I’m staring at my face, but it doesn’t look like me. There’s an eerie smoothness to it – like a Barbie doll with human eyes installed. My nose is unnaturally narrow, my lips are puffy and pert. My cheeks are softly sunken, like I’ve spent weeks refusing to properly eat. If I saw this in the mirror tomorrow, I’d scream.
According to the internet, thanks to some AI enhancement at the hands of Elon Musk’s Grok, I’m now a “Stacey” – or a “Stacy” if you’re in the US – a term, which originated in manosphere communities online, that denotes the “most attractive” tier of woman with a strict set of attributes, including big eyes, high cheekbones, a low BMI, an upturned nose and full lips. Without those, you’re an average “Becky”.
Over the past two years or so, this language has trickled into the mainstream internet lexicon. Looksmaxxing hit headlines in relation to young men, like influencer Clavicular (Braden Peters), who promote bone smashing, extreme diets, and chin extensions to reach their maximally chiselled potential. But women are shapeshifting to become Staceys, too.
18-year-old influencer Alorah Ziva is the self-declared No 1 female looksmaxxer. She has 20 million TikTok likes, close to 250,000 Instagram followers and offers to teach fans how to follow in her footsteps for $79 (£58) a month. Ziva first rose to fame when she was 16 and appeared on a livestream with Peters, who she’s since alleged assaulted her and injected her cheeks with the fat-dissolving drug Aqualyx.
Still, “I want to be considered a Stacey,” one woman writes on a Looksmaxxing advice forum on Reddit. “Surgery advice is wanted as well!” she adds. “I wanted more out of life and I know pretty privilege exists. So I decided if I don’t like what I got, I will upgrade myself then because I can change myself, I cannot change others.”
Advice ranges from extreme exercise to hairline-lowering surgery. “The fat is ruining everything,” one person says.
“[Looksmaxxing] in these cultures is seen as a very rational response to generating status and wealth,” reflects Ellen Atlanta, author of Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women. “Influencers and celebrities have identified this singular face as a route to success,” says Atlanta. “And, clearly, it works. So, it’s quite hard to argue against that.”
Offering your image up to the piranhas of internet forums is, to me, totally terrifying. “The people that do it don’t have a solid, diverse sense of confidence,” says Thomas Midgley, psychotherapist and director of The Body Image Treatment Clinic. “There’s a deficit in their self-worth and they’re looking for what’s aspirational to fill that void. So, the individuals most likely to be affected or connected with this are those that are going to be most vulnerable.”
Over on chatroom app Discord, girls as young as 13 and 14 are looking for advice to “ascend” into a Stacey. But even if they don’t find it there, they can turn to apps and AI to offer them a glimpse of their “potential” – and a detailed, dangerous manual of how to transform.
For free or a small fee, apps including Umax and Glowdess will generate a 10/10 improved version of you, before linking to products to correct your flaws. But the far most efficiently brutal guide I find through the looksmaxxing space is Elon Musk’s Grok, which in under five seconds essentially laminates my face and tells me I’d benefit from a subtle nose job, tear trough filler, mid-face filler and jaw refinement by chewing extra-firm gum daily for a year.
“You’re a solid 7-7.5/10 naturally, with clear potential to reach an easy 8.5+ with smart, consistent effort,” it says alongside the shiny new me.
“I feel like it’s made you look older somehow,” my housemate tells me when I share the photo. I feel older, wearier, just from consuming its laundry list of my flaws. By the time it’s done with me, I need to improve: my acne, my thin lips, my “unsnatched” body, my flat hair, my uncontoured cheeks, my bad posture and my untinted brows. In the photo I submitted, I’m wearing a full face of makeup and recently had Botox.
But the thing with looksmaxxing is, you can never be maxed out. “It doesn’t matter how good you look today. It only works if you’re improving,” says Midgley. “That’s the crux of it.”
“The industry conquers a different part of you; It starts to find smaller and smaller pieces to break off for you to analyse and decide are wrong,” adds Atlanta.“Girls are worried about their underarms, their chins, their ears – and there is an industry to change those. But it will give you another insecurity to keep making money off of you. There is no end.”
While I close my laptop with a depressed sigh, others are taking these AI images into plastic surgeons’ offices and asking for the works. “It’s a slippery slope because it can turn into a disconnect between reality and AI,” says plastic surgeon Nora Nugent. “You can get pulled into chasing the impossible…we are definitely seeing an increase in those images.”
.jpg)
Nugent says one client arrived at her practice asking for implants in their chin, cheeks and jaw after an AI told them they needed the procedures. “You’d never give someone that many implants in their face,” she says. “You’d either look like a balloon or totally over-contoured with very exaggerated features. There’s a line where it stops being good and changes into weird.”
Research suggests that individuals who frequently take and post selfies and “self-objectify” by sharing them online report lower body satisfaction, higher levels of anxiety, and lower self-confidence than passive scrollers. “Research into looksmaxxing is still in its early stages,” says Dr Helena Lewis-Smith. “But we can predict that it will only increase appearance pressures further.”
“The issue that makes us particularly concerned is that these forum users are so young. Their bodies are changing. They’re still developing and so they’re extremely vulnerable,” she explains.
Not all feedback on looksmaxxing forums about how to become a Stacey is bad – but Lewis-Smith says that doesn’t matter. “Even positive reinforcement increases appearance investment and body image concerns,” she explains. “We encourage people to shift the focus away from appearance altogether, and rather to see and celebrate individuals for who they are, not what they look like.”
This sagacity can, sometimes, develop with age. “A more nuanced wisdom grows later,” Midgley reassures. “People don’t want to just be known for their looks anymore. They want to be more than that.” On the cusp of 29, I feel as though I’m starting to feel that kick in, which is one small mercy, at least. There are few forum users over-30 asking for advice, I notice.
Nevertheless, Midgley worries about the lack of restrictions protecting teenagers in the meantime. Once you’ve lost your self-worth, it can be a long road of therapy to get back.
“Australia and the EU are putting in robust protective factors to manage kids’ use of the internet, whereas our government has chosen to prioritise business and AI,” he says. “It’s a ‘wait and see’ mentality… Are we harming our kids more with this approach? Probably.”
Thirty or so years ago, we’d compare ourselves to the hottest person in our village – or, perhaps, the biggest film star. Now, we have several billion filtered faces at our fingertips to choose from. But as everyone clambers to achieve the same Stacey face, ironically, the best thing you can be for your own sanity is average. Or, if you want, a Becky.
Midgley says he most often works with people at either end of the beauty spectrum – either those who were labelled the “pretty” or “athletic” one throughout their life, or those who were labelled the opposite. “Being more average or plain is probably protective to some degree,” he says, adding this simplicity probably makes people more likely to “identify and create worth” in character attributes such as humour or kindness.
And with that, I collect up the looksmaxxing apps and hit delete.
