The images are familiar: square-jawed white men with hardened expressions, speaking the language of strength and command. Over the past week, as the United States advanced its military campaign in the Middle East, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s face appeared repeatedly on screens, delivering the rhetoric of a warrior-patriarch. This is a face already known for other roles: posing in the gym with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Department of War’s YouTube channel, lecturing the military about “fat generals,” and hosting a weekend show on Fox News.
Here, borrowing the troops’ glory, Hegseth presented the general’s mask—the jutting jaw, the unflinching gaze—though critics might note he lacks the military experience or strategic judgment it typically represents. Donald Trump has also offered his version of the strongman face: white, commanding, and unyielding, though lately attention has shifted to a new rash on his neck.
Trump and his cabinet are performing militaristic power at a time when the white male face has become its own theater of authority. Other icons of the Maga movement, like Elon Musk, have also had public “glow-ups.” Even J.D. Vance rebranded himself with a beard during his 2022 Senate campaign to emphasize blue-collar ruggedness. He is now known on Chinese TikTok as the “eyeliner man.”
Men’s faces are under unprecedented scrutiny, both in cultural and political spheres: on red carpets, in tabloid close-ups, across social media feeds, and in movies, TV shows, and advertisements. Their features are analyzed, speculated about, and dissected. Has Bradley Cooper had fillers? Does Brad Pitt have a new jawline? Is that really Jim Carrey?
Scrutinizing faces isn’t new, but historically it was women’s faces that dominated media attention, often questioning whether they’d had cosmetic surgery or who looked older, younger, fatter, or thinner. For women, the homogenization of beauty standards is well-documented: before “Mar-a-Lago face”—which showcases the work, wealth, and whiteness behind a polished, pumped, and preserved look—there was Instagram face, with its cookie-cutter features that made it hard to tell one face from another.
But a parallel shift has been happening with men’s faces, toward something more sculpted, managed, and self-conscious. In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of grooming products, “gymfluencers,” body “hacks,” and tombstone veneers—known as “Turkey teeth” in the UK and “Mexican teeth” in the US. Cosmetic surgery has entered the public arena for men too, most notably in 2021 with designer Marc Jacobs’ facelift. “There is no shame in being vain,” Jacobs declared, posting selfies that showed blood-filled drainage tubes beside his bandaged head.
But is this just vanity? The pursuit of Desperate Dan jawlines and “hunter eyes” explains a growing share of male cosmetic procedures, contributing to a global 40% increase since 2020. Men are worrying about their faces more than ever. But what exactly are they worried about?
I asked Dan Saleh, a leading plastic and cosmetic surgeon and founder of The Face Institute at the Beverley Hospital and Clinic in Gateshead. Post-Covid, his clinic saw a notable rise in male consultations—one in five, compared to one in ten before the pandemic. His clients worry about eye bags, sagging skin, and “Zoom chin,” which became a concern with the rise of video calls. Facelifts are also in higher demand, often linked to GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic that cause weight loss and can lead to loose skin.The face is starting to sag. Saleh doesn’t believe men are becoming more vain, but rather that cosmetic surgery is now more firmly part of the “wellness” arena—a consumer choice.
In this marketplace, however, not all faces are equal. The jaw contouring, hunter eyes, and angular features driving the male beauty conversation represent a western European aesthetic being universalized through social media algorithms and cosmetic surgery. If we see the new focus on men’s faces as mere vanity, an inevitable product of social media, or even a form of gender-based schadenfreude—with men finally experiencing what women have endured for centuries—we miss the crucial point. While the face has become a consumer object for both men and women, the drivers and consequences are different.
Women’s faces have always been valued primarily for their beauty. Men’s faces might be admired for their visual appeal, but they also serve as literal and symbolic figureheads—sites of political power. Even more than the “Mar-a-Lago face,” male faces reveal the impact of neoliberalism in our politics, on our screens, and in surgeons’ consulting rooms.
We can’t fully understand this without considering the often-neglected history of the human face. For centuries, as explored in my book The Face: A Cultural History, faces have been used to judge human worth. Long before modern conceptions of “race,” whiteness and symmetry were celebrated in the Bible and the classical world. Isaiah 1:18 states, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” while Aristotle claimed black skin indicated cowardice. Physiognomy also claimed to find “proof” that a person’s morality, intelligence, and virtue were reflected in the shape of their nose or the curve of their brow.
These ideas influenced art, culture, and even coinage. Aristotle argued that men with small eyes lacked vision and those with weak chins were poor leaders. Consequently, coins minted under his student, Alexander the Great, depicted the leader in profile with a wide-open gaze and a resolute jaw.
Such figureheads were not meant to capture realism, personality, or conventional handsomeness. Wrinkles, furrowed brows, and sagging flesh were markers of authority, reflecting the artistic convention of verism. In Roman portraiture, this hyper-realistic depiction of every line and imperfection made age and experience visible signs of the right to rule. This was not the case for women, who were occasionally sculpted but largely as adornments to men, their faces stylized after goddesses.
Beyond rulers, very few people had their faces visually represented in ancient times. Most people were also unfamiliar with their own faces—before the 18th century, many had never seen themselves in a mirror (widespread ownership wouldn’t come until mass production in the 19th century).
Focus on the face increased from the Renaissance onward, as humanism framed it as a site of inner truth. Portraiture began to emphasize psychological likeness; while physiognomy still mattered, so did realism. A strong chin, steady gaze, and symmetry continued to signal judgment, rationality, and leadership—as did whiteness. As colonial expansion revealed more diverse human faces, whiteness became coded as a mark of “civilization.”
This coding intensified in the 18th century, as portraiture presented whiteness as biologically and morally superior. The mass markets of consumerism and urban culture reinforced “grooming” as evidence of male civility: a well-maintained beard and brow, along with white skin, were markers of wealth, leisure, and respectability.
Later, the Hollywood close-up of actors like Cary Grant triggered a demand for facial perfection.Foundation/Getty Images
As new facial technologies developed, they often reinforced existing social hierarchies, similar to how social media operates today. Photography, for instance, strengthened traditional racial and beauty standards by enabling anthropologists to devise intricate measurements that promoted ideas of white superiority. Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, employed composite photography to produce images of so-called “criminal types” and “racial types,” using facial features to rank human value. Black faces were interpreted as signs of “savagery,” while white faces represented “civilization”—biases that have since been embedded in modern facial recognition algorithms.
The rise of Hollywood and advertising further glorified the ideal face. The close-up shot revolutionized everything. Introduced in early film, it brought faces into extreme close view, exposing pores, asymmetries, and subtle emotional shifts—a trembling lip, a slight quiver. Marketed as authenticity, it also exaggerated imperfections and established unattainable new standards. The close-up claimed to reveal truth while demanding perfection, prompting the industry to develop new control techniques: makeup, specialized lighting, soft-focus lenses, and, by the 1950s, cosmetic surgery.
Similar dynamics are at play today in defining male beauty. Instagram promotes pseudoscientific ideals like square jaws for men as “natural” and desirable, invoking concepts like the “golden ratio” to prescribe attractiveness—specifying the ideal shape and placement of the nose, jawline, and eyes to create a perfectly symmetrical face.
This information has also influenced AI systems, shaping their algorithms, and is often accepted as fact by many cosmetic surgeons. This needs challenging: symmetry isn’t the sole factor in attractiveness, and the golden ratio is an outdated Western European aesthetic notion.
Physiognomy—judging character from appearance—has also made an unwarranted return. We routinely assess who seems trustworthy based on often racist assumptions. This practice now exists digitally, in AI algorithms designed to “read” faces and infer emotions, personality traits, sexual orientation, or even criminality. Cesare Lombroso, the 19th-century Italian criminologist who thought “born criminals” could be identified by their facial features, would be pleased.
Alongside cosmetic surgeons and social media influencers, evolutionary psychologists have revived traditional facial standards, claiming women are naturally drawn to “hunter eyes,” strong chins, and signs of high testosterone. Historically specific ideals are presented as natural and unchanging. But the idea that “predatory” features signal genetic fitness reveals more about our current culture than about human nature.
Let’s be honest: if attraction were truly hardwired, we’d all still admire the shapely, silk-clad calves of an 18th-century merchant and consider powdered wigs the pinnacle of style. Plump bellies were desirable in times of scarcity, and sideburns were fashionable on Victorian gentlemen long before they were adopted by modern hipsters.
Today’s preference for a youthful, hyper-masculine ideal reflects our era. Under neoliberalism, we’re encouraged to see ourselves as projects requiring constant investment and improvement. It’s no surprise, then, that the male face has become a form of capital—a purchasable (though depreciating) asset, like cryptocurrency, in a world where power often feels abstract and elusive.
This explains why it’s not just any male face, but a specific type of male face, that is becoming the standard.All the attention is on youth. In the startup era, the “experience” suggested by wrinkles is no longer needed; status is no longer guaranteed by age, property, or an institutional position. This logic is especially powerful in the manosphere, where there’s a direct link between obsessive self-improvement for appearance and white nationalism. But even outside that sphere, whiteness holds influence. While all faces might be treated as commodities, they are not all valued equally when selling a product, a film, or an ideology.
White faces, having long been the default standard against which others are measured, are assumed to be neutral and easier to imbue with various meanings. This may explain why a new generation of Hollywood heartthrobs—Jacob Elordi, Timothée Chalamet, Austin Butler—all embody a similar white, symmetrical, and angular male aesthetic. They have each been cast as brooding romantic leads—in Saltburn, Bones and All, and The Bikeriders, respectively—roles that project a fantasy of predation: desirable yet dangerous. These faces aren’t entirely new. They echo an older archetype, like the impassive, chiseled authority of a Clint Eastwood from a time before gender became complicated, now filtered through Instagram algorithms and optimized for an age that demands masculine power be both unyielding and purchasable.
Not every face conforms to this type. For every Jacob Elordi, there is an androgynous David Bowie, an “ugly-hot” Steve Buscemi, or a pumped-up Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Yet the white, angular, Western European face that represents modern neoliberalism is considered neutral enough to claim the central space. It is also fluid enough to contain contradictions.
This brings us back to J.D. Vance. His carefully cultivated beard might signal rugged masculinity for a political base that fetishizes “traditional” gender roles and mocks the idea of gender as performance. But Vance’s own face—and his seemingly weary eyes—is pure performance. In a different style, so is Pete Hegseth’s: gym-honed, with a fixed stare, always camera-ready. Donald Trump’s face tells another story entirely—with its 1980s tan, desperate hairstyle, and makeup that stops at the jawline—less a square-jawed warrior and more a painted sovereign. The male face of authority is never just natural; it is also theater, a market product, a carrier of meaning, and a spectacle.
Dr. Fay Bound Alberti is a professor of modern history at King’s College London. Her book The Face: A Cultural History is published by Allen Lane on 26 February 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs The Unstoppable Surge of Unrealistic Male Beauty Ideals
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q What are unrealistic male beauty ideals
A They are narrow often unattainable standards for how men should looklike being extremely muscular having a chiseled jawline perfect skin and very low body fatthat are heavily promoted in media advertising and now social media
Q Isnt it a good thing for men to care about their health and appearance
A Absolutely Theres nothing wrong with wanting to look and feel your best The problem starts when the pursuit of a specific often photoshopped or surgically enhanced ideal leads to unhealthy habits constant dissatisfaction or harms mental wellbeing
Q Where are these ideals coming from
A Historically from movies magazines and fitness ads Today the biggest drivers are social media the rise of malefocused grooming marketing and the popularity of superheroaction movie physiques
Q Whats the difference between a realistic fitness goal and an unrealistic beauty ideal
A A realistic goal is healthfocused An unrealistic ideal is often purely aesthetic extreme and based on comparing yourself to someone whose fulltime job is their physique or who uses digital enhancement
Common Problems Impacts
Q What are some common problems this causes for men
A Common issues include body dysmorphia excessive spending on supplementscosmetics dangerous steroid use social anxiety disordered eating and feeling like your worth is tied to your looks
Q How does this affect mental health
A It can lead to chronic low selfesteem depression and anxiety Constantly comparing yourself to an impossible standard is exhausting and can make you feel like youre never good enough even when youre healthy and fit
Q Are younger guys affected by this too
A Yes significantly Teenage and young adult men are highly exposed to these ideals on platforms like TikTok and Instagram during formative years which can shape their selfimage and lead to issues earlier in life
Advanced Practical Questions
