Looksmaxxing and the poverty of immature desire

The dollar was severed from gold, Gilgamesh did not attain immortality, Marx wrote of commodity fetishism—I wrote and rewrote about “looksmaxxing” and somehow ended up more lost than certain. At first, my piece was snarky—an attack on misogyny; but it felt empty, small, and dishonest.

Love, beauty, and connection are too fundamental; as Diotima knew, desire climbs through everything. To compress and dissect, the computer scientist in me wants to turn this into a Boolean. What makes and unmakes looksmaxxing? When does it not matter? When does it matter?

This entire issue revolves around a lack of vision and hypersocial environments. Clavicular is twenty years old, and so are most of those he targets and attracts. Boys and girls who just left one intense competitive social environment and were thrown into another—college—whose identities are still forming, whose sexuality and desires are still unfolding, at the height of their hormones—the fountain of youth, immortal soul.

“I would only date a guy who is six feet or taller.”

Can you have a healthy long-term relationship based on something so superfluous? Would you sacrifice your self-respect, affection, and intellect in exchange for a bit of Eros? Yes, you would if you were nineteen—where the moment is eternal, the future is a blinding horizon, and all that matters to you is your social standing, your instincts, and some Freudian love.

Looksmaxx is, at its core, correct. You will achieve what Clavicular promises you, at the cost of your soul, your growth, your sanity—for a spark of Eros from a girl, not a woman. How pathetic.

As a man, how sickly is your soul if your dream is to be wanted by an ordinary, mediocre quasi-teen?

But how can you develop something great without the great fire of Rome?

Infatuation is a fantasy—love for a crooked image: a stolen mental painting by an unwilling artist. Limerence: infatuation married to obsession—Nero, how it shines, burns, and kills. Indiscriminate, unforgiving—with gorged eyes.

Beauty matters, Eros is part of our condition, and what is attraction without mystery and forbidden desires?

Personally, I think a slightly recessed chin can look cute.