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- [00:01]
Vanessa
Kara. At Great Wolf Lodge, there's adventure for the whole family. I'm excited to check out the lodge in the Poconos, which is close to me. And with 23 lodges across the country, there's probably one near all of you too. You and your pack can splash away in the indoor water park where it's always a toasty 84 degrees. There's a wave pool, a lazy river and a bottle. A bunch of massive water slides, including ones your family can enjoy all together.
- [00:32]
Kara
They even have adventure packed attractions from Magi Quest, a live action game that kids can play throughout the lodge, to the Northern Lights Arcade. And there's also a bunch of great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties, all under one roof. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more@greatwolf.com that's G-R-E-A-T W O L F.com and strengthen the pack. I do want to spend a second on bone smashing. This is one. Can you just take bone smashing?
- [01:09]
Vanessa
It is literally exactly what it sounds like, which is hammering on the cheeks or the forehead to essentially break the bones to get closer to the masculine ideal.
- [01:32]
Kara
Hi, Vanessa.
- [01:33]
Vanessa
Hi, Tara.
- [01:35]
Kara
Vanessa, you went away for a few days and while you were gone, I went deep down a rabbit hole. I was like texting you. We have to talk about this on the podcast because every single corner of of my world, my podcast algorithm, what's coming across, my news feeds, what's showing up in print in front of me, all of it is pointing to the topics of looks maxing and the manosphere. And you were like, hi, from vacation. La la la. I don't want to think about it.
- [02:16]
Vanessa
I was basically like, go for it. In fairness, in fairness, we. We have covered looks maxing a bit recently. Roger, my husband, was watching the Manosphere documentary while he was on the treadmill, and he was like, you got to watch it. You got to watch it. And I was like, I know I have to watch it. I know I have to watch it. But, like, the world is stressing me out so much right now that, like, I need to reread books that have happy endings because that's how I manage life when the world is feeling feels like it's falling apart. So it was on my to do list. It just moved up a little bit higher on my to do list. And in the case of watching the documentary, waiting paid off because I was actually able to watch it with bear, my 20 year old. So it was sort of a doubly interesting experience, which we will, we will get into. And looks maxing has been a dining room, well, a kitchen table conversation in my house.
- [03:18]
Kara
Yes.
- [03:18]
Vanessa
It's not that formal.
- [03:19]
Kara
It's not that either.
- [03:20]
Vanessa
It's not that formal and is like, filled with meme speak, which we will get into. So this is a whole education. I know people are freaking out about it, but hopefully, Car, this episode gives people lots of information and lots of kind of education as well as the points where we're concerned and we think other people should feel concerned.
- [03:46]
Kara
Yeah. And I think our goal here is to take these two concepts, which are covered separately in a lot of different places, and to place them kind of on a spectrum, on a continuum in relation to one another, because that's what's happening in conversation anyhow. So we want to help you kind of frame where they overlap and where they don't. And in order to do that, we have to start with just a little bit of vocabulary. It's like when we start in our curriculum, we always do the vocabulary first. So we're going to do a little bit of vocabulary teaching just to make sure everyone is on the same page with understanding what this terminology means. And we'll give you a little bit of history through each of these concepts as well, and then we'll kind of land in this finale of where they are connected and where they are not. So, Vanessa, should we start with the looksmaxing piece of it?
- [04:46]
Vanessa
Yeah. And I just to level set because not everyone is aware of this. I mean, if you're a regular listener of the podcast, you are. And if you've been following Car's work for a long time, you are. But I just want to point to the fact that now, six years ago, Decoding Boys came out, and as someone who was working, you know, I, I, I barely knew Cara. I knew Kara a little bit. But when Decoding Boys came out, as someone who'd been working with girls for many, many years and thinking about girls body image and girl self esteem, Decoding Boys was really, really eye opening to me because it pointed to the ways in which teenage boys were struggling with identity, self esteem, body image, as well as lots and lots of science about their growth and development. So while this may feel like a new issue to a lot of people, the concept of boys feeling pressure to look a certain way, to appear a certain way, to change their physical presence is not new. And Cara really was at the forefront of writing about it and speaking about it. So this is like one specific corner of that world. I really encourage people to go back and read Decoding Boys. We get into some of this stuff, and this is so awkward, but that book is really entirely about teen boys. So go back and reread it because it still holds up incredibly well and it has a lot of important foundational stuff in this. In this conversation.
- [06:16]
Kara
Thank you. I appreciate it. I. You know, that book came out a couple of weeks before the COVID shutdowns began. And I don't know if it's that. That it was unique at the time or that the world was actually shuttering itself in. I'm really thrilled to see how much content there is out now from so many writers on the topic, but I appreciate that, Vanessa. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. So let's start with looks, boxing, and let's talk about Braden Peters, aka Clavicular, who, at 20 years old, which, let's
- [06:56]
Vanessa
be honest, sounds like genitalia. I mean, every time I see Clavicular, I'm like, is that like a part of the genitals that I forgot about the clavicle? I know it, I know it is. I know where it comes from. But when you say clavicular, I'm like, I can't help myself but feel like it's, like, not what it is. Anyways. Yes.
- [07:17]
Kara
And I'm always fascinated by people who give themselves their own nickname. That's a whole other episode.
- [07:22]
Vanessa
Well, that was like when my mother gave herself her own grandmother nickname. Like, she, like, chose it. We were like, don't you want to wait to see what the kids are going to call you? She was like, nope, nope. So Clavicular gave himself his own name and as you mentioned, clavicle, which is why is he resting it on the clavicle?
- [07:42]
Kara
Yeah. Let's just explain what his movement is and how it's not entirely his movement. He just happens to be the face of the movement right now. But he's really credited with mainstreaming it. I was actually at a dinner this weekend and I was Talking to a 19 year old who said it's a movement that is so entirely about status, built on looks. That the leading face of the movement is nicknamed after the bone that goes between sort of the base of your neck and your shoulder. She's like, that's bananas. But that is the case. Clavicular is very in the zeitgeist, in part because he places himself there. He courts controversy, Vanessa. He is looking for the attention that he has received. He does things like using the N word and associating himself very aggressively. And openly with racists and misogynists and anti Semites. He, you know, when Andrew Tate was first a big thing, clavicular, like, rushed to make sure everyone knew how much he respected and looked up to Andrew Tate. So, like, if you're looking for headlines and you're looking for people to be talking about you and you don't really care what they're saying about you, this is one way to get that attention. And Clavicular is very happy to splash around in this pool, but when you go back and look at kind of what he's building upon. And there was an excellent episode of the Daily this week which came out describing some of the language behind looks maxing. It was pulled from an article that was published in the New York Times a week or two prior that also talked about clavicular and looks maxing. There are articles everywhere. You can pick whatever your, your outlet of choice is, you will find articles written about this. But the, the language has its roots in gaming, in video gaming, which is interesting to me, and that's the maxing concept. So in video games, the general structure of many video games is that you gather a number of points and you can distribute those points into different buckets. Like, for instance, in games where you have an avatar, you can, you know, have different, you can choose to dress your avatar or whatever, give your avatar whatever skills. It's different for different games. But when you put all of your points in a single bucket, you are maxing those points. And so with looks maxing, you are dedicating a hundred percent of your own personal energy to your looks.
- [10:45]
Vanessa
Yeah. And it's again, people may be like, oh, you know, teenage boys don't care about this that much. Young men don't care about this that much. Even if they're not sort of whole hog into this culture. I just want to reiterate, they care very much how they look, how they're perceived, how they measure up to other people, their peers, celebrities, whatever the case may be. And look no further than the term mogging, because. And you've probably, if you have a young man or teenage boy living in your house or that you're teaching or hanging out with, they use the term mogging all the time. In my house, it's often used as frame mogging, which means if you're in a picture with somebody else, like if you're frame mogging the other person, it means you look much better in the picture than they do. So my kids are constantly joking mostly that the dog is frame mogging. The rest of us, but it's derived from this concept of being in comparison to someone else. And, Cara, this gets at the point that we're going to sort of explore, which is how much is this movement about attracting women, attracting mates, attracting romantic or sexual partners, and how much of it is about just sort of like me in comparison to other guys, my peers, whatever the case may be. It's. It's a. It's a competition. It's a desire for status. You know, as we get into this conversation, it gets muddier and muddier in terms of, like, how it relates to just guys versus relationship to women.
- [12:24]
Kara
Yeah. I mean, I think about mogging as being superior. That's. If you're looks mogging someone, you look more attractive, you are superiorly attractive to them. There's height mogging, hair mogging, jaw mogging, you can mog anything, frame mogging, all the things. Right. When you take a deep dive, there are certainly people out there who are using the terminology whose aim is to attract someone. There's no doubt. But the vast majority do use it in the way you just described as a status play. And that's fascinating because what that means is then you have to think about, well, who's granting the status? And generally speaking, it is males granting other males the status. Like, you look better than I do, you are taller than I am, your jaw is more pronounced than. Than mine is. So if you are doing this as a comparison game and you're aiming to be superior, then the judge of that is not necessarily the person you want to attract. Although it could be, but by and large, it's the person you want to beat at the game. And this is very different from the manosphere, which we're going to describe in a minute. I think you've nailed it in terms of kind of the. If we're looking at a spectrum from looksmaxing to the manosphere, this is one thing that is notably different. The primary goal with looksmaxing in general and mogging in particular is an aesthetic one. Now, I want to define a few of the acronym terms that you will hear. The first one is psl, which is short for proportion, symmetry, length, score. So this is all about the actual measurable aesthetic differences between people. And there's this actor named Matt Bomer. He is generally cited in the original pieces that are written about looks maxing, including all the Reddit threads and all that. I mean, I really.
- [14:32]
Vanessa
Vanessa, you really, really. I went down the line, clearly had a lot of free time this week.
- [14:37]
Kara
My taxes were done And I had time. He is the one whose facial proportions were originally determined to be or deemed to be sort of the ideal.
- [14:49]
Vanessa
Which is fascinating because he's a gay man. He's an out gay man with a partner and children. And this will become relevant as we dive further into the manosphere, just in
- [15:00]
Kara
a sense, it's so fascinating. So you get a PSL score, right? What are the proportions? What are the symmetry? What are the different lengths of things clavicular, by the way, in all of his interviews, can he can actually quote to you the exact numbers of things like the length of his clavicle, the distance between his nose and the top of his upper lip, his eyebrow to upper lid height. Like this is psl.
- [15:30]
Vanessa
I mean, it sort of smacks of like phrenology. I mean, it's really disturbing how much that is related to it.
- [15:39]
Kara
Because what it is, is, yes, it's. There's this sort of. Then there's a perfection, right, that one might attain. And we'll get into the techniques of how people actually get to these ideal scores, what they are doing to themselves to achieve a PSL score that they're happy with. The other score that you will hear about is the SMV score, which is the sexual Market value score. Now, this score is less about status than it is about attractiveness as a measure of status. And if you start searching looksmaxing and SMV score, what you will see is a number of the these threads that come through where people have been identified with optimal SMV scores. I think it's a 1 to 10 scale. And this is fascinating because it's not about your actual measurable looks, it's about your literally, your market value.
- [16:49]
Vanessa
Literally does come in the manosphere stuff.
- [16:53]
Kara
Yes.
- [16:53]
Vanessa
So this is, this is more of a crossover than the psl.
- [16:58]
Kara
That's right. That's right. But. And both are sort of goals for many. Some prioritize one, some prioritize the other depending upon what they're looking for. We'll be right back, but first a word from our sponsors.
- [17:15]
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- [17:40]
Kara
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- [18:47]
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- [19:10]
Kara
I want to get into technique because I think this is the thing that has the hair standing up on the back of people's necks at this point. So do you want to get started, Vanessa, with the list of things that people are willing to do to get the PSL score that they are looking for?
- [19:31]
Vanessa
Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the source of this information for young people. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because we're, we can dive deeper into it as we talk about the manosphere. But this is information and you're going to be shocked at how widespread and available this information is to kids who are are on TikTok on YouTube. My Instagram Reels do not serve me up through the algorithm. But maybe if you have young people on those influencers who are using things like Twitch or Vine, any of these platforms where these influencers are here, they're either going to be talking about their own use of it, they may be promoting the sale of it. And so it's they're receiving this information from these characters out there. I guess they're human, you know, they're human beings, but they're portraying a certain role or character. But also kids are talking about this amongst themselves. They are talking with each other about who's doing what, including. And Kari, you're going to get into this steroid use, which is astounding to those of us who grew up many decades ago. So we'll get into some of the actually really scary stuff. But they are hearing about testosterone, use growth hormones, different kinds of GLP1 use stimulant, use meth, cocaine, Adderall, injectable peptides, which my oldest kid has been talking a lot about.
- [21:04]
Kara
I love how you like go meth, cocaine, Adderall, like method meth.
- [21:10]
Vanessa
Vanessa, It's. Yeah, right. So it's crazy. It's drugs, it's supplements, it's medications that are approved for other uses. Then there's. I'm gonna let you talk specifically about steroids because this is really, really, really fascinating. But I will tell you, I hear from my kids. Oh yeah, yeah, that person's using steroids. Like that random 20 year old I know is using steroids in like casual speak. So there's all of that. And then we can get into some of the surgeries and sort of physical changes that people are doing all the way down to just like how people pose for photos to look better. But car, can you talk about the scary things that are being used that have lifelong consequences?
- [22:02]
Kara
Yeah. So let's go through it and for this part of the conversation, I'm going to recommend that if you have kids who are tweens or teens and you're struggling with how to have conversations with them about this, press play on this part of the episode and they can hear from us what is being peddled to them and then you can get into deeper conversation. Cause this is a lot to figure out if you're not swimming in these waters all the time. And kids deserve to know what they're being told to put in their body by 20 year olds to get a high SMV score. So here we go. Let's start with hormones. So generally the most common hormone that's used in looks maxing is testosterone, although a lot of people also use growth hormone. Growth hormone is when you haven't finished growing, helps you grow taller when you have finished growing. And even when you haven't, it extends the length of bones in your body or the, the prominence of certain bones in your body through the growth spurt and beyond. So people who take growth hormone will often, you'll see their forehead gets a little bit bigger, their jaw gets a little bit more pronounced even when their growth plates are fused and they are not gaining height anymore. Growth hormone is also There's a. A big sort of longevity play with growth hormone, where you're hearing the longevity movement about growth hormone taken for cosmetic reasons, but it is not a benign substance, because growth hormone makes every single cell in the entire body grow and multiply every cell that can. And so if you have a cancer cell in your body, it too will respond to growth hormone and will grow even faster. So when you read about associations between cancers and growth hormone, that is sort of the simplest explanation. The testosterone of it all. I mean, we've done episodes on testosterone. I will just refer people back to those episodes because there's a very long conversation to be had there. But suffice it to say that when you take a hormone that your body is producing as part of puberty. So if you're a tween or a teen and your testicles are making testosterone and they are trying to increase the amount of testosterone they're making over time so that they can get into the balance that your body needs to get to over time, which is called homeostasis. When you interrupt that by giving your body exogenous testosterone, testosterone from the outside, you really do interfere with the signaling that's happening inside your body. That's kind of telling your testicles, hey, machinery that makes testosterone, you need to keep going, keep growing, keep upregulating. I am so curious to see the data over time. And there will be data over time on how tweens and teens who take testosterone are impacted by this hormone long term. But if you are a tween or a teen listening to this, that's the. The one thing I will point to in our own writing. There's a chapter on. In decoding boys, there's a chapter in. This is so awkward. Read about testosterone. Learn about testosterone. Learn how your body makes it. Learn why your body makes it, and learn why it's not ideal to take it in from the outside, particularly if it's not being prescribed to you by a doctor and you don't actually know what's in it. Well, just leave the hormone bucket there. We're going to move over for a second to the steroid bucket. And, Vanessa, what I want to focus on even more than steroids are called SARMs. S A R M S. SARMs. Selective androgen receptor modulators. Okay, so what are SARMs? And again, parents, you might not have heard about these, but kids, you probably have. These are chemically very similar to anabolic steroids. Okay? Very similar. The difference is that anabolic steroids have known androgenic and Estrogenic side effects, sex hormone like side effects. SARMs have fewer of those, so they've become really popular. They are known to stimulate muscle growth, they are known to stimulate bone growth and they are used in medicine for medical conditions that actually need these impacts. If someone has cancer and they are muscle wasting and they need help building their muscles, they might be put on a sarm. If they have osteoporosis and their bones are wasting away, they might be put on a sarm. But, but these are not designed for tweens, teens and 20 somethings. There are lots of side effects. None of them are FDA approved. I'm going to say that again. None of them are FDA approved and they are all prohibited, just like anabolic steroids by the World Anti Doping Agency.
- [27:59]
Vanessa
And Cara, my understanding was that with steroids, and I don't know if this is true of sarms, the concern is things like impotence and rage. I mean, those were the two aspects that. And I was just having this conversation with my 15 year old about it. Is that true of SARMS also? Or is there some difference because of the reduced androgenic and estrogenic side effects?
- [28:22]
Kara
The sex hormone like impacts that cause testicles to shrink, that cause people to be impotent, that give people erectile dysfunction. So I would imagine, although I got to go look into the data a little bit more, but I would imagine those impacts are a little bit lower with sarms. I would also imagine, Vanessa, for the same reason, that the rage that tends to come with testosterone swings is probably a little bit less with SARMs. But I don't know. And I'm going to dive into it and would love to hear from listeners who do know and who have read data, send us studies, I want to see what those show. The other big issue is we're giving you a list of substances that if you are a tween or a teen and you are putting one of these things into your body, I can pretty much guarantee that unless you're doing it for a chronic medical condition, you're not getting this substance from a doctor, it's not being filled by a pharmacist, and the risks to that are massive. You have no idea what you're putting in your body. Like, I can give you all the side effects if you knew this was the thing you were putting in your body, but I cannot tell you. What if it is contaminated with and there's a list of like thousand things it could be contaminated with, or you could be putting this into your body and it could have no active ingredient. Right. Like so, again, to younger listeners, I caution you for the rest of your life when you are talking about putting something into your body or onto your body, there's a whole world of people who have spent a long time studying medicine, studying science, who are there to help you and guide you and give you the medicines and treatments that you need. These are the people to engage in conversations and these are the people to get to help you if you are taking things that a friend is handing to you or someone is selling to you on the street, like I, I. Or on TikTok or on TikTok or on where, whatever platform. So this is worrying. I just want to run through the last of this list so that we can give the kid listeners a break and go back to the adults. I want to talk about weight loss strategies and in particular, which is called lean maxing. Vanessa, you talk about the use of GLP1s. That is absolutely true, that there are kids who are using these and that
- [31:02]
Vanessa
there's a combination of GLP1s with peptides. There's like a new. And I can't even remember what it's called, but my teenagers all know exactly what it's called. And they're like, oh, yeah, every movie star who bulks up for a Marvel movie, this is what they're on. And there's, there's things we've never even heard of. I mean, Kari, you have, that are being introduced into the market, some of which are being used in medical context, again, being prescribed by doctors, but not, you know, for a lean maxing effort.
- [31:34]
Kara
I mean, GLP1s are peptides, just for a little bit of language clarification. But yes, there are combination substances that are making their way onto the market. And the goal is, in the looks, maxing community is dissolving fat. This is the goal, dissolving fat. By the way, as the male body proceeds through puberty and testosterone levels, the net levels of testosterone rise over time. One of the things that happens is that you have more lean muscle mass and less body fat. This doesn't mean you have no body fat. And there are a lot of people who, based on diet and exercise and genetics and all sorts of things, have more body fat. But the male maturing, male body does tend to shift towards a leaner, more muscular build over time because that's testosterone just does this as part of our sexual maturation along with healthy eating, exercise, sleep, all the things. But in order to make this all go much faster and go in the direction that people want. They are starting to use these substances. The other set of substances, and I freak out every time I see this list is the category of meth, cocaine and Adderall, Vanessa. And look no further than clavicular. Who walks through how much of each of these things he's ingesting on a daily basis. Like, I watched a video that described, I just, I don't think this was clavicular. I think this was someone else. I can't even remember because my mind is such a blur of all of this, but it was. I just smoke a little meth every morning.
- [33:22]
Vanessa
And I was like, oh my God, what?
- [33:25]
Kara
And who is following these influencers? But 12 year olds, 14 year olds, 16 year olds with rapidly developing brains. And look, meth is healthy for no brains, but it is especially unhealthy for developing brains. And so if you are a tween or a teen and you are listening to young adults tell you that ingesting stimulants in the name of weight loss is okay, I am here to say it is not. It is not safe. These are addictive substances. These have catastrophic long term impacts. Like, I'm literally begging you, please ignore this piece of advice. Please, please, please ignore this piece of advice.
- [34:16]
Vanessa
And I just want to say, and this will get into this in the manosphere conversation, but who the hell knows if it's even true? I mean, these guys say these things for effect, for clickbait, for impact and like, who knows? I mean, God, I hope no one is smoking a little bit of meth every morning. But like, particularly with these guys who are really saying things just to get more people to stream and whatever, like who the hell knows? So just anything they say you cannot take as truth or fact or even part of their belief system, even if it's shocking and offensive and you want to hold them accountable. When you see into the behind the scenes situation, they're often just saying things just for effect. So I just want to say that about math and anything else. And in terms of stimulants like Aderall or Ritalin, anything that comes in a pill, making sure you've had the conversation with your kids about you never, ever, ever take a pill from anyone, including your friend who says, oh, this was prescribed to me by my doctor, doesn't matter. The only pill you ever take is if it was prescribed by your doctor for a medical reason. A, because you don't take someone else's prescription, but B, because if it's counterfeit, it could very likely have fentanyl in it, and that is fatal. So have that conversation with your kid. It's a small part of this conversation, but it's. You cannot have that conversation too often with kids.
- [35:47]
Kara
I'm going to skip over the. All the supplements, because we've done a lot of content around supplements. But for those who are interested in learning more, listen to our episode about that, watch our videos. You know, everything from ashwagandha to nad. Let's talk about supplements in our homes, around our dinner table. But all these same themes apply to that conversation. I do want to spend a second on bone smashing. This is one. Vanessa, can you just take bone smashing?
- [36:21]
Vanessa
So it is literally exactly what it sounds like, which is hammering on the cheeks or the forehead to essentially break the bones so that micro fractures, like microfacture, you're not like, literally cracking open your skull, but micro fractures, which then, when they heal, will grow back bigger.
- [36:44]
Kara
Ostensibly. Ostensibly, yes.
- [36:46]
Vanessa
Theoretically, yes. To get closer to the masculine ideal of a bigger forehead and more prominent cheekbones. So that's terrifying. So literally having a conversation with the young people in your life, which is. It is deeply unsafe to do this. We're not even sure it works. And you could have serious, serious health and safety consequences. It's not funny. It's not cool. It's terrifying. Don't do it kind of conversation. But the flip side of that conversation is like, hey, I get it. There may be parts of your. The way you look and your face and your bone structure that maybe feels like you wish it was different. And, like, let's talk about that. I want to hear about that. I mean, my. My kids are so funny because they're like, oh, God, mom, we got your nose. Thanks for your nose. And I'm like, I love my nose, but it's okay if you don't love it. I'm not offended. Let's talk about it, right? Like, not just saying to them, don't do it. It's dangerous, but getting underneath the feeling for them of why they would want to do something which seems insane to us as adults, to alter their appearance.
- [38:04]
Kara
I mean, I think you bring up the most important point, which is, this is all so sad. It's all so sad because, as you always say, Vanessa, during the decade of puberty, kids are waking up in a new body every single day. And that takes so much resilience to be comfortable with what is happening to you, okay? And within you in the framing of what the world thinks you should look like. You have no idea where it's going. Your parents have no idea where it's going. Your doctor can't even really predict where it's going to. And this whole movement capitalizes on that. It takes advantage of the fact that that feels bad to not know. And, you know, and then there's the layer of. You'll hear this expression over time that, oh, they lost their baby fat, you know, and what is that? Usually the expression refers to the leaning out of the fat face over time in the later stages of puberty, as facial fat starts to disappear. By the way, this continues through the lifespan, and that is what makes us age too. Right. So, like, that's a. That's an interesting flip side to that totally. But the reason I bring that up is that the targeted audience for a lot of look smackers are kids whose faces still retain a lot of fat. And over time, that fat will naturally disappear and the jaw will become prominent. For a lot of people, their cheekbones will become more prominent because the facial fat is starting to move out of the tissue in the face, the skin in the face. And that piece of it happens over time. That is why adult faces look different than child faces. Right. And also the proportions change. Younger faces have much bigger foreheads relative to the rest of their face and the. The relative size of the forehead over time until you start losing your hair, starts to shrink. Right. And so all of these things that are part of the looks, maxing, movement, are also things that over time may, I don't know, but may become part of the way your body is going to naturally transform. So, I mean, there's so much more to say about fillers and plastic surgery and all the things, but it's all landing at the same point, which is. And then, kids, I promise you can go, here's where it's landing. There's a world of people out there telling you how to, quote, look your best, how to look Max. And we're here to tell you that even if you don't believe us, that you don't need these things. We're here to tell you that the strategies that they are promoting are not okay. They're not healthy, they're not safe, they're not physically safe, they're not emotionally safe, they're not psychologically safe. So please, before you jump in to one of these strategies or many of these strategies, jump into conversation with your trusted adults about how you're feeling, about what the world is telling you, that that is what is going to keep you safe.
- [41:57]
Vanessa
And we don't blame you for feeling the pressure. This is one of the hardest most sinister things about kids being online are the number of influencers and sources that are shouting at them, at us as adults. That the way we look and the way we live our lives is not good enough. And pulling back from those influences and finding other source of influence on your life, including just normal everyday people who have other values is one thing. But feeling influenced by these folks, we understand it. We all feel it. It's not your fault. But figuring out strategies to not let these manipulative influences who do not have your best interests at heart. And we're going to talk about that in a second. These are people who are doing this to make money. These are people who are manipulating you to make money for their own benefit. They do not care about you. They don't care about your health or safety or emotional wellness. None of it. So don't become victim to their manipulation. And if you find yourself going down this rabbit hole and impacted, talk to your adults. Talk to your friends about it. Like gather as many people as you can because it's not your fault that you're feeling influenced by it, but you want to take control of your own life and not let this dictate your life. These people who don't care about you, who are using you and manipulating you, they don't get to be in charge.
- [43:41]
Kara
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- [45:17]
Kara
so now let's get into the manosphere. And the conversation about the manosphere is in some ways very separate from looksmaxing and in some ways is very interrelated. So let's start again with some definitions. I'll run through the terminology because what I'm really interested in getting to Vanessa is what you and Bear talked about when you watched Inside the Manosphere, which is the Netflix documentary that came out recently and that has really catapulted this conversation in so many ways. So the manosphere refers to all of the websites, platforms, podcasts, blogs, forums, whatever it is promoting extreme masculinity. That's what that is. Okay. In the documentary, a documentarian named Louis Thoreau, who I was not familiar with before, but I think is very well known, and my guess is, Vanessa, you knew exactly who he was, but he's very well regarded and he followed and sort of embedded with several extremely popular influencers who document in on their own channels. And he documented in this film anti woman and often anti Semitic. Very anti Semitic, which was sort of a fascinating secondary threat I wasn't expecting.
- [46:52]
Vanessa
Beliefs and also actively homophobic and racist.
- [46:59]
Kara
Yes.
- [47:00]
Vanessa
It's really just a layer upon layer upon layer of these positions, really extreme positions.
- [47:07]
Kara
I mean, like it's a stunning watch. It is not long. It is about an hour and a half. It is stunning. A couple of things that he nods to throughout that a lot of these articles about the Manosphere nod to throughout. And I just want to bring up here, one is red pill communities. So this is a reference to the film the Matrix. For those who don't remember the Matrix super well or never saw it, the red pill. You could take one of two pills, right? The red pill or the blue pill. The red pill represented willingness to learn a potentially unsettling and life changing truth. Okay? So you would leave the illusory world that you are living in and you would see reality as it truly is. Okay? Face the hard truth. The blue pill is blissful ignorance that you want to just live in blissful ignorance and you don't want to really deal. And so the manosphere often aggressively promotes its willingness to take the red pill, that this is what it's all about. It's the red pill. The Other reference that is constantly made in this content, not by the manosphere influencers themselves, but by people who are writing about, speaking about. The concept of the manosphere is the Netflix show Adolescence, which we covered it in a podcast when it first came out about a year and a half ago. And this show basically was the first to explain in a mainstream way how pervasive the manosphere was down to the tween and teen demographic.
- [48:50]
Vanessa
Yeah. And if just a few other comments about the manosphere, it is using YouTube, sort of podcasts that are recorded on video, also TikTok, other platforms, other social media platforms because some of these folks have gotten banned from standard platforms like Twitter Now X, TikTok, YouTube, those places, so they find other platforms. It also promotes this kind of conspiracy theory that the world has been trying to keep men down. Even some of these influencers talk about their satanic forces at work that are controlling things and keeping men down. And this is one of the places where there's an intersection with long standing anti Semitic tropes sort of connecting Jews to Satan. There's all sorts of stuff, you know, there's ways it intersects with the Maha movement and some of what RFK Jr. Is talking about sort of greater conspiracies at play there around hell. So there's these very big picture concepts which these folks just refer to as fact. So they make these statements and then they just refer to them as fact, which they clearly are not.
- [50:09]
Kara
Well, they clearly are not, but they're target to us, to people who under. Right.
- [50:15]
Vanessa
So here's the adults, here's the. I want to, I want to get into bear's reaction, my 20 year old. And I'm going to use this statement as a bridge to Bear's reaction, which is the manosphere documentary, which there's a bunch of characters in it. But then interstitially there are moments where these influences are out on the street, man on the street. And they are interacting with young men and teenage boys who recognize them and are really excited to see them. And these are kids, you know, middle schoolers, high schoolers, maybe young adult men. And they are chanting back to these influencers the racist, anti Semitic, homophobic comments that they make on their, you know, podcast channels, on their TikToks, on their live streams out in the world. Things we couldn't imagine even five years ago. Someone chanting out loud in public. It's now publicly, you know, acceptable to make these statements in relationship to these influencers. And I'm not going to repeat them here, but they are Slurs of every imaginable thing, awful thing you can imagine, these. These folks are saying it. So Bear and I watched it last night and then when I sat down, he was struck by the international nature. So they filmed these kids all over the world, in Marbella and Miami and everywhere in between. And he was struck by how kids everywhere all over the world knew these guys and were impacted by them and were parroting back to them what they say. And so if you think about it, it is so widespread, the influence of these folks is so enormous that I want you to imagine. And Bear said this to me. He said, you know, for the people who listen to your podcast, if they imagine their kid has not seen it or heard of it, they're wrong. Even if their kid is not on these platforms, doesn't have a phone, doesn't have access to the kids they're friends with do, and they have to talk to them about it, no kid is immune from these characters. Now what he said to me was he was aware of some of them and this is a 20 year old, right? He's on. Maybe he's on them all. He recently deleted TikTok, but it's. He was on Tik Tok for years. He's like, I've seen some of them, but I've seen their most innocuous stuff because I don't follow them. So, like, it gets fed to me on my for you page. So one of the guys hs, who's actually like quite a sophisticated character and marketer who also espouses on his live streams, you know, anti woman, anti Jewish, anti gay content for the clicks. According to him, he's seen.
- [52:58]
Kara
That's what he says he rationalizes what
- [53:00]
Vanessa
he says he rationalizes. Bear was like, yeah, I've seen some of his stuff about him, like chatting up women on the street in different cities. I've never seen his more extreme stuff. And some of the much more extreme characters he's never encountered before, he's heard of them or whatever, but he hasn't encountered them. So if it's not these particular influencers, it's other influencers.
- [53:23]
Kara
And I was left wondering, you know, these are. You said you used a phrase at the top of the podcast. These are real humans today, but there's a massive market for AI influencers to come in and continue these tropes. And so, you know, I don't know where we're going to be a year from now.
- [53:45]
Vanessa
And by the way, in the documentary, there was a clip of a woman or an image of a Woman. And Bear was like, oh, that's totally an AI woman. So, you know, even inside of it, there's, there's footage that's not, that's not real. The other thing that he wished was in the documentary that wasn't was like any research or studies on tweens and teens, like it focused on the influencers themselves, but it didn't get into like any of the research we have about the influence. And I know this is like in some ways a new movement, in some ways not a new movement. So would love to hear more about that.
- [54:24]
Kara
He was struck and he was looking for that data.
- [54:27]
Vanessa
He was looking for that data. Now, in fairness, this is a kid who's a psych minor in college, so he's like, this is very much front of mind. He was also related to that, interested in that sort of sub storyline about how a lot of these guys didn't have father figures in their lives.
- [54:43]
Kara
Yeah, very interesting.
- [54:44]
Vanessa
Both the influencers themselves and some of their sort of most fervent supporters and whether that sort of impacted them and that storyline, which gives you some empathy for them if they weren't spewing such hateful stuff. And he was very shocked. As someone who's aware of the manosphere and sort of all the masculinity conversations, he was not aware of the very potent intersection of this manosphere world and the really, really fervent anti Jewish rhetoric that seems to be coming up underneath it. Nor. Nor was I. He was more aware of the racist and anti gay and anti woman rhetoric. But this was a new element for him.
- [55:33]
Kara
Yeah, and I, I think this is just yet another sort of proof point that if you're trying to get in a conversation with kids about what is happening here, the manosphere is filled not just with no facts or very few facts, but also with hate speech. I mean, that's really what this comes down to and what is illustrated over and over. I know we're going to get a question of, should I watch this with my kid? I immediately sent it to my two kids who are in college and said, please, please, please, this is worth your time. I think for high schoolers, it's very appropriate to show it to them. But like everything else we recommend, if you're not sure, just watch it first. You know, in terms of middle schoolers, I would say there's going to be a lot of room for what are you comfortable with in your home. But at the very least, you need to watch this so you can begin to have some of the conversations to Protect your middle schoolers.
- [56:41]
Vanessa
Yeah. And I think it's so complicated because there are so many statements being thrown out by these influencers, and each statement about how men have been kept down, how, you know, a man and a woman have different roles in a relationship. I mean, that. Cara, there's one part of the documentary where one of these manosphere influencers who also, you know, hangs out with folks like Andrew Tate and the like, he was standing on the balcony of a high rise and he said, look around, men have invented all this, have built all this, have designed in it. That's just fact. And he then doesn't give the documentarian a chance to rebut it. It's just fact. And if you're a 12 year old boy looking at that scene, it's pretty easy to be like, oh yeah, if you're a 12 year old boy who is also feeling crummy about themselves, who is struggling with executive functioning, whose academic reality is sort of like faltering, who's not feeling great about themselves physically. Right. If you're not feeling super confident and somebody is feeding you all this stuff that says, no, no, no, you can be greater, stronger, better, more important, have all the power, you can begin to understand why that's appealing. So while the temptation if you watch this with your kids or if you just get into conversation with them is just to say, this is wrong, this is terrible, all of that, which, trust me, I feel that way. It's terrifying. What you really want to do is understand what are they hearing, what are they seeing, what's filtering down into their middle school classrooms and high school parties like, and then having a conversation with them where they get to share, reflect, talk about it instead of just shutting down the conversation because it's so frightening and so awful. Give them voice, give them a chance to be in conversation with you about it.
- [58:44]
Kara
And I think the way you just framed that is the perfect lead in to sort of landing on a quick conversation about the Venn diagram overlap of looksmaxing and the manosphere. Because where these things intersect, as you just beautifully described, is that this is a pair of movements that are both highly narcissistic, highly manipulative. They're fueled by global virtual platforms of all types. They have their own languages, which we don't understand unless we take the time to learn the terminology.
- [59:28]
Vanessa
So.
- [59:28]
Kara
So it's hard for outsiders to follow. And then it's like an inside thing. And they are paths for some, not many, but for some, to financial success.
- [59:39]
Vanessa
Right? And that's what they're selling, they're selling. You know, they have financial platforms and they have money making schemes and it's. I talk to teenage boys and young men all the time about the pressure they feel to be financially successful. The pressure in a crappy job market with AI taking over a lot of entry level jobs and still they're expected to pay for everything and make a lot of money and do all that stuff. Get to the core of the pressure, which is that boys and young men feel incredible pressure even in 2026 to make a lot of money. So, yes, poo poo it eventually. Like, hey, if you want to make money, there's other ways to try to make money. These are schemes that are only enriching the people promoting them, but getting at underneath what's driving it. They are speaking to a zeitgeist, feeling a movement, a flow, a current in our culture. That is young men are feeling. I mean, Cara, there was a young man in the documentary who espoused truly one of these influencers. And they were.
- [60:47]
Kara
I know exactly who you're talking about. Yep.
- [60:49]
Vanessa
I. It just about broke my heart because he was talking about having been homeless and this guy gave him hope. He talked about how depression isn't a real thing, that they don't believe in mental illness. This is one of the crossovers with the, the Maha movement. They don't believe in depression. And the documentarian dug a little deeper and he said, well, you know, my brother took his own life and he just needed to think differently. He just needed an attitude adjustment. Right. Mental illness is real. Depression is real. And these guys are being sold on the fact that, no, you just have to like subscribe to my platform or work out or do whatever it is they're telling them to do and then you won't feel mental illness. I mean, so there's, there's just these places where they are preying on, you know, the, the challenges and the heartbreak and the difficulties of people's lives. Those things are real. Right. Don't discount those feelings. And one of Bear's criticisms, as the documentary and I will get it, how they these looks Maxing and Manosphere are different. His criticism was that the, the documentary should have talked more clearly and explicitly about looks maxing, about the intersection of the pressure on young men to look a certain way because it is inextricably linked to this masculine culture. Right. It shows these guys working out and their gym routines and a lot of them got into it as fitness influencers first. So they're not separate, but they're not entirely overlapping in the, in the Venn diagram.
- [62:31]
Kara
And so let's go there and land on how they are different. And I would say my, my sort of top line after spending don't ever leave for five years. I can't take it. Where I landed was looks. Maxing is not really about women. It's about status. And maybe status gets a man female attention, but it's not really about women. Whereas the manosphere is, it is about the hatred of women, the keeping women down, keeping women in their lane. I mean we've labeled anti Semitism, we've labeled anti gay, we've labeled all this stuff. But at its root the manosphere is anti woman.
- [63:23]
Vanessa
But what they say is I love women. I, I love women. And but their whole point is I love women to be able to control them. And you see evidence of this in the documentary itself. They also have this thing called one sided monogamy which is one sided monogamy. Vanessa, the woman, their partners, their girlfriends, their wives, what they have to be monogamous. But the men are allowed to have multiple partners to go on dates. But yet they. One guy talked about showing a picture of his, of his wife or his partner and saying she's so hot. This is my wife. While they're on a date with another person. But then he uses it as an opportunity to get into threesomes or multi partner sexual situations.
- [64:14]
Kara
Now again, and the women have been so demoralized that there was a comment somewhere in that documentary that well, I prefer knowing that he's not lying to me. Right.
- [64:30]
Vanessa
I prefer that he's upfront about it.
- [64:32]
Kara
If we have an open relationship and then the documentarian was like, yeah, but then why isn't it open on both sides? Right, Right. So yes.
- [64:41]
Vanessa
And it's not clear. This is another place where it's not clear if this is truly what they do or truly what they believe or if they're just using it for virality. Just like the anti gay where they do these anti predator stings. That's another thing that they, that they sort of do live streams where they trap people into an unproved. Like we have no idea if these people are actually predators. But these guys don't care if they believe in what they're doing. They're doing it for virality. Whereas the kids who are watching it don't know the difference. And so they're being fed this content just like the looks maxers don't care if the kids can tell the difference. They're being fed this content because these influencers are making money off of people. They are, you know, getting sponsorships, they're doing all sorts of things. And so the larger conversation is about how folks online are manipulating other people to benefit off of them, to prey on them. We didn't even get to Only Fans, which is its own. You know, one of them said, well, I would never let my daughter on Only Fans. It's disgusting. And yet he has a house full of only fans, women who he makes money off of. He takes a cut of them. And when the hypocrisy was called out, he's like, oh, well, I don't mind making money off of them.
- [66:10]
Kara
I'm a businessman.
- [66:11]
Vanessa
I'm a businessman. So there's getting at the hypocrisy, getting at the complexity of these. This is a many, many, many conversation situation. This is not a one and done. It's so complicated, it's so shocking that. Give yourself time to process it before you dive into conversation with the kids in your life, because you're gonna have to unpack your own feelings and reactions to it, which are really, really complex.
- [66:42]
Kara
That's right, Vanessa, as always, I could just stay on and keep going, but I think these listeners need a break.
- [66:54]
Vanessa
I think they're probably exhausted from this conversation.
- [66:57]
Kara
You know, this is just the beginning. And hopefully this is a messy ball of thread that hopefully becomes detangled, that the threads unwind as we talk about it more and more with each other, with the people that we love, with the kids in our lives, because the more knowledge that we have and that they have, the more power we all have to not be manipulated by these messages. And ultimately, if there's one thing to take away from this, it's that you don't have to be manipulated by any of these messages, by any of these standards. There was a nod in one of the articles or one of the podcasts or one of the. I can't even remember where, talking about the similarity between what women have always faced in terms of body ideology and looks maxing. And to this comment, I would say, welcome, men, to having yet another layer of conversations around something that has been placing pressure on your shoulders for a long time. This looks different, the words are different, but the concepts are things that, yes, women have been dealing with forever and you, too, have been dealing with for a very long time. So if this version of it is what gets you to start thinking about it and talking about it more. Okay, okay, welcome.
- [68:38]
Vanessa
I want to point people to. There's an influencer, a positive influencer, on Instagram that I started following. And it's someone who starts every video with one of these influencers about money or weight or plastic surgery or whatever. And then about two seconds in, she goes, yeah, nobody cares. And then she'll talk about, like, a funny scientific fact about, like, penguins. And she just, like, helps give a reset of all the stuff coming at us constantly. And I think it's actually just called Nobody cares. I can't remember her name, but it's so brilliant. And, like, help your kids if they're online, if they're following people, help them find those people, send those videos to them. Help upend the algorithm that is sending them all this scary, negative, unhealthy stuff. Give them other hilarious, brilliant things to watch and listen to. I know it's hard. I know people are leaving this feeling overwhelmed and worried and scared. There's so much we can do, but first and foremost, we have to educate ourselves and the kids in our lives. So you got this. Good luck.
- [69:50]
Kara
Good luck.
- [69:52]
Vanessa
Thank you so much for listening. You can email us with questions, feedback, or episode requests@podcastawkward.com if you want to
- [70:02]
Kara
learn more about what we do to make this whole stage of life less awkward for everyone involved. Our parent membership, our school health ed curriculum, our keynote talks, and more are
- [70:15]
Vanessa
all@lessawkward.com and if you want products that make puberty so much more comfortable, visit myumla.com.