Eatingdisordermaxxing

Body Obsession is Consuming Men on the Right

“Put the food down. Stop eating for me. Stop eating. Do it for me. Do it for America First. Do it for the Groypers. No more f*tties. No more disgusting pigs,” raved Nick Fuentes while announcing his significant weight loss to the internet last week. And if you’re asking who that is, I’m sorry to say that you’re about to find out.

Nick Fuentes is a white nationalist known primarily for his use of incel (involuntarily celibate) language, racism, anti-LGBTQ values, and antisemitism (including Holocaust denial). He is critical of MAGA for not being conservative enough and his followers are known as the Groypers. He is an increasingly influential voice on the far right and, if you’re familiar with anti-Fatness, his statement is less shocking. Afterall, anti-Fatness is a far right ideology and is intrinsically linked to anti-Blackness. It is no surprise that he is espousing traditional eating disorder rhetoric. Men’s eating disorders are on the rise, particularly for men and boys who have any proximity to the “manosphere,” the loose network of online “men’s rights” thought leaders whose best and brightest include Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Myron Gaines.

Pictured above from left to right: Andrew Tate, Pete Hegseth, Clavicular, and Nick Fuentes.

I’ve been sounding the alarm on men’s eating disorders for over half a decade, but they have recently entered the mainstream in a significant and unavoidable way. The rise of the “manosphere” has ushered us straight into this resoundingly fascist moment in our history, and with fascism comes body fascism. It’s explicitly apparent in MAGA administration policy. This was on display just yesterday when it was reported that, in order for service members to get free tickets to the UFC match that will be held at the White House next month, “ticket recipients are required to meet the DOW waist-to-height ratio standard of less than 0.55, as well as all service specific physical fitness test requirements,” in accordance with Pete Hegseth’s mandate in September that there will be no “fat troops” or “fat generals or admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.” It’s no wonder that more and more men are struggling with eating and body image.

If the rise of men’s eating disorders and body obsession hasn’t been apparent to you until recently, that’s completely understandable. I would argue that they are everywhere you look, but we don’t see things we don’t know to look for.

Have you noticed that men in your life have gotten really into their “health” in the past few years? Really into going to the gym? Really into eating to “support their gains” and won’t stray from their very specific diets? Welcome to men’s eating disorders. You might see them in your son, your boyfriend, your cousin, or your students. Wherever there are men in your life, particularly in the West, you can almost be certain eating disorders are spreading and thriving.

Are boys and men really looksmaxxing? Or are they actually eatingdisordermaxxing?

Looksmaxxing! That’s a term you’ve almost certainly heard in the past year! Or you’ve at least heard the suffix -maxxing enter the popular vernacular! But what is it?

According to a BBC report from 2024, “the aim of looksmaxxing [to become] the most attractive one can possibly look according to a set of prescribed criteria, with particular importance given to jawlines, eyes and physique (including “hunter” eyes, angled slightly upward toward the temples – a positive canthal tilt).”

Perhaps you’ve heard of Clavicular, a far right streamer who has become the face of looksmaxxing by, among other things, promoting jaw-smashing, a practice aimed at making one’s jaw more defined by literally smashing your jaw with a hammer to create microfractures that heal into more bone mass. (PLEASE do not do this.) He has also been proudly open about doping and his meth usage as a means of looksmaxxing. (He recently overdosed.)

So… why? Why smash your jaw with a hammer?

The “manosphere” has adopted the idea that you, as a man, are born with no inherent value; that your worth must be earned. One of the only ways that the “manosphere” purports that a man can “earn” value is by changing his physical appearance by slimming down, bulking up, and changing his facial structure. Essentially, meeting the eurocentric beauty standards of the adonis, right down to the face. (I’d be remiss not to point out that these male beauty ideals are rooted in white supremacy and influenced by the outdated junk science of phrenology.) And, unfortunately, because we live under a patriarchal society, these changes genuinely affect access to privilege, despite the social and mental ills they bring about.

Emily Contois, author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets, theorizes that this shift in the morality and value of men’s physical appearance was exacerbated by the Great Recession, particularly for Millennial men and continuing on into Generations Z and Alpha. Up until 2008, patriarchal society required men to be the provider for their families and/or gradually accumulate wealth to be considered high value men. When the Great Recession happened, being the earner and/or provider became a near economic impossibility. So, how do you uphold a system of oppression like the patriarchy if the people tasked with upholding it no longer feel worth? You shift the definition of what it means to be a member; a real man.

The lack of potential for financial success left a void in what made up the identity of a man in good standing with the patriarchy, and that void was readily filled by the way a man looks. Suddenly the way a man looked and ate and moved had far more influence on their identity as men. The fitness and wellness industries made a hard pivot to selling diets to men. This is all in accordance with body fascism, which places an emphasis on the militarization of the bodies in the populace, not only in ability but also in aesthetic. Notably, it is a lot easier to control people who are hungry and hyperfocused on changing their bodies rather than the world and systems around them. That is one of the main reasons diet culture was pushed so heavily onto women in the wake of second wave feminism, as pointed out by Christy Harrison in Anti-Diet.

But it’s important to remember that in the same way the patriarchy mandates how women should look, the patriarchy ALSO mandates how men should look. The men of the “manosphere” will have you believe that they have to change how they look in order to meet women’s standards for men’s bodies but they are scapegoating. Men set the social and structural expectation for how both women and men should look. These are patriarchal mandates.

Last year I was on a panel moderated by Chelsea Clinton at the United Nations for World Eating Disorders Action Day held by the National Alliance for Eating Disorders’ and I made the point that “eating disorders are miserable, the patriarchy is miserable, and the patriarchy is being run by a lot of men with eating disorders which means the rest of us will be miserable too.” I stand by that statement.

Men are the ones insisting that men looksmaxx. Men are the ones assigning “high value” to lean and muscular physiques. Men are the ones driving men into a culture of disordered eating and body image. Men are the ones at the helm of the contagion that is men’s eating disorders. And, in that vein, it is on men to change the society we live in; to dismantle the patriarchy that is upheld by men and harms everyone, INCLUDING men.

Looksmaxxing or eatingdisordermaxxing does indeed grant men more privilege in our society, but a society where how you look determines your privilege will always cause harm and be oppressive. You should not have to push your body to harmful extremes to be considered worthy of life, liberty, and happiness.

I wish I had the answer for how to stop this, but pointing it out and talking about it is a step in the right direction. I hope we can stop this. We need to stop this. Men need to stop this. But, until then, we are going to sink further into a culture of body fascism and continue eatingdisordermaxxing.

And, as always, thank you to my paid subscribers whose financial support makes it possible for me to write about eating disorder recovery and Fat liberation in this abysmal political and media climate.