Collage by Cath Virginia | Photos via IMDB.com
Every month Alex Cabba posts photos of himself on Reddit and asks strangers to rate his appearance. The 33-year-old was diagnosed with body dysmorphia, but this doesn’t stop him asking faceless users questions like: “Do I have a recessed chin?” and “Do I need forehead reduction surgery?” People have not been kind. Some of the responses include “you give off a creepy vibe” and “you need to lose weight. 3.5/10”. Advertisem*nt
Robert Pattinson: a man with "hunter eyes". Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Hunter eyes aren’t a new concept. The term originates from online blackpill and lookism communities – forums where strangers exchange similarly extreme ideas around physical appearance and critique each others’ looks – which claim that the hottest guys have a hooded eye-shape with a positive canthal tilt, meaning they turn up at the ends.Cabba theorises that hunter eyes “make a man [seem] more dominant and mysterious”.You might call this a “fox eye” or “cat eye” shape– the idea is that men with hunter eyes are sexier to women as they resemble apex predators like tigers and cheetahs, and therefore look like they could protect them. (As opposed to, you know, eating them.)On TikTok alone, videos tagged with “hunter eyes” have attracted a total of 49.6m views.Men on the least desirable side of this beauty spectrum, according to these communities, have “prey eyes”, and these doe-eyed schmucks are thought to look weak and unassertive. Despite the fact that he is universally fancied by almost every woman on the internet, Timothee Chalamet’s negative canthal tilt would land him firmly in “prey” territory. Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
TikTok isn’t just helping to popularise the aesthetic –it’s helping to spread misinformation on what is physically possible, too. “Glow up tips for boys”, a TikTok with 2.6m views, claims you can stretch and pull your eye area to achieve hunter eyes. Countless videos also suggest that mewing – flattening your tongue against the roof of your mouth –can redefine your jaw and give you hunter eyes.On the extreme end of the spectrum is “bonesmashing” – the act of repeatedly hitting your face in the belief that it will make you look more chiselled. Though mostly framed as an inside joke on TikTok, some men on Reddit claim to have earnestly attempted it in the pursuit of a larger jaw and hunter eyes. Advertisem*nt
Spoiler: According to Dr Ross Perry, a cosmetic doctor, mewing and bonesmashing are unlikely to change your eye or face shape in any tangible way. But they’re part of a wider trend of looksmaxxing, in which men pursue extreme physical glow-ups through surgery and grooming techniques to improve their lives. A term once confined to incel forums, those who don’t define as incels but have poor body image – people like Cabba – appear to be leaning into this in the hopes of being happier and attracting more women.Perry, the medical director of London and Bristol-based skin clinic Cosmedics, says that it is very difficult to achieve hunter eyes without surgery “due to the necessity of correcting the anatomy”. The type of surgery required is “a very delicate and highly specialised procedure”.So what kind of procedures would someone need to achieve this aesthetic? Eppley says depending on what the patient came in with, it would require multiple procedures, including a brow implant and tear trough filler, with each operation costing anywhere from $2,486-$7,460 (£2,000-£6,000).
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Not everyone is as surgically committed as Cabba. One man, who regularly posts on mewing and aesthetic self-help subreddits like Cabba, told VICE: “I do want them but I could live fine without them since they're genetic.”The Redditor –who requested anonymity to protect his privacy – has posted several updates on his journey to looking more attractive. The rise in popularity for hunter eyes is obvious among those in his online circles, he says, adding that there is a greater demand for people to look attractive more generally.“The increase in the number of single people and standards resulted in an increase in insecurity, so people want to look better and they eventually either discover the ideas of mewing, looksmaxxing, hunter eyes, better posture, etc by accident or intentionally,” he explains. But rather than this empowering him with the tools to feel better about himself, it’s only made him feel worse: “It has made me more aware of my own imperfections.”Many of the men chasing hunter eyes seem convinced women are only attracted to the human version of a jaguar, and it’s clear they believe changing their appearance accordingly will astronomically improve their dating chances. But many, myself included, can attest to the fact that the men you fancy often aren’t a triple threat of tall, stacked and scowling. Why else would Chalamet – a sexy but haunted Victorian doll – bring so many women around the world to their knees? Why would bug-eyed Pete Davidson be able to bag Instagram’s finest women one after another?And, as Eppley points out, achieving hunter eyes can be extremely expensive. You know what’s cheaper? Self-acceptance. Or, in the meantime, squinting.
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