Charlie Sosnick

For the past decade, Hope Robertson, 21, has had problems with her hair. It was frizzy, hard to tame, prone to breakage, and “felt like hay.” Also, her skin was dry and her nails grew slowly, often breaking into hangnails. In 2022, after some Internet self-diagnosis, she began to suspect she had hypothyroidism, which was later confirmed by her ob-gyn. She was prescribed medication but never took it. “I just assumed that it wouldn't do anything because I was just so hopeless,” Robertson says.

At 3 a.m., in an Uber in Mexico City, I decided to go cold turkey on black loafers. There had been five of us at the bar that night, all visiting from various U.S. cities. All men, ages 28 to 30, with three pairs of acetate glasses and multiple curly pseudo-mullets between us.

Guys today go to great lengths to look good: They fly to Istanbul for hair transplants, Botox their foreheads, and treat injectable peptides like daily multivitamins. Still, the thought of blasting your eyes with a laser until they change color sounds like a stretch to almost everyone. Everyone except for the looksmaxxers.