Junior Elijah Kraus stared into the mirror.
He noticed his positive canthal tilt, slightly developed masseter muscles and minor facial asymmetry.
During his freshman year, Kraus first began to notice his failos. The online self-improvement trend dubbed looksmaxxing had caught his attention.
As he dove further into the trend, he learned more about this new self-improvement terminology. According to online looksmaxxing forums, halos are his facial features that boost the overall aesthetic, and failos are visual features that evoke a negative reaction.
Scrolling through TikTok, Kraus became more aware of each minute facial feature. The tilt of his eyes, the imperfections in his skin and the bone structure of his face all became more noticeable, and once he realized these “flaws,” he set out on a journey of improvement.
At times, the trend offered advice that seemed suspicious. He was hesitant to commit to techniques like bonesmashing – the exercise in which one hits the jawline with a hammer to create microfractures to accentuate the prominence of the jawbone.
Yet other techniques made sense to Kraus.
He adjusted his diet to improve his skin and reduce acne; for example, eating carrots, rich in beta keratin, which were supposed to add a tannish hue to his skin tone; or consuming potassium to flush out salt which bloats the face.
And while this looksmaxxing trend promotes self-improvement at its core, it preys on the growing amount of body dysmorphia clearly seen in countless teenage boys across the world and is often taken to a dangerous extreme.
Body dysmorphia is a mental health condition in which an individual spends an excessive amount of time worrying about their physical appearance and flaws. This condition has seen more coverage in recent years due to a movement in social media trends and prevalence.

Online, countless TikTok and Instagram reel accounts put forth idealized images in which the images are not natural but staged and edited to the creator’s discretion. Perfect lighting, the right angle and Photoshop skills create unrealistic expectations for the viewer.
One of the most notable industries this is seen in is the exercise industry. Combined with a niche trend of hyper-masculine social media pages, it has created a new, dangerous model that can easily manipulate the youth.
At times, these types of media appear to inundate a user’s algorithm — an endless stream of exercise regimens, diet hacks and grooming tips. They’re a constant reminder of a utopia that an influencer lives on a regular basis. A utopia that other people should strive to emulate. But it’s only an imperfect, partial reflection of exclusively the perfect moments that occur.
“As a result of social media, people can become a little bit more rigid or think that if all these other people are doing something and they’re not doing the same thing, then there must be something wrong with them,” Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Sallye Clark said. “So then people kind of go overboard with that. It’s an expectation that isn’t realistic. Everyone has a bad day, and people don’t always work out or practice good self-care, but people are still posting that they do, even when they actually might not.”
These idealized and idolized influencers, often shown in edgy and motivational edits (short-form videos with numerous effects) that capture attention easily, can lead people to lower levels of self-esteem and a greater willingness to take drastic measures for self-improvement. These videos of influencers like male supermodels Jordan Barrett and Francisco Lachowski further inspired Kraus’ desire to improve himself.
During the transition from freshman to sophomore year, Kraus began to mew, the action of pressing one’s tongue against the roof of the mouth to improve jaw structure and face shape. He claimed his jaw was constantly sore and that one could never catch him not mewing. Combined with his other efforts, he found himself safely immersed in the trend.
According to Clark, these daily self-care routines that countless other teenagers cling to typically emerge from a healthy motivation — a desire for self-improvement. But this stimulus can quickly turn into a mentally destructive activity, causing heightened unrealistic expectations.
“Especially in regard to exercising or eating clean, sometimes the really good motivation that boys initially have is stuff like, ‘I want to be really healthy and fit,’ or, ‘I want to get abs,’” Clark said. “But then there can be a fine line for both boys and girls, where it can become a little bit more obsessive and compulsive than just practicing good self-care techniques.”
According to Jamie Grant, a licensed professional counselor, proper self care involves maintaining good health in all facets of life: rest, nutrition, fitness and more. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted some important issues that were previously not addressed, mainly mental health and self care, yet, like many trends, it went too far at times.

“Even things that are good can become compulsive and thereby cause problems,” Grant said. “Even the shift toward more self care has become or can become compulsive. It’s really important for me to clarify what self care is and is not, because a lot of times, people use that word as a carte blanche (an excuse) to do whatever they want.”
Grant believes that anxiously obsessing over self care stems from chronic misattunements in our environment during childhood. This environment can include parents, peers, teachers and society as a whole.
“Often our environments fail us in ways that impact our ability to esteem, value and love ourselves for who we are as humans,” Grant said. “The result can be an inability to esteem oneself from a healthy, secure perspective. That’s often where compulsive and extreme behaviors may become means of trying to feel better externally, when the problem is actually deeply internal.”
These toxic environments became more pronounced when some extremists in the looksmaxxing community took the trend further. There is a theory or consensus among these extremists that essentially rates people’s looks on a 1-to-10 scale, saying that “sub-fives” have no potential and should give up on bettering themselves while the others may continue.
Further, they believe that the only important thing about interacting with romantic interests is one’s appearance. Personality and internality do not matter because, in the end, objective attractiveness is the only deciding factor. Kraus believes that this obsession with only one’s external image has drastic negative consequences.
“If you get super obsessed with body image and diet, especially, that can lead to eating disorders,” Kraus said. “One of the harmful things about looksmaxxing is that it focuses on a lot of things that are rarely noticed. It focuses on a lot of things that are not in your control, like your facial thirds. You want to have even facial thirds, and that’s entirely genetic unless you get surgery.”
These insecurities that some extreme followers of this trend obsess over often cause them to superimpose one’s failos over all other features and qualities, shrouding their holistic identity.
“You also start to look at other people differently, like you start to analyze other people’s facial thirds, other people’s eye area, other people’s jawline, other people’s canthal tilts; and that can really skew your perception and mess up your ego,” Kraus said.
At the same time, some online platforms can actually be humbling and beneficial. Senior Hans Hesse regularly uses YouTube to watch powerlifting and bodybuilding videos and looks to Instagram for weightlifting inspiration and motivation that is less superficial.
“When I was younger I looked up to this guy Alex Eubank because he was very muscular,” Hesse said. “But other channels would use their platform to talk about mental health struggles, family issues or experiences with religion and God — deeper issues that are more meaningful and motivating.”
Besides taking simple multivitamins, Hesse has strayed away from the supplements that many influencers online promote. He’s found creatine monohydrate, a common sports supplement, to be more of an annoyance than a benefit. Instead, he focuses on trying to get eight hours of sleep a day and maintaining a simple diet.
“I think people overcomplicate things with diet sometimes, and I used to be one of them,” Hesse said. “The idea that you can’t ever have fast food or sweets doesn’t always make sense. Typically, I won’t eat fast food or very sugary and processed stuff. But every once in a while, it’s perfectly fine to have that.”
Senior Jack Frary has a slightly different approach to self-improvement. Like Hesse, exercise is at its core, but Frary also uses numerous supplements and follows a different regimen to better himself.
His journey began in seventh grade with weightlifting for sports, which resulted in an injury. In order to recover from the injury, Frary began reevaluating everything he did to get himself healthy again. He started with the basics first, looking at his calories in and out and calculating what his calorie goal should be for the day.

Since freshman year, Frary has been on a lean bulk — an approach to adding muscle that aims to increase lean body mass while minimizing added body fat — by eating in the low 3000-calorie range and exercising at least four times a week. Throughout the day, he tracks the calories that he has consumed.
“By the end of the day, whatever calories are missing, I’ll go to my kitchen and get a Greek yogurt or a bar or something like that, and try to fill out the rest of my calories,” Frary said. “I try to eat a protein-rich diet that is nutritious, but as my friends know, I also eat some unhealthy things too. It’s really all about balance.”
This focus on balanced health became a habit, and as social media made supplement usage more mainstream, Frary began changing what he was putting in his body. Supplements could help flush out any deficiencies in vitamins or essential nutrients so he could be at his best on the baseball field and in life in general.
Frary’s supplement stack contains a variety of things: creatine monohydrate; a bioavailable magnesium complex; vitamin D3; a multivitamin that has boron, zinc, calcium, B12, folate and other vitamins; fish oil pills for omega-3s; a probiotic pill; collagen pills with vitamin C; and ashwagandha (an herbal root extract) pills.
The goal of this self-improvement supplement stack is to create the best conditions to put on muscle mass as well as improve mood, reduce stress and create a healthy body that is in balance.
According to Frary, he recognizes that there is a danger in relentless self-improvement, something that has grown even more common with social media as pages capitalize on teenage boys’ desire to be an “admired man.”
“A lot of these kids are looking at these social media pages and courses that people are selling and trying to just self-improve,” Frary said. “There are kids who just want to get better, but then you get some kids going to dangerous extremes like trying to raise testosterone with weird methodologies or trying to improve facial structure in harmful ways.”
To Frary, it is all about balance and prioritizing your health, something that is at the core and original purpose of self-care.
“With over-analysis of anything, you’ll always find flaws, and you will just be unsatisfied,” Frary said. “It’s good to always be pushing yourself to be better and better, but at some point, it’s a little bit too much.”
In general, having good social media literacy can help individuals find this balance in an age of social media perpetuating the extremes.
“There’s unrealistic standards that social media is putting on people, so sometimes it’s hard for us not to idolize things or people that we see,” Clark said.
Clark also highlights the blur on reality that the internet often presents, which makes it difficult for people, especially teenage boys, to discern what is fact and a marketing ploy.
From her perspective, the sense of determination to continue one’s seemingly endless journey of self-improvement can quickly turn awry. And without personal boundaries set in place, mental health is bound to become compromised — an issue that can eventually alter other aspects of one’s routine lifestyle.
“When these self-care practices become a little too extreme and maybe dangerous, like if you’re missing out on certain activities or thinking to yourself all the time, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to do this after school, am I going to find the time to work out,’ then the routine can get risky,” Clark said. “I think even when our motivation is like, ‘I have to look a certain way to be okay with myself,’ then it’s too much.”
Ultimately, she believes that the first step to reestablishing a healthy mindset on self-improvement is to reach out to someone.
“I would say that if you start noticing that this is something that is starting to consume a lot of your thoughts, just go and ask for help,” Clark said. “I know that it could feel scary, but I think that just talking to a family member, trusted adult or even a coach can be super beneficial.”