Injections, Bone Hammering and the Pursuit of Peak Male Beauty

What It Covers

NYT reporter Joe Bernstein examines looksmaxing — an online subculture of mostly young men pursuing extreme physical enhancement through hormones, experimental peptides, and facial bone-tapping — tracing how 20-year-old influencer Braden Peters, known as Clavicular, propelled this niche forum culture into mainstream pop culture awareness.

Key Questions Answered

• •Looksmaxing Origins: The movement emerged from incel culture but diverged on one key point: rather than accepting unattractiveness as a permanent life sentence, looksmaxers believe physical shortcomings can be overcome through extreme intervention. The goal shifts from attracting women to achieving male status — called "ascending" — measured by outcompeting other men in appearance, a concept called "mogging."
• •Clavicular's Supplement Stack: Braden Peters, age 20, publicly documents taking testosterone, experimental GLP peptide retrotide (sourced from a Chinese pharmacy while still in clinical trials), a beta-blocker to offset cardiovascular strain, Dutasteride and Minoxidil for hair retention, Melanotan for accelerated tanning, 300–500mg melatonin as an antioxidant, glutathione, NAD+, and human growth hormone simultaneously.
• •Radicalization Pathway: Peters began testosterone use at age 14, ordered it online, cycled through parental confiscations, and eventually secured a PO box to continue. His parents ultimately stopped intervening. This pattern — hyperfixated teenager discovering pharmaceutical "cheat codes" online, facing no effective guardrails — represents a replicable pathway that the looksmaxing community actively documents and encourages for younger members.
• •Beauty Standard as Racism: The looksmaxing community's explicit physical ideal centers on white actor Matt Bomer's facial ratios, including pupil distance, mid-face length, and eye slant. A Black creator who attempted to produce looksmaxing content was racially harassed out of the community. Peters himself uses racial slurs on stream, dismissing criticism as overreaction rather than engaging with the harm caused.
• •Cultural Mirror Effect: The looksmaxing movement reflects broader societal trends already normalized elsewhere: GLP drugs taken by people without medical need, record male cosmetic surgery rates, and image-based platforms that quantify human attractiveness through swiping. Bernstein argues young men are not inventing a new pathology but rather applying existing cultural logic — that appearance determines worth — more explicitly and systematically than previous generations did.