Declining testosterone levels in midlife and beyond can overlap with natural age-related cognitive changes, making it tough to tell what’s hormonal and what’s just aging. This doesn’t mean testosterone is a fix-all for emotional health, but it does suggest that hormones play a supporting role in how resilient we feel when life gets hard. Since baseline levels may influence how people respond to additional testosterone, future studies could examine whether individual differences in hormone levels change the effect of treatment. The researchers also did not measure participants’ natural testosterone levels before the experiment. Low self-esteem is linked to a variety of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal. Some users rate him out of 10, suggesting scores of 1, 1.5, 5 or 6. Some users state that he is average‐looking, has ‘great potential’ or is slightly above average. Members weaponise hegemonic masculine norms against each other, critiquing bodies and extensively diagnosing masculine imperfections. We have demonstrated that, while operating under the guise of self‐improvement, looksmaxxing harms the health of men and boys. However, we demonstrate that they are instead subjected to a hegemonic masculine gaze that caustically evaluates them in relation to an unachievable masculine ideal. As we argue, men participate in looksmaxxing because they position the community as providing objective information about their bodies and concrete advice about how to improve their looks. All men are judged in relation to masculine ideals, with most men found to be painfully inadequate and excluded from masculinity. Regular physical activity, particularly strength training and high-intensity interval training (HIIT), has been shown to effectively increase testosterone production. The psychological impact of reduced testosterone can be profound, leading to a lack of motivation, fatigue, and a diminished ability to cope with stress. Confidence, often perceived as a byproduct of testosterone, impacts decision-making processes and risk-taking behaviors, traits typically admired in leadership roles. Testosterone levels are intrinsically linked to self-esteem and confidence in men. It’s important to see a psychologist if you’re experiencing stress and/or depression due to these symptoms. If you’re taking medication, you’ll likely need to see your healthcare provider regularly to make sure your treatment is working. It’s not completely reversible, but you can manage the symptoms it causes. Many people see their provider to help with symptoms like excess hair growth, acne or irregular periods. Providers treat hyperandrogenism by lowering the amount of androgens in the body. Your provider may order additional blood tests to rule out other possible causes of your symptoms. In these and other cases, men who fall outside the perceived norms of hegemonic masculinity are subordinated and positioned as repulsive subhumans who are categorically unattractive to all women. They are positioned as permanently subordinated (Connell 1995) and ostracised from the hegemonic masculinity that they are pursuing. In these conversations, looksmaxxing resembles an echo chamber of masculine demoralisation rather than a self‐improvement community. In these cases, members use pictures of other men to weaponise the hegemonic masculine gaze, with even apparent ‘success stories’ being positioned as inferior to an idealised masculine body. In this section, we argue that looksmaxxing instead negatively impacts men's and boys' health and self‐worth. We further argue that, despite the community's apparently supportive aims, it leverages lookism and hegemonic ideals against men, such that they view their physical appearance as being responsible for the troubles in their lives.
