TikTok tells us to do a lot of things in the name of beauty. A few examples: Reshape your teeth using a nail file; swap makeup primer for personal lubricant; slather yourself in beer before sitting out to tan. It doesn’t take much to figure out that these trends are ill-advised — but none of them are quite as glaringly unwise as “bonesmashing,” a practice encouraging TikTokers to hit themselves in the face in pursuit of a squarer jaw and sharper cheekbones.
It’s not entirely clear whether TikTokers are actively bonesmashing, or just posting about the extreme beauty “hack” for likes and comments (one video of a strong-jawed man suggesting he owes his face to bonesmashing has racked up nearly 2 million views). But trace the origins of the practice, and it’s clear some people take it pretty seriously. Before infiltrating TikTok, bonesmashing originated on forums popular among incels (you know, “involuntarily celibate” men who blame women for their inability to form romantic and sexual relationships). Search bonesmashing on TikTok and you’ll come across a range of content. Some videos poke fun at the practice and incels at large, but others seem to more earnestly promote bonesmashing as a form of “looksmaxxing” — in incel speak, this means optimizing one’s appearance via anything from diet and exercise to plastic surgery and penis stretching. The end goal is always the same: to become a Chad, shorthand for a standard of male beauty defined by traditionally masculine features like a strong jawline, almond-shaped eyes, and dark, thick eyebrows. (Take a look at the models Jordan Barrett and David Gandy, paragons of Chad-dom in incel-world.)
So how did bonesmashing become part of the looksmaxxing conversation? Proponents back the practice by taking existing science — namely Wolff’s law, the idea that bones will remodel in response to stress — and running with it. “[Wolff’s law] is an adaptive process that can happen naturally over…
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