Hardmaxxing

Hardmaxxing is the invasive half of looksmaxxing: changes that involve a procedure, a recovery period, or a result you cannot simply stop doing. Its opposite is softmaxxing. The term covers two very different things, and they need separating.

Medical procedures

The first group is real medicine, performed by licensed clinicians:

• Surgery — rhinoplasty, chin and jaw implants, jaw surgery (orthognathic surgery), eyelid procedures such as canthoplasty.
• Injectables — dermal fillers and muscle-relaxing injections.
• Hair transplants.

These do change structure, which is why people pursue them. They also carry real risks, real recovery time, real cost and, in many cases, results that are permanent whether you like them or not. Outcomes depend heavily on the surgeon. If you are considering any of them, the person to ask is a board-certified surgeon or the relevant specialist — not a forum, and not a video. Ask what the procedure can and cannot do for your face specifically, what the complication rates are, and what revision would involve.

The forum fringe

The second group is not medicine. The best-known example is bone smashing: deliberately striking facial bones on the theory that the repair will build a stronger jaw or cheekbones. There is no evidence that it does anything of the kind, and it carries obvious risks — fractures, nerve damage, dental injury, infection and asymmetry that may be permanent. Do not do it. The same goes for unsupervised hormones, steroids and grey-market injectables bought online: these are serious health risks presented as shortcuts.

What it actually measures

Hardmaxxing is usually aimed at the structural measures — jaw width, maxilla position, canthal tilt, cheekbones. Those are the only inputs that softmaxxing cannot reach. But they are also the inputs most often misjudged from photographs, because body fat, skin, sleep and lens distortion all read as structure. Plenty of people looking at surgery for a weak jaw are looking at a lower face that would read differently at a lower body-fat percentage — the argument in the jawmaxxing guide.

What is changeable first

The honest order is soft before hard. Softmaxxing is cheaper, reversible, and answers the question surgery would otherwise be guessing at: what your face looks like with every changeable input in order. Any surgical decision made after that is a better-informed one. The priced comparison is in softmaxxing versus hardmaxxing.

One more thing worth saying plainly. If the pull toward a procedure is coming from a feeling that will not let go of one feature, that is worth raising with a doctor before a surgeon. It is a common experience, and it is not a weakness to take it seriously.