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Women have been ‘looksmaxxing’ for decades, Gen Z men are just catching up — and realizing the pressures

Gen Z boys are obsessing over their skin, their jawlines and their bodies in a new trend called “looksmaxxing.” 

These young men swap tips and scrutinize themselves in the mirror, going to extreme and sometimes harmful lengths to improve their appearances. They’ve baffled the internet and the media, but there’s absolutely nothing surprising about the rise of looksmaxxing.

Young men are simply following in the footsteps of their female peers, who have long been convinced by the same sources that they are not good enough as they are and must do everything and anything to improve their appearance.

For decades, women have been subjected to nonstop messaging telling them that appearance is everything. It started with magazines, movie stars, and music videos. Then the internet came along and made everything 100 times worse.

Girls were canaries in the coal mine for its effects. According to Meta’s own internal data, Instagram made body image worse for 1 in 3 girls. As it turns out, boys were just a couple years behind girls in developing crippling insecurity.

It turns out that young men are also adversely affected by a........

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