Braden Peters, known as Clavicular, has emerged as a beacon for a group of narcissistic, status-obsessed young men.
This was the opening sentence of The New York Times article.
Looksmaxxing communities originated on fringe websites and forums that encourage practices for ‘maximising’ one’s physical features as a means of gaining social recognition and improving one’s position in the ‘dating market’. Clavicular is a looksmaxxing influencer who recently gained his fame. He is mostly known for promoting tactics to improve physical appearance, often through extreme measures.
Research into these communities has shown that members of these forums are mostly young, cisgender, heterosexual men who are seeking to improve their physical appearance in the hope of increasing their chances in the dating scene. In general, their focus is on masculinity, body ideals, and (often racialised) aesthetics of beauty. They promote a wide range of practices for physical improvement, from less invasive measures such as exercise, grooming, skincare, and clothing advice to more invasive ones, including plastic surgery, supplement use, and what is commonly referred to as bone-smashing to enhance facial features, or using methamphetamine for weight loss.
These discussions typically take place in closed, niche spaces, away from public scrutiny. What happens, then, when a figure associated with these spaces rises to fame?
When we look at the language of looksmaxxing, we see a revival of the ‘civilised body’, a concept rooted in colonial standards and supremacist politics that use physical appearance to decide who is ‘fit’ and who is not (Shilling, 2012). It’s an approach that separates the body from its social and natural contexts, valuing individuals for their capacity to control both physical and emotional conditions.
As Michael Feola (2026) notes, focus on the body has always been central to fascist beliefs and far-right movements. For instance, the Nazis believed that a healthy spirit could only exist in a strong, attractive body. They considered physical beauty a measure of a person’s worth, while anything deemed ‘ugly’ was viewed as less valuable. This belief system was used to justify their fascist agenda.
Today, we see these same historical patterns resurfacing in the contemporary manosphere. There is a noticeable shift towards more individualistic, health-conscious, and body-focused content influenced by the wellness industry (Gerrand et al., 2025). These ideals are simultaneously politicised, racialised, and rooted in reactionary conceptions of masculinity (Sousbouis, 2026). Masculinity, in this view, becomes an investment in the male body, which should be kept strong, disciplined, and well-maintained. (Feola, 2026). While in mainstream platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, it is advertised as fitness and nutrition, this promotes a politics of the body shaped by exclusion and competition.
In my research, I observe the growing popularity of manfluencers who focus on physical and mental self-optimisation, often promoting an ideal of masculinity defined by discipline, emotional control, and bodily mastery. In this context, constant pressures to become the best version of oneself intensify forms of policing among young men to conform to what is deemed ideal. Bullying, in particular, becomes difficult to name or challenge, as experiencing or acknowledging it is associated with weakness, which stands in direct opposition to the ideal of the emotionally controlled and resilient man. As a result, these dynamics continue to shape how young men internalise societal expectations and respond to those who fail to meet these standards.
This dynamic is not simply cultural but also deeply political. The intersection of fitness culture, looksmaxxing communities, and mainstream influencers highlights the complex relationship between physical ideals and the political dimensions of masculinity and capitalism. With the global beauty industry expected to reach $698.38 billion by 2026, the market spans a vast range, from expensive cosmetic surgeries to ‘affordable’ self-improvement methods.
Manfluencers essentially ‘launder’ extreme aesthetic practices for the mainstream audience using the socially acceptable language of self-improvement. Because they avoid the most outward extremism of looksmaxxing forums, they are able to present obsessive physical grooming as a healthy pursuit. In other terms, the appearance of extreme looksmaxxers such as Clavicular makes the ‘lifestyle’ manfluencers look reasonable.
Yet, while these trends focus on grooming practices and fitness routines, they are often rooted in white nationalist ideals and Western colonial standards. This is also exemplified in the media’s reclassification of manosphere actors as ‘right-wing’ or ‘white-nationalist’ influencers, which also reflects their growing collaboration with far-right politics and campaigns. Ultimately, both their aesthetic and political projects rely on the same biological essentialism to justify their social and racial hierarchies.
Importantly, when figures like Clavicular emerge, who use explicitly misogynistic language and extreme physical transformations, they trigger a moral panic centred on young people. His sudden rise to fame, for example, instantly generates a public reaction: “Is this what young men are watching these days?” A similar pattern emerged during Andrew Tate’s rise, when the manosphere became largely linked to him (i.e. the Tate effect). However, this often concealed those who adapted their language towards socially accepted neoliberal-patriarchal ideals by emphasising ‘self-improvement’, specifically ‘self-optimisation’, or striving to ‘become the best version of oneself’. As a result, while Clavicular is labelled as harmful, others (such as Rob Lipsett or Mike Thurston) are able to operate under the banner of promoting a ‘healthy lifestyle’, which involves strict gym routines and dietary restrictions to achieve a socially acceptable ideal body.
What emerges then is a dynamic in which more extreme figures such as Clavicular stretch the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. At the same time, the conditions that drive interest in self-optimisation in the first place are dismissed as the concerns of ‘insecure, status-obsessed young men’. This framing overlooks the longer historical context of bodily optimisation rooted in exclusionary, supremacist politics.
Perhaps rather than focusing only on figures like Clavicular the moment they rise to fame, it may be more useful to understand why there might be an interest in the first place. As long as we reward physical beauty as the ultimate virtue, we will continue to provide the ground for the supremacist ideologies of the manosphere to grow.
Deniz Celikoglu
References
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/style/clavicular-looksmaxxing-braden-peters.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/tate-brothers-miami-heil-hitler-kanye-west.html
Arnds P. The Dwarf and Nazi Body Politics. In: Representation, Subversion, and Eugenics in Günter Grass’s “The Tin Drum.” Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture. Boydell & Brewer; 2004:49-76.
Feola, M. (2026). Sun, Steel, and Raw Eggs: The Far-right Politics of the Male Body. Theory & Event 29(2), 298-320. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tae.2026.a986562.
Gerrand, V., Ging, D., Roose, J. M., & Flood, M. (2025). Mapping the Neo-Manosphere(s): New Directions for Research. Men And Masculinities, 28(5), 443–464. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184×251350277
Shilling, C. (2012). The Body and Social Theory. SAGE.
Sousbois, O. F. (2025). Incels, LooksMaxxing, and the surgical design of the ‘Chad’-vertised body. Body & Society, 31(4), 33–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034×251363787
