New standards for masculinity are stacked against men’s health

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Whenever the algorithm serves up a steaming pile of looksmaxxing, I flash back to an old sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look. An ordinary woman is told by a commercial narrator that she’s “leaking, hairy, aging, overweight, and everything hurts.” Women, the smug narrator says, for god’s sake, sort yourselves out by buying roughly $300 of products. After a jump cut, an average man is told to shave and get drunk, guitars blaring in the background. The reason? Because he’s already brilliant.

Back when that sketch first aired in 2009, it was funny because it felt broadly true. But in the age of looksmaxxing, where men are increasingly obsessed with testosterone, smashing their bones in pursuit of a sharp jawline, and optimizing their penises, that sketch feels like a glimpse into antiquity.

Today, you have men in subreddits and Facebook groups posting before-and-after pics at the gym, arms flexed for maximum veiny bicep effect. In the comments, they ask for each other’s stacks, protocols, and dosing advice, which include everything from T to unapproved gray-market peptides. Some say it’s to score baddies. Others say it’s to maximize their gains at the gym. A few seem to think turning themselves into science experiments is how they’ll find the fountain of youth. To me, it feels similar to what women have done for ages: buying snake oil that preys on their insecurities.

“I take Cialis, but not for sex,” begins one of biohacker and tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s X posts. “It’s actually a longevity medicine. Cialis (Tadalafil) is great for the same reason it gives you fantastic erections… it improves blood flow.”

Tadalafil does, in fact, improve blood flow. The medicine is a vasodilator, meaning it relaxes muscles and widens blood vessels. It’s most widely known as a treatment for erectile dysfunction. (To be clear, it doesn’t cause erections but helps them last when they occur.) It’s also prescribed to alleviate urinary issues in people with enlarged prostates and high blood pressure in the pulmonary artery. Biohackers like Johnson tout a low dose of tadalafil daily as helping lower cardiovascular risk and cognitive decline. Gym rats often microdose tadalafil as a preworkout supplement because, well, the erections are supposedly better and dilating blood vessels is thought to lead to better “muscle pumps.”

Enhanced, the company behind the pro-doping Enhanced Games, sells low-dose tadalafil on its site. Clavicular, the most infamous looksmaxxer, has also stated that he’s taken about 5mg of tadalafil in the past as part of an extensive stack. This, despite the fact that he’s 20 years old and far from the conventional profile of someone a doctor might prescribe tadalafil to. Popular podcaster Andrew Huberman has also recommended on his show that every man over 40 should be taking a low dose of tadalafil as a preventative measure.

Of course, tadalafil is just like any other medicine. While many may not experience adverse effects at low daily dosages, some will. And like any medication, there are some people who shouldn’t take it and there are drug interactions to be wary of.

It’d be one thing if these influencers were just promoting tadalafil. But most are promoting multiple substances, seemingly all of which you need to be a man. Testosterone, for instance, is massively popular in the same cohort. Ninety-one percent of the athletes at the inaugural Enhanced Games dabbled with testosterone. Notably, Pete Hegseth recently announced mandatory testosterone screenings for the troops. Some also hype up retatrutide, an unapproved peptide currently undergoing phase three clinical trials, along with TB-500 and BPC-157, two gray-market peptides colloquially known as the Wolverine stack for their supposed wound healing and muscle recovery benefits. And the more things you stack, the greater the risk that a combination has an unintended effect. In the case of lesser-studied experimental treatments, even doctors may not know what those effects are — and might not know for a long time.

The stated reasons for taking these risks are myriad. But whether it’s because it’ll help someone get jacked, live longer, perform better in bed, or just “have more energy,” it boils down to a singular message: It’ll make you more of a man.

“This kind of masculinity is a little bit fantastical,” says Dr. Arthur Burnett, the Patrick C. Walsh professor of urology at Johns Hopkins, referring to the current cultural obsession with “maxxing.” Burnett should know. On top of over three decades as a men’s health expert, his research into nitric oxide biochemical mechanisms in erectile tissue helped pave the way for drugs like Viagra.

Regarding men taking on all of these additional requirements, he says that “there’s not really a scientific basis.”
“I think it’s unfortunate that we’ve pushed the pendulum in a direction that may be harmful, frankly, psychologically at the very least but possibly even physically to the body. It could be problematic trying to adopt medical terms like ‘prevention’ and ‘men’s health’.”

Burnett is essentially pointing to the divide between how clinicians and the biohacking / looksmaxxing communities view medicine. On the one side, you have medical professionals who largely view drugs as a way to treat deficiencies and bring people back to a “normal” baseline. On the other, you have influencers and enthusiasts (which can include clinicians) who believe that drugs can and ought to be used to “enhance” people beyond their natural limits. It’s a tension that’s at the heart of so many debates in the wellness wild west.

“Preventative care should really be something that those who are at risk or have health adversities can make changes in a way that’s going to correct a problem. What you have here is completely healthy people doing things that can be problematic,” explains Burnett.

Testosterone, he says, is a classic example. Otherwise healthy men who over-supplement the hormonal steroid often inadvertently make themselves infertile. For some men, too much testosterone can also trigger a genetic predisposition for hair thinning — which looksmaxxers often address by taking minoxidil. Add another supplement, drug, or product to combat the side effects of minoxidil — which include dizziness, headaches, and bloating — and that’s how you end up with a stack.

What gets lost in all these stacks and protocols is that health isn’t about optimization. For many young men, “optimizing” seems to be less of a goal than a vaguely defined baseline they’re expected to maintain forever. Anything less is a failure, a weakness — unhealthy.

A depressing way to spend an afternoon is rifling through looksmaxxing and gear forums. (I don’t recommend staying too long — unless you feel like torturing yourself reading 4chan-esque insults and slurs about penis size and “weekly slays.”)

In one post, a supposed 18-year-old asks for advice dosing Cialis to have better erections and “get more flaccid hang.” In a biohacking subreddit, a 30-year-old essentially crowdsources whether he’s developing a “dependency” on tadalafil. At no point, despite all the posturing, do any of the men in the posts I read seem to be genuinely happy. They’re often boastful about how good they feel or how many conquests they’ve had. But mostly, there seems to be an undercurrent of angry self-loathing. A desperate urge to “fix” oneself for… what or whom exactly? I never find a coherent answer.

Admittedly, I’m not a man. I will never know what it means to be a man or experience the societal pressures that men face. But there’s something strange about how the internet is amplifying a subsect of men turning themselves into science experiments. There’s a veritable pipeline from relatively benign trends like boy kibble protein-washing and news stories about RFK Jr. working out shirtless with Kid Rock to whatever it is the Enhanced Games and Bryan Johnson are doing. It’s easy to write off, until Whoop’s AI recommends your boss up his testosterone levels — not because he’s deficient, but because he’s not optimized for performance.

“It happens in my clinic periodically — guys thinking they need enhancements, or they’re unhappy with certain interventions, or they feel they’re not performing at a certain level,” says Burnett. “It’s counterproductive as it actually promotes stigma [around men’s health] because they can’t live up to what they think is the notion of the ideal man.” That, he says, creates more anxiety, stress, embarrassment, and shame. On top of that, it makes it hard for men to speak more openly about genuine health issues or seek a professional’s help. Anything “abnormal” becomes something to be suffered in silence or supplemented away.

For now, it’s probably contained to a chronically online niche. (Burnett says these behaviors aren’t heavily prevalent in his practice just yet, but then again — how likely are the most susceptible men to trust the medical establishment when that’s the first thing wellness grifters seek to discredit?) But this niche is loud and it loves to post. Eventually, those messages embed themselves in the broader culture — even if everyone knows better.

The only thing I can conclude is that the looksmaxxers are not okay. I hope that one day they will be, that this is a passing fad that one day we’ll look back and laugh at. But in the meantime, I’ll leave this with some advice from Burnett.

“As long as we’re living healthy, we’re doing the right thing. Please accept that you are a good man for who you are, and don’t be swayed by the influencers.”