BOSTON — Gene Beresin, executive director of the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said this month that the viral looksmaxxing movement has moved from the fringes of the online world into the mainstream and is pushing boys and young men toward extreme and dangerous measures. The trend urges radical improvement of physical appearance and has been linked to steroid use and elective surgery.

Beresin said he had never seen anything like looksmaxxing before in more than 40 years of work in child psychiatry. He said the phenomenon has been going on with young men for about a decade and has increased considerably during that period, producing a spike in worrying behavior from male adolescents around their looks that can result in eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

Looksmaxxing focuses on what is known as "ascendancy, or having a perfect body," he said. "You're scored from being subhuman, to what's a normie — or normal — to Chad. Chad is, unfortunately, the essence of white supremacy."

The term originated on incel message boards in the 2010s. A core principle of the incel movement is that the only way for men to achieve happiness, success and sexual attention from women is through optimizing their looks, with European beauty standards central to those beliefs. Social media now offers self-improvement methods ranging from workout tips and skincare advice to destructive measures such as bonesmashing, which involves hitting the face with a hammer based on the belief that minor fractures will sharpen the jawline. Jaw surgery is a particular favorite within the community.

The term and the goal of "optimization" are closely associated with the manosphere, an online ecosystem that promotes outdated views of masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. "I've definitely noticed some manosphere-coded language in some of my employees," said Liam, an HR executive. Netflix released a documentary featuring several prominent influencers in the looksmaxxing space, and coverage of the trend has appeared in national outlets.

Beresin said young adolescents are "extraordinarily vulnerable" and that early intervention is the best remedy, suggesting parents start talks about appearance and self-esteem as early as preschool. "The more we have conversations about how you're feeling, how you're looking – engaging, listening, validating them, being nonjudgmental, noncritical, it becomes a fabric of the relationship. So if you haven't started, there's no better time than the present," he said.

Valerie Adams-Bass, an assistant professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University whose research focuses on identity, body image and media among adolescents, said social norms mean it is still hard for some boys to express their feelings. She urged parents to ask their sons direct questions: "Why is that the avatar you've chosen? Why is it that you're choosing these exercises for the gym? Why is it that you are socializing with this particular group of young men?" Adams-Bass suggested teaching children coding and website creation can redirect them from unhealthy behaviors.