It's a somewhat gruesome-sounding surgery: The wisdom teeth are extracted, the mandible—that's the lower jaw—is cut and then detached using a hammer and chisel, repositioned, and kept in place with titanium plates. The process repeats for the upper jaw. The result? A manlier mandible, or at least that's the hope of an increasing number of men who are turning to the cosmetic surgery. Matthew Shave takes a deep dive into the trend for GQ, and some of the ground he treads is expected. He introduces readers to Dr. Federico Hernández Alfaro, a Barcelona-based surgeon who performs 200 orthofacial surgeries a year, wears a Rolex, and plays Britpop and indie music during surgery. He talks about the rise of international male patients, particularly in the tech industry.
"They spend their lives in front of the computer and ... are able to study their faces to a degree that scares me sometimes," he says. Alfaro also sees the pandemic as a gamechanger, with the rise of Zoom and hours spent staring at potentially weak jawlines driving men to look for a fix. But Shave also goes deeper, into the toxic world of looksmaxing: Looksmax.org is a part of the "manosphere," an online forum for men that focuses on one's "aesthetic potential." It's "home to pages of sexist and racist vitriol" but also offers technical discussions of facial ratios and, yes, jaw surgery. Shave explains that within the manosphere are "redpillers," who chafe at a perceived "feminist power shift that leaves them unable to find sexual partners" and "blackpillers" who think their physical appearance determines pretty much every facet of their lives. It's a wild read. (Read it in full here.)
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uBlock 
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