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Whenever the algorithm serves up a steaming pile of looksmaxxing, I flash back to an old sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look. An ordinary woman is told by a commercial narrator that she’s “leaking, hairy, aging, overweight, and everything hurts.” Women, the smug narrator says, for god’s sake, sort yourselves out by buying roughly $300 of products. After a jump cut, an average man is told to shave and get drunk, guitars blaring in the background. The reason? Because he’s already brilliant.
Back when that sketch first aired in 2009, it was funny because it felt broadly true. But in the age of looksmaxxing, where men are increasingly obsessed with testosterone, smashing their bones in pursuit of a sharp jawline, and optimizing their penises, that sketch feels like a glimpse into antiquity.
Today, you have men in subreddits and Facebook groups posting before-and-after pics at the gym, arms flexed for maximum veiny bicep effect. In the comments, they ask for each other’s stacks, protocols, and dosing advice, which include everything from T to unapproved gray-market peptides. Some say it’s to score baddies. Others say it’s to maximize their gains at the gym. A few seem to think turning themselves into science experiments is how they’ll find the fountain of youth. To me, it feels similar to what women have done for ages: buying snake oil that preys on their insecurities.
“I take Cialis, but not for sex,” begins one of biohacker and tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s X posts. “It’s actually a longevity medicine. Cialis (Tadalafil) is great for the same reason it gives you fantastic erections… it improves blood flow.”
Tadalafil does, in fact, improve blood flow. The medicine is a vasodilator, meaning it relaxes muscles and widens blood vessels. It’s most widely known as a treatment for erectile dysfunction. (To be clear, it doesn’t cause erections but helps them last when they occur.) It’s also prescribed to alleviate urinary issues in people with enlarged prostates and high blood pressure in the pulmonary artery. Biohackers like Johnson tout a low dose of tadalafil daily as helping lower cardiovascular risk and cognitive decline. Gym rats often microdose tadalafil as a preworkout supplement because, well, the erections are supposedly better and dilating blood vessels is thought to lead to better “muscle pumps.”
Enhanced, the company behind the pro-doping Enhanced Games, sells low-dose tadalafil on its site. Clavicular, the most infamous looksmaxxer, has also stated that he’s taken about 5mg of tadalafil in the past as part of an extensive stack. This, despite the fact that he’s 20 years old and far from the conventional profile of someone a doctor might prescribe tadalafil to. Popular podcaster Andrew Huberman has also recommended on his show that every man over 40 should be taking a low dose of tadalafil as a preventative measure.
Cialis, or tadalafil, works by relaxing muscles and improving blood flow. Photo: Getty Images
Of course, tadalafil is just like any other medicine. While many may not experience adverse effects at low daily dosages, some will. And like any medication, there are some people who shouldn’t take it and there are drug interactions to be wary of.
It’d be one thing if these influencers were just promoting tadalafil. But most are promoting multiple substances, seemingly all of which you need to be a man. Testosterone, for instance, is massively popular in the same cohort. Ninety-one percent of the athletes at the inaugural Enhanced Games dabbled with testosterone. Notably, Pete Hegseth recently announced mandatory testosterone screenings for the troops. Some also hype up retatrutide, an unapproved peptide currently undergoing phase three clinical trials, along with TB-500 and BPC-157, two gray-market peptides colloquially known as the Wolverine stack for their supposed wound healing and muscle recovery benefits. And the more things you stack, the greater the risk that a combination has an unintended effect. In the case of lesser-studied experimental treatments, even doctors may not know what those effects are — and might not know for a long time.
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