Years ago, a supervisor was helping me think through what I should do next. Further studies, work, management—whatever direction might make sense for me.
They were listing the reasons they thought I would be fine. What I remember is something like: “You're smart. You're a good-looking guy. You'll do well.”
I stopped at good-looking.
What? Good-looking?
I had heard things like that in relationships before. This was the first time somebody had said it in a completely non-romantic context. My supervisor had no reason to flatter me. They were looking at my future and placed my appearance beside my intelligence and potential.
I think that was the first time I understood being good-looking as an asset. It could be useful. Until then, I am not sure I had fully believed it about myself.
Now I do.
When looking better becomes a ranking system
Online, this pursuit now has a name: looksmaxxing. It is appearance-focused self-improvement taken toward its literal maximum. It can include familiar things such as fitness, grooming and clothes. At its more extreme edges, jawlines, height, hair and body fat become evidence of where a man ranks and what attention he should expect from women.
I can see the nugget of truth inside it.
Being good-looking is an advantage.
Clavicular is one of the online figures associated with looksmaxxing. His Instagram following grew from nearly 550,000 in April 2026 to about 1.05 million by August. I do not follow him or want to imitate him. I am interested in what that kind of growth says about the moment.
Research into these communities describes something harsher than grooming. Men scrutinize other men, present humiliation as objective advice and treat small distances from an ideal face or body as failure. The research describes a masculine gaze enforced by peers.
Appearance affects how people receive us. Looksmaxxing begins with that truth, then makes appearance responsible for almost everything.
After more than ten years building Diggn'It, I do not have much patience for pretending that the outside does not matter. I have built a business around men caring for it. The question is what care is doing to the man.
What makes somebody good-looking? What do you do to become good-looking? To me, that is the whole game.
If you destroy yourself on the outside trying to look good, and destroy yourself on the inside while doing it, I do not know if the result can still be called good-looking.
Maybe our insecurity has different witnesses
I recently read a GQ Middle East article asking, “Can an Arab Clavicular Ever Exist?” Its argument is that looksmaxxing has found less ground in Southwest Asia and North Africa, or SWANA, because men here tend to be less isolated. Family, kinship and social roles still give masculinity an outward purpose.
Part of that feels true to me. It is also too easy to turn it into a flattering story about us.
I do not think the conversation around masculinity in Saudi Arabia is the same as the one I watch happening online in the West. In that online conversation, I can see some young men searching for somebody to define masculinity for them. Andrew Tate, Clavicular and others enter that opening with very different answers.
I am less certain what our conversation is.
Where do our examples of masculinity come from? Fathers? Uncles? Religion? Tribe? History? Other men? Women? The men we see online?
I am not prepared to say Saudi or Arab men are simply more secure. Our insecurities may arrive through questions of respect, provision, protectiveness and whether other people recognize us as men. The question may be less “Is my face good enough?” and more “Am I respected? Can I provide? Do I carry myself properly? Can people count on me?”
That is a question, not a regional diagnosis. In a small qualitative study in Saudi Arabia, the men interviewed often described appearance pressure through fitness, discipline, prestige and performance. It does not tell us what Saudi men as a whole believe. It suggests that appearance anxiety can arrive in the language of seriousness and control.
I want to stand out
I do not match what many people expect a Saudi man to look like. I have a mohawk, a big beard and a mustache. I wear earrings. I have tattoos. People are often surprised when they learn I am Saudi.
Some of that comes from growing up Saudi Canadian, between Saudi and Canada, but part of it is simpler: I want to stand out. There is insecurity inside that choice because standing out means being seen, and being seen gives people the chance to misunderstand you. I have become more comfortable with it over time. I like how I look. I think I am good-looking, and I do not think I always did.
Calling this confidence feels too easy. Somebody else named something in me before I could see it properly, and since then my understanding of a man's beauty has always involved other people.
A man is not beautiful alone.
The waiter test
I do not mean that other people get to vote him beautiful. They are not only mirrors; they have to experience the person behind the appearance. For me, almost nothing makes a man less attractive than watching him treat somebody poorly when there is nothing to gain from treating them well. How does he speak to a waiter? How does he treat staff? What happens when he believes his status is higher than the person in front of him?
It does not matter how many muscles he has, how carefully he grooms himself or what trainers he wears. If he uses his status—or the status he imagines he has—to make somebody smaller, the whole image changes. It is an ick factor for me. The outside remains real—a face, a body, a beard, clothes, the way a man carries himself all affect how we see him—but then he acts, and we see the same face differently.
Relaxed discipline
When I picture a beautiful man, I picture somebody who takes care of himself mentally and physically. I picture him reading, smiling at people, taking care of his family and being there for his community. I notice how he carries himself, how he talks and how he helps. He does not have to be in shape. Fitness may be part of taking care of yourself, but it is not the definition.
Discipline is very attractive to me, but more precisely, I am attracted to how relaxed somebody is with discipline—how comfortable he is with the act itself. When a man is punishing himself because he feels inadequate, there is tension in the work. A workout can carry the anxiety that missing it will expose him. The outward act may look disciplined while fear is doing the pushing.
I think of homework. One person does his homework because homework is the work in front of him. Another does it because he is afraid that failing will reveal something about him. They may finish the same assignment. They are not having the same experience.
What I find beautiful is relaxed discipline. It means doing what is good for you without making your worth depend on the result.
Walking
For me, right now, that looks like walking. My back feels better when I stand and walk, and my mindset feels better too. If I feel sluggish, I walk. The more I walk, the better I tend to feel.
Getting a walking pad made it much easier because I can walk at my desk instead of turning it into a heroic event that requires the perfect time. Even if walking never changed the appearance of my body, I would still place it inside my idea of male beauty. For me, walking is doing: one step follows another, and over time I get somewhere. I can keep moving without making every step a test of my worth. That steady movement is what I connect to being counted on.
Being there without having the answer
If there is a death in the family, or somebody needs help, I want to be in a position to help. That does not mean I arrive with the answer. When somebody needs real help, I often have the feeling that I do not know what I am doing. Sometimes it is a doozy. Keeping my cool means admitting what I am missing, asking questions and moving anyway.
A beautiful man, to me, cares for people and helps them stand back up. He can be there, but he also has to question himself, learn his weaknesses and strengths, and know when he is out of his depth. Being dependable cannot mean forcing certainty onto everyone around you.
My sense, from the conversations I have had, is that it can be hard for a man to ask another man for help. As I get older, even those conversations feel harder. Sometimes helping another man means listening; sometimes it means helping him get going, even if he does not feel like it. Often it is both.
But being dependable also means knowing when to say, “I need help.” That may be one of the hardest qualities to find in anybody, especially among men. I strive for it myself, and it is still very hard for me to ask.
That matters because I can see the trap in the way I have been describing beauty. If a beautiful man is a useful man, what happens when he is down, when he cannot give or lead or help somebody else stand? Is he no longer beautiful? No, man.
So what are we talking about when we call a man beautiful? Are we talking about physical beauty, an energy, a vibe, what he gives to other people? I do not have a complete answer, and I want to leave some of that question open.
I do know this much: a man is not beautiful alone. His beauty becomes visible in relationship—in how he treats people, how he cares for himself and others, what people can count on him to do, and whether he can tell them when he needs help.
I still believe being good-looking is an asset. The supervisor who said it to me helped me recognize an advantage I had not recognized in myself. The surface matters, but it cannot settle the question.
