The phenomenon of looksmaxxing can be understood in the realm of the 'Canadian discourse of technology’, which identifies technology as being composed of social and psychic space. The social space is the material environment of everyday interactions and social practices whereas the psychic space is related to the perceptions and shaping of cognitions in everyday life. Drawing on this concept, looksmaxxing can be understood as a system of shaping and embodiment of values that normalize constant comparison making it a social space and creating ideologies of beauty that have been constructed through the psychic space. In this trending culture of beauty standards, technology’s impact is embodied showing how individuals of society perceive themselves and our relation to others.
McLuhan helps us to better understand that looksmaxxing is not just rooted in narcissism, but in the global media environment that shapes people’s values. The media don’t reflect beauty standards, they are the ones who actively produce them. When we let the media re-shape what beauty standards are and the norms of attractiveness, in reality we lose what it means to actually be human. Looksmaxxing displays a dilemma of agency as well, where it relates to providing empowerment in the form of taking control of your physical appearance and having the right to look beautiful on the one hand but at the same time it is reshaping and conforming individuals to beauty standards that are completely constructed and have put restrictions on how people think about it. Thus, this kind of medium does not just enable action, it is actually re-structuring it. It is integral to analyze trends like looksmaxxing, through the lens of scholars like McLuhan, which provides us a way to understand the shaping of identities and perception is the new age of digital media.
References:
Herman, A. (2026, March 30). Marshall McLuhan: The medium theory of media ecologies/environments from The Gutenberg Galaxy to Understanding Media [PowerPoint slides]. CS304B Canadian Communication Thought, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Miroshnichenko, A. (2016). Extrapolating on McLuhan: How media environments of the given, the represented, and the induced shape and reshape our sensorium. Philosophies, 1(3), 170-189.
Rothfield, B. (2026, March 7). The captivating derangement of the looksmaxxing movement. The New Yorker.
Hey, I really like your post, it is a thoughtful and well-developed application of Marshall McLuhan to the looksmaxxing phenomenon, particularly in how you frame the body itself as a “medium.” That’s a sharp insight. One area to refine is precision: the argument sometimes repeats rather than deepens, especially around “media shaping perception.” You could strengthen it by pushing for a clearer claim that looksmaxxing doesn’t only reflect society's distorted beauty standards; it operationalizes them through algorithmic visibility and reward systems. Your use of the sensorium is strong, but it would benefit from a concrete example (e.g., filters, editing tools). Overall, this is a really solid analysis that would be even stronger with tighter focus.
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