Since we live in a society, it’s fairly impossible to escape societal standards around things like appearance and behavior. Many women have talked about how frustrating beauty standards can be, and how much it can feel like they dictate your life. But not as many men have talked openly about the lengths they’ll go to in order to meet those standards.


Take looksmaxxing, for example. A term coined by incels to describe any attempt to improve your appearance, it can cover everything from adopting personal grooming habits to undergoing cosmetic surgery. Now we’ve got an even more extreme practice making the rounds: bonesmashing.



Bonesmashing allegedly involves “hitting yourself in the face with a hammer to cause fractures that heal and give you a better jawline,” according to Josh Trebach, MD. According to Know Your Meme, the concept probably originated on the same forums as looksmaxxing back in 2018.



Despite the inclusion of two screenshots in Trebach’s tweet, it’s not clear that men are actually engaging in this practice in significant numbers. Know Your Meme cites a couple of YouTubers posting videos depicting the practice, but one of them is “smashing” his face fairly gently using only his knuckles, while another is using what appears to be a massage gun to “smash” his face. A different video, in which a YouTuber allegedly does use a hammer to demonstrate bonesmashing, has since been privated.


So much bonesmashing content online is satirical and has been stripped of its context and shared elsewhere in an attempt to generate outrage — it’s easy bait to get people worked up about “stupid TikTok trends,” even if said trends predate TikTok. Regardless, even one person smashing their face to bits with a hammer in pursuit of a chiseled jawline is unacceptable, so it’s worth stressing that there’s zero evidence this works.


You’re much better off learning how to contour instead.