“I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking. And I plan on finding out what that is,” Ben Stiller’s character memorably proclaimed in Zoolander, the early-aughts comedy that introduced mainstream audiences to the idea of men’s beauty culture—even if it did so with its tongue firmly in its cheek. Today, amid the rise of looksmaxxing and mogging, the notion that men should constantly be working to improve their appearance has become more normalized than ever.
And while the looksmaxxing community—its most recognizable figure being the 20-year-old streamer Clavicular—remains as easy to parody as Zoolander’s signature smolder, Brandon Palas recognized this growing interest in male beauty even earlier, and saw within it an opportunity.
