Remember when a man using moisturizer was enough to earn him the title of metrosexual? The word feels almost prehistoric now—a relic of a time when men having an interest in fashion, skincare or anything vaguely associated with femininity was treated as a cultural development worth naming. Somewhere between the rise of TikTok and the discovery of retinol, the ‘metrosexual’ disappeared. In his place came the performative man, and evidently, he has a 12-step skincare routine, a gym membership, a collection of expensive fragrances and a concerning amount of knowledge about his facial bone structure.
The modern man is no longer simply interested in looking good; he is interested in optimizing himself. Enter looksmaxxing, the internet phenomenon dedicated to maximizing physical attractiveness through everything from skincare and fitness to facial symmetry, jawline exercises and increasingly extreme attempts to alter one’s appearance. What might begin as an interest in self-improvement can quickly become an obsessive project of measuring, correcting and perfecting every perceived physical flaw. Because apparently, simply being a person with a face is no longer enough.
And when have men ever been not intense about anything?
There is something almost impressive about the way male beauty culture has managed to turn vanity into a competitive sport. Women have spent generations being told that their appearance is a reflection of their worth, that beauty is a responsibility and that looking effortless requires an exhausting amount of effort. Now, as men enter the same arena, the language is noticeably different. It is not vanity, it is discipline. It is not insecurity, it is self-improvement. It is not an obsession with appearance; it is optimization.
The metrosexual was once defined by his willingness to embrace interests traditionally associated with women; however, the performative man has found a way to enjoy those same interests without having to surrender any claim to masculinity. Skincare becomes maintenance, fashion becomes personal branding and fragrance becomes a signature. Even the most elaborate beauty routine can be justified as a form of self-respect. The difference is not necessarily what men are doing, but how carefully those behaviors are repackaged.
Social media has made the display nearly impossible to ignore. The performative man is not simply a man who enjoys nice things. He is a man whose interests seem to have been selected with an audience in mind. The carefully curated wardrobe, the morning gym routine, the record collection, the film camera, the expensive coffee and the perfectly styled hair. Even his hobbies appear to have been assembled to communicate that he is cultured, disciplined, attractive and just interesting enough to be desirable. There is a fine line between having a personality and having a personal brand, and some men seem determined to erase that line entirely.
“Looksmaxxing” takes this performance a step further. It transforms the body into a project that is never quite finished. There is always another feature to improve, another product to purchase or another routine to perfect. The same internet that tells women they are never quite beautiful enough now offers men an increasingly technical vocabulary for their own insecurities. Facial ratios, bone structure, body fat percentages and aesthetic rankings turn attractiveness into something that can supposedly be calculated and controlled. Beauty becomes less about personal expression and more about achieving an arbitrary standard of physical perfection.
Of course, none of this means that men should be discouraged from caring about their appearance. There is nothing inherently wrong with skincare, fashion, fitness or wanting to feel attractive. The issue is the intensity with which these practices can become tied to personal worth, particularly when online communities encourage people to view their bodies as collections of flaws requiring correction. It is difficult to call something self-improvement when the underlying message is that the self, as it currently exists, is inadequate.
There is also a familiar gendered contradiction at play. Women’s beauty routines have long been dismissed as frivolous, superficial or evidence of insecurity despite the enormous social pressure placed on women to maintain them. Yet when men adopt similar practices, they are often framed as disciplined, ambitious or simply taking care of themselves. The beauty industry has spent decades convincing women that their appearance is a project. It seems the men have finally received the assignment, and predictably, some have turned it into a competition.
Perhaps the metrosexual did not die so much as evolve into something more palatable. The man who once risked being labeled feminine for caring about his appearance has become the man who can spend hours perfecting it while insisting that the entire exercise is about discipline and self-mastery. Masculinity has not necessarily abandoned its boundaries; it has simply found new ways to decorate them.
The performative man is not defined by his skincare routine or his interest in fashion, he is defined by the pressure to make every aspect of himself legible as desirable. In a culture where even attractiveness has become something to optimize, the question is no longer whether men are allowed to be pretty, it is whether anyone is allowed to just exist without turning themselves into a project.
Charlotte McDaniel can be contacted at
cm1621@usnh.edu
