Making Sense of Clavicular and ‘Looksmaxxing’

by Sarkozy and T.E. Moon

In their latest, Sarkozy and T. E. Moon argue that apolitical culture—looksmaxxing, self-optimization, algorithmic obsession—is not an escape from politics but one of its most dangerous forms. Using Lukacs, Althusser, and Gramsci, they show how the looksmaxxer is both worker and machine, performing unpaid labor on his own body in pursuit of attention that can be monetized elsewhere.