The Existentialist's Guide to LooksMaxxing
I had a thought a few years ago, that if I buy myself something nice for my appearance, once a month, over a year I would have bought myself 12 things. You can bulk shop of course once a year, but I can just forget to do this, or forget to do this for specific categories of items. It is easier to think about “what would feel really nice this month” and perhaps try something new, or upgrade it. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be a new color of nail polish, or replacing old socks, or finding a new bra that fits you better, or hair ties that don’t snag your hair.
It can even be accessories. New pens for your purse, because you lost them all, or a new notebook that you are fond of and will actually use.
The idea is to be thinking about yourself, thinking about how you feel about yourself. The idea is not to “appearance-maxx” just one time, but to continue thinking about your appearance as part of a way you live your life.
There are a few reasons I recommend this.
It generally makes you happier. If you’re doing this right, it makes you stop and think about what you like about yourself, and what makes you feel hot.
“Buying a new nail polish color” means “being excited about something that makes you feel hot.”
That’s the spirit in which you should be doing this.
On a less local level, it is continuing maintenance on signaling to the world what you want to move towards you.
Appearance is about embracing who you are, embracing your sexuality, having a vision for what kind of half of a couple you will be.
It displays what kind of work you’ll do in partnership.
Imagine a beautiful woman. She can change her hair color, change her lipstick, be curvier, be skinnier, wear boho jewelry, wear “classic” jewelry. All of these are displays about how she wants to be fucked and how she wants to be taken care of and what she expects to be allowably messy and what she expects to be clean.
And then men have a parallel to this, but men are sometimes fixed into certain work archetypes and the “allowable range” sometimes feels smaller, but men also signal how they will provide care, what kind of care they will need. Someone with a clean-shaven head and no beard, who always wears pressed button-downs signals one kind of reliability and tolerance for mess, and someone with shaggy hair and a salt and pepper beard might signal another.
Giving some mixed signals can be fine, so long as there is legibility and congruity. People can be clean and messy in really fascinating ways, and they should show off these ways!
You can wear a band tshirt with a blazer. You can be bald with cop posture and wear a Hawaiian shirt. You can have tattoos and then wear a satin white dress.
When you actually pay attention to these signals, in the way that “just picking out some new thing this month that makes you happy” requires, you end up being aligned in the signals you are sending out, and the signals you want to be sending out.
And then you are using your appearance to engage in intentional communication and manifestation.
You are becoming more of who you are, in the Aristotelian sense.