How to looksmax: what works, what doesn't, and what causes harm

Looksmaxxing means two different things online. One is structured self-care: sleep, skin, fitness, grooming and style, approached with the discipline people bring to training. The other is a forum culture that ranks faces on a ladder, treats bone structure as destiny and promotes practices that injure people. This guide is about the first, and it is honest about the second. Where the evidence for a tip is strong, it says so; where it is weak or absent, it says that too.

1. 1Measure first. Take a baseline photo in fixed conditions and measure what a front photo can actually measure.
2. 2Fix the fundamentals. Sleep, daily sunscreen, a retinoid for adults, not smoking, and a healthy body composition.
3. 3Change the fast, reversible things. Haircut, brows, beard, skin routine, clothes and colours.
4. 4Give each change eight to twelve weeks and compare photos taken the same way.
5. 5Leave procedures to last, and to a specialist. Know what a procedure changes and what it cannot.
6. 6Skip anything that injures you. Bone smashing, self-injected fillers and unregulated peptides are not a lane; they are harm.

Looksmaxxing communities split changes into softmaxxing — anything reversible and non-medical — and hardmaxxing — anything permanent or medical. The split is useful, with one correction: the most dangerous practices promoted online are not medical at all. They belong in a third column.

Softmaxxing: reversible, cheap, and where most of the change is

Softmaxxing is unglamorous and it works. The reason is that most of how a face is read is not bone. It is skin evenness and colour, how rested the eyes look, hair and facial hair, expression, posture, and the colours and clothes around the face. All of those can change, reversibly, for little money. The glow up guide lays the same levers out as a week, month and 90-day plan, and the guide to being prettier explains why each one changes how people respond.

Hardmaxxing: permanent, medical, and a specialist's decision

Fillers, toxin injections, implants and surgery do change specific features, and for some adults with a clear, specific concern they are a reasonable choice. They are also medical procedures with complications, recovery and costs that recur. The useful questions are which measurement a procedure changes, what it cannot change, and whether the feature you want to change is the one actually driving how you look. That is covered below, by region.

Practices that cause harm

Some practices promoted in looksmaxxing spaces are not a riskier version of a treatment; they are injury. Bone smashing — deliberately striking the face in the hope that bone will remodel larger — can fracture facial bones and cause permanent asymmetry, and there is no evidence it produces the promised result. Maxillofacial surgeons have published warnings about it. A 2026 analysis of social media counted 2,518 mentions of bone smashing over 12 months, with an estimated reach of 32 million; about 98% of the bone smashing content was by men, and most of the sentiment was neutral or positive. The same analysis described how posts normalise risk with pseudoscientific language. Self-injected fillers bought online and unregulated peptides or tanning injections carry risks of infection, vascular injury and unknown contents. A 2026 commentary in the journal Pediatrics described looksmaxxing, from mewing to peptides, as an emerging pediatric concern. None of these belongs in a plan.

Measuring first stops you spending months on a feature that was never the issue, and it gives you something to compare against. The catch is that a front-facing photo can measure some things well and some not at all, and most looksmaxxing content does not separate them.

Take the baseline photo with the camera at eye level, about an arm's length or more away, in even daylight facing a window, hair pulled back, neutral expression. Every later photo has to match those conditions, or you will be measuring the camera rather than your face. The photogenic guide shows how much lens distance and camera height change a face on their own.

Skin: sunscreen and a retinoid

Skin is the fundamental with the best trials. In a randomised trial in Australia, adults who applied sunscreen daily for four and a half years showed less skin ageing than those who used it at their own discretion. In a controlled trial of retinol in older adults, fine wrinkles improved after 24 weeks compared with a placebo lotion. Even skin tone matters more than most people expect: in experiments, the evenness of skin colour alone shifted how old, healthy and attractive faces looked. A retinoid is for adults and is avoided in pregnancy; start slowly, because irritation is common.

Body fat and the face

Body fat changes the soft tissue over the jaw and cheeks, not the bone underneath. A study of perceived facial adiposity — how much weight people see in a face — found it predicted how healthy and attractive the face was rated. That is a mechanism, not a target: there is no body fat percentage at which a jaw appears, and chasing a number is how looksmaxxing slides into disordered eating. The jawline guide covers the layers — bone, muscle, fat and skin — and why there is no magic percentage.

Sleep

In a controlled experiment published in the BMJ, the same young adults were photographed after normal sleep and after sleep deprivation, and observers rated the sleep-deprived photos as less healthy, more tired and less attractive. Sleep is the fundamental that shows fastest, and it costs nothing.

Smoking

In a study of 79 pairs of identical twins in which one twin smoked, or had smoked at least five years longer, blinded judges scored the smoking twins worse on lower lid bags, cheek bags, nasolabial folds, lip wrinkles and jowls — mostly in the middle and lower face. Because identical twins share their genes, the comparison takes genetics out of the explanation.

Grooming and style change how a face reads the same day, and all of them can be undone. A haircut chosen for your face shape moves volume to where the outline is narrow; tidy brows frame the eyes; a beard adds length or width wherever it grows; colours near the face that suit your colouring change how even the skin looks. The hairstyles for face shape guide shows where volume goes for each shape.

Mewing

There is no evidence that mewing reshapes an adult face. Tongue and lip posture influence how the jaws develop in children, but the adult jaw has stopped growing. Pressing the tongue to the palate changes head and neck posture and tightens the area under the chin while you hold it, which explains most mewing before-and-after photos, together with lighting and camera angle. It is harmless as a posture habit and useless as a bone treatment.

Facial exercises and jaw trainers

A systematic review of facial exercises for rejuvenation found the evidence too weak to support them: few studies, small samples and weak designs. A later pilot in middle-aged women reported fuller-looking cheeks after a 20-week programme, but it had no control group and did not measure the jaw. Jaw trainers and hard chewing gum promise a bigger masseter; the trial evidence does not show one, and the load on the jaw joint is real. The facial symmetry exercises guide and the jawline guide go through the studies.

Looksmaxxing products and supplements

Most "looksmaxxing product" lists are affiliate catalogues. The two product categories with strong trial evidence for appearance are the ones above: a broad-spectrum sunscreen every day and a retinoid at night for adults. A simple cleanser and moisturiser, grooming tools and a good haircut complete the list. Supplements promising jawlines, hunter eyes or taller growth do not have evidence behind them, and peptides or tanning injections sold through social media are unregulated. This guide recommends no brands and has no affiliate links.

Two practical rules follow. Change one or two things at a time, so you know which one worked. And compare photos no more often than every eight to twelve weeks, taken in the same conditions; daily checking mostly measures lighting and mood. The glow up guide turns this into a week, month and 90-day plan.

A procedure changes one region and leaves everything else as it was. Before considering one, it helps to know which measurement a procedure actually moves. The table maps regions to the procedures that change them; it is not a recommendation, and a specialist examination is the only way to know whether a procedure suits a particular face.

The simulation pages render a procedure on your own photo as an AI illustration. They are useful for seeing whether a change in one region is the change you had in mind; they are not a surgical outcome, and they cannot show risk, recovery or how your tissue will respond. People seeking cosmetic procedures have much higher rates of body dysmorphic disorder than the general population, which is one more reason the decision belongs in a consultation, not a comment thread.

Looksmaxxing forums are overwhelmingly male, but nothing in the evidence-based part of it is. Skin, sleep, sun damage, smoking and body composition work the same way for everyone. The differences are in the levers. Many women have more tools around the eyes and skin — makeup, brow shaping, hair styling — and research on facial contrast suggests why makeup works, and why its effect depends on age. Many men have beard shape and neckline, and fade height and hair length on top. Men's grooming guides tend to underrate skin and overrate the jaw; women's beauty content tends to do the reverse with products.

PSL is a 1–10 rating scale that came out of looksmaxxing forums, where it is assigned by other users' votes. A computed score from facial measurements is a different thing: it is a weighted combination of measurements, and the weighting is a choice somebody made. The PSL scale page explains where the scale came from and why the two numbers are not the same quantity. The looksmax AI guide explains why two apps give the same face two different scores.

The one legitimate use of any score is comparing your own photos, taken the same way, over time. A score is not a rank against other people, and it is not a measure of your worth. Ranking faces on a ladder is the part of looksmaxxing culture this guide does not reproduce.

Appearance does matter socially, and pretending otherwise is part of why looksmaxxing content finds an audience. A large meta-analysis found that people agree, within and across cultures, about who is attractive, and that attractive children and adults are judged and treated more positively on average. But an average difference across many people is not a ceiling on any one person, and the fatalistic reading — that looks decide everything and effort is pointless — is not what the research shows. It is also a belief that makes people less likely to do the things that help.

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance that other people do not notice or see as minor. A systematic review estimated it affects about 1.9% of adults and 2.2% of adolescents in the community, and far more people in cosmetic settings: around 13% in general cosmetic surgery and 20% among people seeking rhinoplasty. Signs that looksmaxxing has stopped being self-care:

• ✓Checking mirrors, photos or scores for hours a day, or avoiding them entirely.
• ✓Rating yourself or others constantly, or seeking out forums that rate faces.
• ✓Skipping school, work or social plans because of how you look.
• ✓Planning procedures to fix something that people close to you cannot see.
• ✓Trying risky practices after being told they cause harm.

1. 1Week 0: take a baseline photo in fixed conditions and measure what a front photo can measure. Write down what you want to change and why.
2. 2Weeks 1–2: fix sleep timing, start daily sunscreen, get a haircut chosen for your face shape, tidy brows or beard.
3. 3Weeks 2–4: add a simple skin routine; adults can add a retinoid slowly. Sort out clothes that fit.
4. 4Ongoing: exercise and eat in a way you can sustain, without a body fat target.
5. 5Weeks 8–12: retake the photo in the same conditions and compare. Keep what worked; drop what did not.
6. 6Only after that: if one specific feature still bothers you, learn what changes it and book a consultation with a qualified specialist.