Looksmaxxing is far from being a niche phenomenon anymore. What started as a fringe movement in the dark corners of incel forums now flickers across the For You Page feeds of millions of young people in an unending series of tutorials and bodily transformations. TikTok offers the promise of optimizing the male body ranging from “bonesmashing” to “softmaxxing,” from skincare routines that resemble clinical procedures to facial analyses that break down the human form into angles and symmetry scores, with algorithms rewarding the Before and After, the makeover, the tangible measurable progress.

Fashion the Gaze explores the ideologies underlying the algorithmic measurement of the face, the return to pseudoscientific beauty ideals, and the nostalgic yearning for the “natural” body. How do trends such as “looksmaxxing“ and „effortless naturalness“ relate to political discourses on purity and the body? And what does TikTok’s body language reveal about a society in which beauty is increasingly being conceived in biological, ethnic, and normative terms?

This episodes guest: Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, a writer based in Berlin and an editor at Delfi, Magazine for New Literature, and a DJ. Hengameh’s publications include the essay collection *Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare*, co-edited with Fatma Aydemir; the debut novel *Ministry of Dreams*; the WDR radio play *Unverpackt*; and the column collection *Habibitus*, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Kurt Tucholsky Prize. In 2024, her second novel, Schwindel, was published. Hengameh also hosts the conversation podcast Auf eine Tüte.