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Episode 129 -- Looksmaxxing (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-07 06:21:22
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

In this episode, Moira walks Adrian through the strange, disturbing world of looksmaxxing. We try to spend less time asking where this phenomenon comes from, less time gawking at the weird terminology and rituals of this subculture (though we do spend some time, we're only human!)--but our main question is what a phenomenon like looksmaxxing says about masculinity, right-wing gender politics, and heterosexuality.

Comments

James Hultgren

YEAH FIRST COMMENT. I’m excited to learn about how people changing their appearance demonstrates their genetic superiority ❤️

Lu

Of course we remember jordan peterson meat coma. I will not let anyone forget it.

Nick

Came here to say this!

holly

How could we forget jordan peterson meat coma! Also i hadn’t drawn the goop / looksmaxxing parallel but of course clavicular is gwyneth paltrow for boys. Thank for your insights as always <3

MWD

Just wanted to chime in. I avoid all things JP as much as possible, so I'm just imagining what the hell the meat coma is...

Forest 🐞

I was looking for your thoughts on this strand of internet masculinity and I wasn't disappointed! Also, I feel like Jordan Peterson is my wario, my dark mirror. We share many personality points that could have made me a similar person. But the gods blessed me with being a queer trans men and I worked hard to become the person I am today. Nevertheless, the man fascinated me for years now. -j

Dylan Stephens

How little do Moira and Adrian think of us that the Jordan Peterson Meat Coma (bad band name) would not be burned indelibly into our brain space.

Kim

If looksmaxxers wanna have bigger jaw muscles, they should just develop a anxious habit of grinding their teeth and clenching. My dentist says it’s not good but I could be onto something with that.

Kass

I had double jaw surgery 8 months ago. I tried researching the procedure on Reddit but every 3rd post was an incel teenager selfie with the caption “Will this fix my cuck chin?”

Dylan Stephens

God I hate that I know about this stuff but Kik predates that whole “right wing makes their own shitty version of stuff” in the 2020s. I had friends using it when I was a high schooler in like 2012-2013 because “the government couldn’t see your messages on Kil.” Which makes me wonder how long the right wing culture was present/active on there prior the broad shift by the Right away from platforms that wouldn’t let you say the N-word.

Charley

Funny how they are exhausting themselves with unhealthy self objectification and impossible standards of beauty…sort of like women experience under patriarchy 🤔 OK - Moira just said it!!

Kelsey

“He would see faces in movies, on TV In magazines and in books He thought that some of these faces might be right for him And that through the years By keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind Or somewhere in the back of his mind That he might, by force of will Cause his face to approach those of his ideal” —David Byrne predicting looksmaxxing in 1980

Ben Schwabe

If only we could download Susan Faludi's Stiffed into all these poor bastard's heads. I think the patriarchy obviously benefits men in many, many ways but it is also a burden. That constant status monitoring these bros engage in is not a positive experience, and it applies to their whole lives, not just their looks

Kira Hamilton

I took a class on feminist phenomenology in college that rewired my brain for a couple years

daisy

Feeling smart bc I’ve always said that Florida is the Australia of America

A Felt

“It’s spiritually Australian, by which I mean it reminds me of Florida” As a Floridian I must regretfully agree haha

Ren

Literally the first thing I think of when I hear his name.

Julia Pavlick

Oh trust i remember the jordan peterson meat coma

Eleanor Howell

When Moira asked what PSL stood for my brain immediately went “pumpkin spice latte?” 🤦‍♀️😂

Amy

Whoa. Moira's no mobility, no politics, no future speech. Not wrong, but dang.

Jenny

As a figure skating pedant I gotta say... If you have a triple axel as a woman, that'll be one of the first (hardest) jumps in your program, not the last! BUT, what you can do as an end flourish, if you're very based and powerful, is a backflip. With the added bonus of kicking misogynists in the face.

Ren

Hitting Bartky and Sedgwick in the same episode? This is why I love y’all!

Tiaragram

Let me start by saying that I love all of the episodes. I get a dopamine, or some other neurotransmitter, surge when I see a new episode appear. Your takes and analyses are sharp and sparkling and the humor with which you approach is delightful. I have been aware of this subject and the people involved for while now (sad). One thing that always strikes me in all of the right wing, crazy world, MAGA/mano/trad sphere is the hypocrisy. In this episode in particular I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that if this critical measure of looks is part of what puts someone high on the hierarchy for these guys- wth is Andrew Tate doing on top? Should I send him a hammer to start working over his face? Anyway, thank you for another very enjoyable time. Love your content, outlooks, the time you put in, the humor and your voices of comfort and joy.

mink

So kik has actually been around for a very long time. I remember it as the platform where a lot of my friends in middle and high school were groomed. (Edit: in the early 2010s, I looked it up and it was founded in 2010).

testosteronefemme

wait im so confused. kik??? the app for grooming teenagers from troubled homes??? bc that was a thing when i was a teenager, but this sounds different

Maud McInerney

To me looksmaxxers sound like Alex and his droogs from Clockwork Orange… droogs/goons, a bit of of the old ultraviolence, lovely Ludwig van… and look how that ended!

Devin Rooney

Moira is smarter than this episode. You all are amazing, but Moira's thesis and discourse in this episode was cisnormative/transphobic and homophobic.

basil water

going to name my midwest emo band Jordan Peterson Meat Coma

Moira Donegan

Exactly what I thought when I first read it, and I had to be like “wait no.”

Amelia Barracca

I fear I remember the Jordan Peterson meat coma…

Heidi Lou

As an Australian I must concur 😂

Moira Donegan

Yikes?!? Hope you’re all healed up and feeling better!

Laura Cullen

Was it a meat coma or didn't he blame the apple cider? Need to go consult the Maintenance Phase episode...

Rissa

I think it’s related to what Moira talked about in terms of getting to experience dominating and humiliating women second-hand, something Tate literally built a “business” (crime) around

Masie McCandless

He ate so much essentially raw meat that he got so sick that he went to Russia, I think, to be put into a medically induced coma. There was also how he got addicted to a drug, and only Russia would put him in a coma to get him through withdrawal. There might have been more than one coma incident. But yeah, he's been in at least one medically induced coma.

Alice Kron

Gotta disagree with you here, but I'm interested to hear why you think this.

Devin Rooney

The thesis was, "what's happening to these men is not that they're being hurt as men through patriarchy, but that they're being transformed into women into like functionally serving in the status of women through patriarchy." It's the same train of thought that hatched metrosexual discourse in the early oughts, but with a more transphobic valence/gender essentialist perspective

Masie McCandless

I thought a lot of this was really interesting, but some of it I don't think landed quite right. I certainly understand pointing out that Kik is the much less moderated, much more racist version of things like Twitch or YouTube, but I didn't quite understand why Twitch needed to catch a stray in that description. Video games have basically always been very queer spaces, especially when you get deeper into them. Sure, I started watching Twitch as a young boy, but when I was not safe to transition in my state and with my family, Twitch was a place that was very accepting and understanding. But even aside from trans women/trans men/nonbinary people who have a higher than average population on Twitch, of course, women have been watching video games the whole time. I understand the discourse of, and am not trying to, like reverse "not all men" here, but it felt oddly dismissive of the women and queer people who have always been part of these scenes. I assume video games have never quite been Moira's area of interest, so I understand maybe having an outside perspective that isn't quite accurate. Just for a brief look, speedrunning has been a huge part of Twitch's development. Michael Hobbes is very into speedrunning. I'm sure he's been watching speedrunners on Twitch for years. I've been in the Magic the Gathering community for almost two decades, and it is very open to queer people and women and has had many popular women streamers. I'm not sure. I always appreciate how this podcast talks about gender and current trends, and there was a lot I found really interesting in this episode, but I guess I would just say, like, maybe we shouldn't be too dismissive of things that aren't hobbies of ours or dismiss them as being a very cishet place. This is far too long a comment for what was essentially a throwaway line, so I apologize for that as well.

lsh

Reacting to the beginning of the episode : slang is fun. Slang evolves. Absurd new convoluted language can come from weird subcultures, will culturally apropriate others, doesn't have to be celebrated per se, but is so interesting in its modeling and shaping the zeitgeist. Also Channel 5 interview with Clavicular was fascinating. They just let him talk. I almost felt for the guy and his special interests until he applied it to women and then eeeeh, it's like Kant, your concepts (looks DO help) are founded but please stop applying them to Society.

Sally Anne

As an Australian I have to pull you up - not all of Australia is Florida, primarily it's Queensland 😂

Jenny

Appreciate this thought as a fellow listener. For what it's worth, I do think every online community that has welcomed minorities can also, simultaneously, have a lot of potential to reproduce harmful dynamics. For me it's Tumblr/fanfic. I found a great amount of acceptance on Tumblr in the 2010s and got radicalized to the left by seeing how people build community there. But it's also undeniable that parts of Tumblr have reproduced Christian purity politics in therapy-speak clothing, causing harm to a lot of young and vulnerable people. Both things can be true at the same time, unfortunately.

Saar

The discussion on the patriarchy harming men or not reminded me of DuBois's discussion on the psychological wage of whiteness as a response to marxist theory asserting that it was in the best interests of poor white men to go against capitalism. While maybe true in the long term, their whiteness still 'paid' them a wage, making this interest not immediately obvious. Similarly (although not the same), while in the abstract maybe men are harmed by patriarchy, they too receive such a 'wage'. We cannot rely on shared oppression to ground political movements--we need solidarity

Kelly G.

I absolutely agree. Many observations in this episode were incredibly flat- from slang, to Twitch, but especially when discussing patriarchy. It was just odd for her to assert that patriarchy does not harm men, obviously men benefit from patriarchy, but the feminist assertion is the harm is cumulatively negative.

WGM

Both a fun episode and a distressing episode. I have a visceral disgust for that commodified "market place" language of these spaces and how mainstream a lot of it's become.

Claire Burdick

I think there is a missing piece here. The manosphere probably thinks about itself in relation to the “sphere” of content creation. In that sphere, women often reign supreme, especially if we think of the success of a platform like onlyfans, where some make more money than any looksmaxxer (I assume), and do so largely on their own terms. The influencers featured in Louis Theroux’s new doc were acting as a kind of leech on the larger field of onlyfans, making money by attracting more traffic to the women’s (sex) content. The manosphere content is like underwritten by the content of women. How does this change Moira’s thesis, or does it?

James Hultgren

Thank you so much for this exploration. I was ambiently aware of it but thought it was a descriptive term for a set of behaviours across different people rather than a community with their own customs and structure. I’m… so very tired.

SP

I hope you're recovering well! This reminds me of when I was researching facial feminization surgery on reddit. Without a doubt it was tougher than the procedure itself. Valuable insights and personal experiences were poisoned by an overwhelming atmosphere of despair, anxiety, self-disgust, phrenology, comparison, appraisal, fear mongering, and evangelizing on behalf of celebrity surgeons. It still makes me physically ill when I think back on it.

Renee Autumn Ray

I steadfastly refused to engage with any looksmaxxing content until this came up in my feed, and then I listened immediately. Another great episode.

Betti Tristan

The Jordan Peterson Meat Coma is an essential part of the podcast ecosystem that this wonderful show resides in.

Astraea

Personal edit: kicking misogynists in the face *with blades attached to your feet!*

Astraea

Maintenance Phase has a good two-partner on this absolute weirdo. Unfortunately it wasn't actually the meat that put him into a coma, but that will not stop me from using "Jordan Peterson Meat Coma" in my daily life. What actually happened is he went on an all-meat diet that resulted in some very weird physical and psychological symptoms (because that's what happens when you royally fuck with your nutrition), including really severe anxiety. To treat the mental symptoms, his doctor put him on benzodiazepines, but provided essentially no advice or oversight. After being in benzos for a truly unsafe length of time, Peterson decided to stop cold turkey. This is a life-threateningly bad decision. NEVER go off benzos cold turkey! This started a spiral of addiction and withdrawal and general fucked-up-ness. He went to Russia because there's a method of detox that involves putting the patient into a coma, but it isn't approved in the US. It didn't work for him, so he tried it again in Croatia (?) sometime later. Unclear whether the second coma worked either - I get the impression it didn't, though.

Astraea

I mean JP is a terrible person and a poison on the public discourse, but also, benzo addiction is one of the most difficult and literally life-threatening addictions to treat. And NO doctor should be prescribing it for continuous use unless all other options have been exhausted and they and the patient have a full discussion of the extreme dangers.

Astraea

It was benzodiazepine withdrawal. I don't remember anything about apple cider, but it's all part of the same grifty universe, so I wouldn't be shocked if Bragg's was in there somewhere too.

Astraea

To be fair, white men are paid a whiteness "wage" not by accident, but deliberately. I mean yes, white supremacy is systemic and often unconscious, and I don't mean to downplay that. But also, deliberate separation of poor people on the basis of race was a specific political strategy (especially in the post-reconstruction era in the South, but not only). It doesn't take a genius to figure out that poor whites have a lot more in common with black folk than with rich whites, especially in terms of economic exploitation by said rich whites. So, wealthy whites very deliberately used race as a wedge to keep poor whites from making common cause with black folk. It wasn't accidental and it didn't happen because rich whites actually feel kinship with poor whites on the basis of race - it was a deliberate strategy to help wealthy white people hold on to their political power and the wealth they gained from exploiting the labor of poorer folk. "Give a white man someone to look down on, and he'll pick his pocket *for* you," and all that.

MWD

yikes

Z F

Moira's point about straight men understanding sex primarily in terms of domination is the reason you have to peg them first and see how they process it

Kass

Yes! I transitioned in my 30’s. After years of planning, I found 3 surgeons to perform FFS and double jaw surgery as a combined procedure. I was under anesthesia for 9 hours. Recovery was the most painful experience of my life. I am doing better now. TOOTH CONTENT. My dentists and orthodontists have been suggesting jaw surgery for years. I had a type 3 underbite which caused a molar to break under the off-set pressure. That required a root canal, that root canal got infected and required a apicoectomy. It’s been a lot. I had my first consult for FFS 3 years ago, the surgeon told me that I shouldn’t consider FFS until I address my jaw issues because moving my jaws will change the position of my nose and other features. So I would be at a high risk of revision if I did not combine the procedures or do jaw surgery first. It took a long time and a lot of consults, but I did it. My case was unique and I cast a wide net to try to find anyone who had been through the same hurdles. I found some good resources! But I also found mewing content, ‘natural medicine alternatives to jaw surgery’, and young trans women in their early 20’s were despairing that they would have to “boymode” until FFS.

Kass

I am! Thank you!

Erin Mather

I would love to look up the Sandra Bocky "I must cream my body with a thousand creams" but I think I'm misspelling it. Does anyone have a link?

Z F

Close! Sandra Lee Bartky, and the book is 'Femininity and Domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression'

James Talley

Marilyn Fry quote knocked me out. I think I found the pdf online.

Zoe S.

Loved this! In the vein of self proclaimed alpha cis men on the internet, would anyone else be so into an episode on the right wing gender politics of (what they think is) stoicism 👀 Is stoicism really about being an emotionless, never smiling loner with no friends? Or do they just want an excuse rooted in the fallacy of ancient greco roman white male supremacy? Thank you for amazing thoughtful episodes!!

Sarah Moore

“Spiritually Australian by which I mean it reminds me of Florida” 🤣🤣 Moira nailed it

Jenny

Coming back here from the future to say: A Bit Fruity just did a great episode on Clavicular, and how he's a symptom of young people trying to make sense of a sick world that runs on misogyny, prejudice, scarcity, and lack of upward mobility. Their analysis resonates with me in highlighting how our society has encouraged a sense of nihilistic desperation among teens/20 yr olds: if the system won't allow me to flourish as a full human being, I might as well create a funhouse mirror version of the system that allows me some measure of control over it and over myself. I find myself more prone to wanting to help these kids grow up and grow out of it than anything else.

LP

Late to the party but here I am :) official patreon pervert. Thanks so much for your podcast! You make me laugh and cry at the same time. Shout out to Adrian from Berlin. You 2 are amazing!