looksmaxxing

What it means

Looksmaxxing is treating your appearance like a stat you can level up — grooming, skincare, fitness, posture, hair, sometimes further. It runs from ordinary self-care at one end ("softmaxxing") to surgery and jaw implants at the other ("hardmaxxing"), and the word carries whichever end the speaker means. It is used sincerely inside its own communities and mockingly outside them.

Words like “looksmaxxing” are exactly the kind of vocabulary our English vocabulary size test measures — find out how many English words you know.

Examples

• He's been looksmaxxing since January — new haircut, gym five days a week.
• Half of that subreddit is just looksmaxxing advice.
• Softmaxxing is skincare and sleep. Hardmaxxing is a surgeon.
• I'm not looksmaxxing, I just started using sunscreen.

Where it comes from

From "maxxing" — maximising a stat, borrowed from role-playing games — attached to "looks". It grew in online male self-improvement forums in the late 2010s and reached TikTok around 2023, where it picked up both a genuine following and a steady stream of parody.

Related slang