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If Harry Potter were set in today’s world, there might be a plotline where Ron Weasley falls down an online rabbit hole and gets really into looksmaxing, the practice by mostly young men of trying to “maximize” their appearance with skin creams, jawline exercises, and in extreme cases, expensive surgeries. Imagine him hitting the gym and chugging wizard steroids all in the hopes of getting swole to impress Hermione.
For $10 a month, you can roleplay as something similar as a “Moggle” enrolled at the Mogwarts school for self-improvement. (In looksmaxer lingo, “to mog” means to assert dominance over someone else by being hotter or buffer than them.) The program is hosted on Skool, a digital community-creation platform. Group members must pay to access the channel, which includes threads of looksmaxing advice and a “calendar” that lists upcoming advice classes. Mogwarts functions something like a 24/7 virtual locker room hangout, with a perpetual text chat to discuss tips and daily happenings. Most users join to get feedback from others on their looksmaxing progress, but it’s also designed as a space for people to share anything going on in their lives and befriend those similarly committed to bettering themselves.
Mogwarts currently has over 2,000 paying members. It was started by the beauty influencer Kareem Shami, who has parlayed male-oriented self-help tips into over 1.5 million TikTok followers. He told me he got into looksmaxxing after being bullied for his acne and size in high school. His looksmaxxing journey included clearing up his acne with Accutane; stretching his jawline; and routinely using Volufiline, an oil made of plant extract that supposedly adds fat under the skin (but that hasn’t been extensively researched), to ameliorate his eye bags. The before-and-after pictures are impressive. He proudly flexes the glow-up in TikToks that have amassed tens of millions of views. Shami, currently a college student in California, conceived of Mogwarts as a hate-free space for young men looking to have a similar evolution, a positivity-oriented haven for people trying to improve themselves. To many observers, this is something of an oxymoron: Looksmaxxing is a community with a reputation for toxic behavior and a fixation on unhealthy male beauty standards. Is it possible to build a digital utopia out of a self-loathing subculture?
There are clear benefits to Mogwarts, especially for young men, a demographic not known for caring much about personal hygiene. It could help shatter taboos about whether skin care is “manly” and lead people to feel more confident about their looks. Yet it’s nearly impossible to neatly delineate the boundary between what’s helpful and harmful in the Mogwarts community. The result is a beautification college: weekly classes with influencer-professors, guest Q&As with icons in the looksmaxxing scene like Brett Maverick, slideshows, and dozens of pages of tips and diagrams on everything from attaining katana-sharp jawlines to finding a loyal girlfriend. There are monthly challenges like Best Before/After Jawline and Best Skin Glow-Up where members post images of their self-improvement and win rewards like getting access to exclusive livestreams and private advice calls. New messages flood the Skool chat at all hours, which is partly because Mogwarts incentivizes participation: The more you post, the higher rank you become, and the more secret knowledge you unlock from Shami. Level 2 gets you access to a private group chat with only 17% of Mogwarts members, and at Level 4 you’ll be invited to an even more exclusive channel called the VIP Inner-Circle with just 5% of members. At the highest level, 9 (no members have reached it yet), users receive a one-on-one call with Shami. It’s like masonic degrees but for trying to perfect every inch of your body. With thousands of paid members, Shami told me Mogwarts has brought in over $60,000, and he’s confident he’ll reach six figures by the end of 2024.
Mogwarts’s main selling point, beyond the advice, is that it offers a wholesome digital lounge in a very un-wholesome content genre. It’s largely not like the looksmaxxer forums online, which are cesspits of insecurities where posters demean boys for having subpar “canthal tilts” (the angle between the inner and outer corners of the eyes) and command each other to commit suicide by “ropemaxxing” or “shotgunmaxxing” if they think their genetics are too ugly to be redeemed. Mogwarts is also not like the worst kinds of viral looksmaxxer content on TikTok, like “brutal mog compilations” that denigrate people for being uglier than their friends. The potential for harm apparently led TikTok to block hashtags for “looksmaxxing” and “starvemaxxing,” a code word for intense diets, which can’t be searched for. (Earlier this year, #starvemaxxing had over 8 million views, according to Business Insider.)
Theoretically, the idea of a sensitive and educational looksmaxxing community doesn’t have to be a total contradiction in terms. While Shami emphasized to me that he doesn’t promote “the weird stuff” you find on looksmaxxing forums, the Mogwarts curriculum swerves between the fairly sensible and the verging on unhinged. There are thoughtful, well-researched guides to cologne intensity levels, but also lectures on how to get a snatched jaw by following obsessive regimens of mastic gum chewing, complete with a Jaw Sculpting Progress Worksheet to hold yourself accountable. One of Shami’s guest lectures features Mike Mew, the son of John Mew, who founded the alternative offshoot of dentistry known as “orthotropics,” which is where mewing (a popular yet unproven looksmaxxing technique to sharpen the jaw by holding the tongue on the roof of your mouth) originated. In his lessons, Shami takes care to list potential side effects and stresses that severe medical operations—like leg lengthening surgery to increase height—should only be undertaken as a last resort.
In Shami’s view, there’s always going to be hateful vitriol on the internet, and it’s inevitable that online life breeds insecurity. “It’s completely delusional to think that young men are gonna go on social media…see these high-value, attractive people with money and all these sort of things, and not get insecure,” he said. “This is innate. It’s gonna happen. So I’d rather be that one influencer who, instead of making people feel this sort of insecureness, instead I’ll guide them towards the sort of thing that they can change.”
But is Mogwarts a positive authority for the people in it? Many of the members I spoke with praised Mogwarts and the advice they’ve received. The 19-year-old Ruben Flores said Mogwarts introduced him to an intense but sensible skin care routine: a cleanser, a moisturizer with sunscreen, Retinol, a vitamin C serum, and caffeine eye serum. He said he’s made friends through Mogwarts, and was so active in the chat that he was awarded the title of “Mentor.”
But the intense examination the program promotes can also clearly erode one’s sense of self-worth. “I’m completely mentally destroyed because of it,” Mathias, a 15-year-old from Prague who’s spent over $1,200 on looksmaxxing supplies (and $90 in Mogwarts subscriptions), told me. “I do every little thing just to be like 1% better.” Since joining Mogwarts months ago, Mathias said he’s started taking a slew of supplements from lycopene (to make the skin glow) and zinc tablets (all-day energy) to beta carotene (for a natural tan), and he got a perm after one of the instructors recommended it to him for wavier hair. He’s even attempted starvemaxxing with a goal of 1,680 daily calories, which is significantly under most recommended calorie intakes for teens.
Mathias said he’s pleased with the progress and tips, but feels like he’s locked into a hopeless quest for perfection. “If I looked at myself six months ago, I would have been like, ‘Wow, it’s such great progress,’ he said. “But now, I look at myself and I’m like, ‘This is not enough.’”
Shami insists that Mogwarts is focused on the “softer” side of looksmaxxing, yet he takes a laissez-faire approach to moderating the Skool chat. He’s never banned members for being too extreme—even people yearning for expensive surgeries and talking about starvemaxxing. (Shami told me that starvemaxxing is largely a “joke,” and said he promotes caloric deficits only for people above 18.)
What’s most fraught about Mogwarts is the way it seems to involve treating every facet of life as an opportunity to optimize, including intimate relationships. One of Shami’s latest additions to Mogwarts, a video tutorial on social life and dating, is rife with ridiculous “red flags” to watch out for in women that’s meant to be taken seriously: You should run if she makes too much eye contact with you, drinks alcohol for fun, or dyes her hair a lot. Shami urges viewers to break up with their girlfriend if she has a celebrity crush. “She's disrespected you by mentioning the celebrity in front of you,” he says in the video, seemingly seriously. “If a girl truly likes you…she won't even think about any other guy…. Drop her, she's immature.”
Many adherents are young and impressionable. It’s easy to see how becoming a core member of a group like this, and being urged to revolve your life around it, would lead to an unhealthy obsession. Aki, a 15-year-old from the Maldives who’s new to Mogwarts, told me he discovered looksmaxxing on TikTok during the pandemic at age 12. He was inspired to use a jawline trainer and mew so much that it’s become second nature. “Every free time I'm not talking, I mew,” he said. He also tried to slim down by only eating 1,500 calories a day for a year.
The way Mogwarts is set up—incentivizing people to chat constantly, offering “lectures” with info about unproven medical techniques—encourages a neurotic focus on self-improvement and has a built-in tendency to spiral out of control. Mathias described the process of getting into looksmaxxing as an addictive loop, where every new method offered the thrill of potentially glowing-up even more. A nontoxic, mutually supportive looksmaxxing community seems to be a contradiction in terms.