Looksmaxxing for beginners: an evidence-first starting guide

Why the order matters more than the products

Most people who start looksmaxxing begin in the wrong place. They read a thread about jaw angles or eye shape, buy a device or a serum for a trait that is set by bone, and spend three months waiting for a change that was never available. The forum vocabulary makes this worse: it is precise about geometry and vague about what any of it responds to.

The honest version is shorter. Every facial trait is either workable, sitting in soft tissue you can change, or structural, sitting in bone you cannot change without surgery. Softmaxxing is the whole of the first category: skin, hair, body composition, sleep, grooming and framing. The steps below are ranked by the strength of the evidence behind each one and by cost, cheapest first. Follow them in order and you spend money last, on the things that were actually costing you points.

One warning before the list. Nothing here moves the gonial angle, the canthal tilt, the maxilla or the facial thirds. Those are structural, and a beginner who accepts that on day one saves a year. What the steps do is change how the structural traits read, and that turns out to be worth more than the forums admit.

Step 1: take a baseline photo before you change anything

You cannot judge a change without a starting point, and a starting point is only useful if you can reproduce it. So the first act of looksmaxxing is not a product; it is a photograph taken under conditions you can repeat in two months. Daylight from a window, phone at eye level and at arm's length or further, neutral expression, hair off the forehead, no filter, no beauty mode. Take three and keep the most neutral.

Run that photo through the free AI face rating. The score and tier tell you where the photo sits on a scale calibrated so an average, groomed adult lands at 50 to 60. More useful for a beginner is the split the report makes: which of the five areas, harmony, eye area, jaw and chin, skin and hair, is costing the most points, and whether the weak points inside it are workable or structural. That split is your plan; everything below is the order to work through it.

If you want a single trait first, the free tools each read one thing from the same photo: face shape, symmetry, jawline, eye shape and the rest. They are useful for the framing steps later. For the first month, the overall score and the area split are enough.

Step 2: sunscreen every morning, a retinoid at night

Skin carries the largest non-surgical potential of the five areas, up to 25 points on its own dimension, because every skin trait the rating reads, tone evenness, clarity, texture, redness and oiliness, sits in tissue that responds to a routine. Two products have the strongest evidence, and a beginner needs no others for the first three months.

Broad-spectrum sunscreen, every morning. A 2013 randomised trial in Annals of Internal Medicine assigned adults either to daily sunscreen or to using it at their own discretion and followed them for several years. The daily group showed less visible skin aging. This is prevention: it stops new unevenness forming rather than fading what is there, so it will not show in a scan next month. It is still the first item on the list because every other skin step assumes it, and because it is the cheapest thing in this guide.

A retinoid at night. A 2007 study in Archives of Dermatology applied retinol to naturally aged skin for six months and reported fewer fine wrinkles and more collagen in the treated skin against the untreated side. Retinol is available over the counter; tretinoin is stronger and prescription-only, and the decision to use it belongs with a doctor. Start low and infrequent, expect dryness and flaking for the first month, and do not judge it before twelve weeks. The complete routine, with the optional additions, is in the skin routine that moves a rating.

Step 3: sleep, because the eye area reads it first

The eye area carries more weight in the overall score than skin does, and it is the area most sensitive to how you slept. A 2013 study in the journal Sleep photographed the same people rested and after sleep deprivation, then had observers rate the photos. The tired faces were judged to have more hanging eyelids, redder and more swollen eyes, darker circles under the eyes, paler skin and more visible fine lines. Every one of those is a cue the rating reads.

This is the fastest lever in the guide. A week of consistent sleep changes how the under-eye reads in a matched photo; nothing else here works that quickly. It is also the reason a baseline photo taken after a bad night is a poor baseline. What sleep, water and smoking each do to the face is set out in sleep, hydration and the face, and the under-eye specifically in what is workable under the eye.

Step 4: body fat, the largest lever on the lower third

Almost every beginner who asks about the jaw is asking about fat. The mandible is bone and does not change; the layer over it does, and that layer decides whether the bone you have is visible. Two perception studies make the point. A 2009 paper in Perception found that facial adiposity, the amount of fat visible in a face, is a cue observers use to judge health, and that it tracks rated attractiveness. A 2010 paper in the same journal showed that observers read weight from a face image reliably, using cues such as the width of the cheeks against the jaw.

The practical meaning is that for most adults above a moderate body fat level, a slow calorie deficit is the single largest change available to the jaw and chin area, which has a potential cap of 14 points. It is also the slowest step: expect the area under the chin to change over one to two months and the rest of the face over three to six. Do not rush it and do not chase a number; the face does not need a very low body fat to read as defined. The detail is in body fat and the jawline.

If you are already lean and the jaw still reads soft, that is bone, and no deficit will change it. The report will tag the relevant traits structural. What remains for a lean face is framing, posture and grooming, which is the next step.

Step 5: grooming, hair and framing

Grooming has almost no trial evidence and is still worth doing, because it changes the edges of the face that a photo and a room read first. Two lines do most of the work. The beard neckline, placed where the neck meets the underside of the head rather than along the jawbone, draws the jaw outline whether or not the bone underneath is doing much. The tail of the eyebrow, tidied so it does not droop below the outer corner of the eye, stops a rested eye reading tired. Both take minutes. See eyebrows, beard and the perceived jaw.

Hair is a separate matter with real evidence. If the hairline is receding or density is falling, a randomised trial found topical minoxidil beat placebo for regrowth in men with pattern hair loss, and trials of finasteride found improved hair counts against placebo. Both are medication with side effects, and finasteride is prescription-only; the conversation is with a doctor, not a forum. What the trials showed, and how long they took, is in minoxidil vs finasteride for the hairline.

The haircut itself is framing. It changes the apparent length and width of the face, which changes how the facial thirds read, without touching the thirds. The face shape tool tells you the shape from the same baseline photo, and hairstyle by face shape says what to balance for each one.

What not to do: the two methods with no evidence

Mewing. The claim is that resting the tongue on the roof of the mouth moves the adult maxilla forward and sharpens the jaw. There are no clinical trials showing tongue posture changes adult facial bone, and no mechanism by which resting tongue pressure would move a fused midface. Head and neck posture genuinely changes how the jaw reads in a photo, which is where the before-and-after pictures come from. Keep the posture; drop the expectation. The full argument is in what mewing does not do.

A useful rule for anything you read later: if the method promises to move a trait the report tagged structural, it is either surgery or it is not going to work. BecomeTen does not recommend surgery at any tier, and this guide has nothing to say about it beyond that.

How to check whether any of it worked

Re-take the baseline photo under the same conditions at six to eight weeks, and again at twelve to sixteen. Compare the matched pairs, not the memory of your face. A change within two points is noise. Grooming and sleep show at the first checkpoint; skin texture at the second; pigment, fine lines and body composition later still. The protocol is in how to track progress, and a re-scan on BecomeTen sees both photos side by side and may only report visible differences, including no difference.

That is the whole starting guide. If you want the month laid out day by day, the 30-day glow up plan does that, and is honest about which of the steps above can and cannot show inside a month.