how do i "glow up" as a man?

mixed feelings’ multi-voiced advice column features a mental health expert or writer who responds to your most pressing existential conundrums. Use our anonymous form to be considered for a future newsletter. This week, Chris Gayomali, a writer and editor based in New York who writes the health and wellness newsletter HEAVIES, talks about how to “glow up” as a man or masc-of-center individual.

dear mixed feelings,

I'm doing quite a lot of things to 'glow up,' but I feel like I'm not doing enough to be the the 'ideal man.' Feels like everyone around me still looks better than I do. — Butterfly45, (he/him)

Chris Gayomali is a writer and editor based in New York. He writes the health and wellness newsletter

HEAVIES

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hey Butterfly45, 

One of the more confusing things about being a guy is that there aren't very many useful resources for us to help us figure out our shit. When I was in college, I remember trying all sorts of wacky stuff in a doofy attempt to get abs like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, the poster of which had a 93% chance of hanging in any random guy’s dorm room at the time. I stopped eating meat. I’d go to the gym and do, like, 200 crunches — and little else. I even shoplifted Hydroxycut fat burning pills from CVS, which, at their most benign, ended up making me feel dizzy when I’d take them, and at their worst are dangerous. All this because the reptilian part of my brain was convinced that a six-pack would make me considerably more bone-able to the girls I had a crush on. I wish I had the vocabulary back then to express it, but what I was experiencing was a pervasive form of body dysmorphia, which took years to unlearn.

And the truth is, it’s even harder for young men today to work on themselves, let alone find a safe community with whom to be vulnerable about it. If you search something as innocent as “best ab routines for men” on YouTube, the algorithm will quickly serve you a flotsam of clips of Andrew Tate, a self-professed alpha who is actually one of the corniest humans alive. A totally swagless individual and, despite upholding anachronistic ideas of manhood, someone who actually kind of sucks at fighting. But Tate’s conclusions — that men need to be domineering, infallible, dismissive of the people around them, insulting to women — while deeply misogynistic, are rooted in an old “Hollywood form of masculinity, [albeit] one that is as deep as a puddle,” as the scholar and author Robert Lawson has put it. On some level, I understand Tate’s appeal. He’s a cartoony avatar of manhood in an ecosystem bereft of good examples worth learning from. 

That’s all to say that I get what it’s like to feel like you’re not “doing enough” to improve yourself. I think it’s something many men grapple with, whether we’re gay, straight, trans, cis, or someone that defies easy categorization. But that’s okay! To the point of your question, the urge to be attractive is a perfectly natural impulse, as is the tendency to compare yourself to the others in your orbit. Tech companies practically built their business models for social media around this very particular brand of anxiety stoking. 

That said, I would resist the idea of a quick “glow up” or the concept of an “ideal man.” Progress and self-enrichment are lifelong pursuits, and the road to a better version of you — cool, self-assured, generous, curious about other people, knows how to tip without a calculator — takes time and more than a little bit of vulnerability. You have to acknowledge your weaknesses before you can assess them. 

Please know that there is no idealized ~*anyone*~ because we’re all just works in progress, fragile and finite. But, if we endeavor to be better versions of ourselves than we were yesterday, even by a fraction of a percentage, you’d be surprised by how far that can get you in a year or two. 

I would stop focusing on trying to “look better” and instead shift the mission a little by fortifying who you are and who you’d like to be. Once you start taking that on as your project, hotness just sort of happens. It just starts seeping out of your pores and swirling in the airspace around you like a high pollen count. 

But where to start? 

kindness goes a long way

When I read your question, I went over to our bookshelf and plucked out Glenn O’Brien’s How to Be a Man, as funny and useful a treatise on masculinity as there ever was. Glenn was maybe the coolest motherfucker to ever do it. His CV is too long to go through in its entirety here, but in brief: he basically ran downtown NYC in the ‘80s with Basquiat and Warhol; launched Interview Magazine; hosted a cult public-access show called TV Party; and spent his last two decades writing “The Style Guy” column for GQ, where I was an editor for nine years. Unimpeachable style. The man carried himself with singular wit and charm. He dated Grace Jones!

And really, what separates all the cool hot people from all the merely hot people (important distinction; you want to be the former) is kindness, which is as good a place as any to start. As Glenn writes in How to Be a Man: “It is an excellent tactic to be unfailingly polite. If you are cheerful, solicitous, and appear kind and attentive, you will be welcome almost everywhere. Strangers will believe that you like them. Your enemies will be thwarted, even disarmed by the relentless good vibrations you transmit.” 

There was this one time when I was at GQ where Bella Hadid went around the set before a photoshoot and introduced herself to everyone — from the creative director to the production assistants — with a hug and unfailing eye contact, making it a point to remember everyone’s name. She could have very easily not done so, as she is Bella Hadid, but the act of kindness was reifying. 

Not to get all woo-woo, but I really do believe that putting out warm and gentle energy into the world has a compounding effect on how people perceive you. It makes logical sense, too. No rules of attraction shit here either, no dude science needed. On a practical and very human level, we all just want to feel seen and respected, and we glom onto people who offer that. 

I’ve interviewed a lot of very hot people during my career, and the handsomest, Steven Yeun, had a succinct mantra for how he hopes to raise his children, but I think it’s good advice for anyone of any age: 

“Kindness breeds safety, and safety breeds confidence.” 

In order to understand your sense of self, you have to first see yourself refracted through other people. We don’t even really exist without the other. So, it’s up to you to make the people you come across feel heard, appreciated, and respected, and they in turn help you see yourself. If you laugh at their jokes and can tactfully needle them all the better.

your mental health and physical health work in concert

Even a decade ago, there was this queasy expectation that men shouldn’t talk about their feelings. That we should “man up,” which is a hilarious and terrible phrase. That’s starting to change in very tangible ways; now you see everyone from Bowen Yang to Tom Holland talking openly about the life-changing magic of a good therapist. (Get one if you can afford it.) These days it’s normal, and maybe even cool, to have a gratitude practice.

One of the only things that the cuckoos of the right-wing manosphere like Tate get right is that physical health is tied very closely to our mental and spiritual health. If you are able-bodied, there is literally no downside to moving: it releases all the brain’s feel-good chemicals and makes the heart strong. 

Exercising is not a panacea, but it’s a good companion to a mental health routine. Moving your body with some regularity has a plethora of physical benefits, yes, but it’s also the Trojan horse to improving your mental health, reducing anxiety, depression, and improving self-esteem and cognitive function. All of which, can contribute to that “glow up” you seek.

The mistake a lot of newbies make is they go way too turbo out the gate and burn out. I would instead focus on doing something you don’t mind doing a lot, something endlessly repeatable, whether that’s lifting kettlebells or joining a climbing gym or finally getting into jogging. Start following whatever your chosen thing’s Reddit is. Maybe follow a few creators in that community on IG. Sign up for that 5K that’s three months away — whatever you need to do to create some accountability for yourself.

The goal should be consistency. Not the Brad Pitt V or losing X number of pounds. If you show up and exercise three to five days a week, all that other good stuff tends to happen ancillarily. Set a daily block in your Google Calendar and get your heart rate up. 

introduce yourself to new perspectives

This is a no-brainer, but reading — especially fiction — is the easiest way to step outside of your body and develop perspective. If you want to be hot, a healthy perspective is essential. Reading expands your imagination and unconsciously equips you with tools to deal with all the bullshit that life hurls at you. Never mind all those goofily designed surveys for straights that came out recently suggesting that women find “reading” to be the most attractive male hobby. Do it because it grounds you. Gives your soul structure. Subtract thirty minutes from your daily screen time before bed and you’ll sleep much better.

I’m not big on personal heroes, but I think if you were to attach aspiration to anyone, literary heroes are a slightly safer bet (but even then; see: a certain Harry Potter author). Study their worldview. Learning how to appreciate how someone else thinks — where you agree and disagree — rather than how they look, will do wonders for developing your worldview and confidence. You don’t have to start with Dostoevsky but the dude is a pretty good one to spend some time with. 

get your hygiene right

I know this might read as trite Queer Eye 101 stuff, but in order to sparkle you have to first present yourself as a tidy person. There’s no way around that, unfortunately. Brush your teeth twice a day. Floss every night. Use non-alcoholic mouthwash, as the strong stuff might be bad for us. And get yourself a good deodorant (I like Aesop.) Wash your face and use whatever daily moisturizer does it for you at your local drugstore.  

Because the olfactory bulb is geographically close to the limbic system, smell possesses unnervingly powerful associations with memory. Someone who smells pleasant leaves a lasting impression, and if you smell good you’ll feel good and how you carry yourself is 98 percent of the battle. 

If you start doing these things earnestly and with regularity you will start transforming into a version of yourself that you will like much better. You are already “enough.” But think of these practices — and they are practices, i.e. work — as weekly nutrients to metabolize, to bloom into something beautiful. There is a strong chance you will very quickly bioluminate.  

Lastly, here’s the secret to quickly tipping without a calculator: simply double the first number of the total bill—i.e. if it’s a $40 check, tip $8; if it’s $45, round up first, so $10. If the bill is over $100, double the first two digits, etcetera. Good luck. It’s ruthless out there.