Written by Hannah Walker, edited by Lara Abbey
Dictionary.com has selected the term ‘maxxing’ as its Word of the Year. A neologism which “refers to the practice of pursuing an activity to the fullest or optimising a certain aspect of your life”. The concept has spread across online spaces, from ‘proteinmaxxing’ to ‘looksmaxxing’ and ‘skillsmaxxing’. Originally emerging from the manosphere, a rather suspicious starting point in itself, the term has since been adopted by wider internet culture. It might seem like just another passing trend, but trends have a habit of repeating themselves. We have seen this one before. Only then, it was dressed in a high-end blazer and reassuring us that, yes, we really could have it all.
The ‘girlboss’ emerged in the early 2010s as a term celebrating the career-driven woman and her self-made financial ambitions. A symbol of corporate aspiration, she was the stylish leading lady we recognised from countless romcoms: somehow managing to afford a two-bedroom flat in central London on an assistant’s salary. Yet this carefully constructed image of female empowerment soon revealed its limitations. What began as an aspirational celebration of women's independence evolved into a pipeline for performative activism, exposing a fundamental ignorance of intersectional feminism and overlooking the disproportionate burden of unpaid domestic labour. More importantly, it upheld the very structures it claimed to challenge, reinforcing capitalism and hustle culture through the promise that women, too, could excel within the corporate machine. In today's economy, we are witnessing the same ideology repackaged. This time, it is called ‘maxxing’.
Where women may have been the primary demographic targeted by the girlboss ideal in the 2010s, everyone is now vulnerable to the pressures of maxxing. In an increasingly digital world, coupled with economic uncertainty and social instability, it is hardly surprising that people have begun to view themselves as a collection of metrics to track, measure and control. Social media has made visual comparison almost unavoidable, creating an online ecosystem in which social value is increasingly tied to appearance, productivity and perceived success. Insecurities can now be transformed into actionable projects, with the promise of achieving standards that women, in particular, have spent decades being conditioned to pursue.
The trend has expanded to encompass almost every aspect of life. While maxxing can be used as a relatively harmless form of personal motivation, it also carries a series of more troubling implications. Burnout and psychological stress seem inevitable when we are encouraged to constantly optimise processes as unpredictable and deeply personal as health, wellbeing and relationships. The pressure to compete, or simply keep up with others embarking on similar journeys online, only perpetuates the cycles of comparison and self-doubt that have become so familiar to social media users. Suddenly, our capabilities become something to quantify, with tracking and self-improvement bordering on obsession. Beneath all this sits the corporate undercurrent, revealing the commercialisation at the heart of the trend. The blazer might have been replaced by an upcycled Vinted shirt, but the underlying ideology remains much the same.
In an era of late-stage capitalism, where disillusionment with the system is increasingly apparent among younger generations, we are somehow finding new ways to feed the very machine we claim to distrust. Maxxing encourages us to buy X, Y and Z products to achieve our desired results as quickly as possible. To establish rigid routines, cultivate disciplined habits and construct an entire lifestyle around becoming an enhanced version of ourselves. This relentless pursuit of optimisation begins to resemble a dystopian model of the human condition, doubling down on the total commodification of society upon which capitalism thrives. We are once again being encouraged to conform to the idealised, optimised worker and consumer that the system can most readily exploit.
The inevitable result is further exhaustion, although by the time we reach that point, another trend will have emerged, shiny and tempting, promising a renewed sense of control, hope or possibility. And so the cycle continues.
This article is not intended to scold those who participate in maxxing, nor to criticise anyone's personal approach to self-improvement. Rather, it is a reminder that the fundamental elements of our humanity should not become something to be exploited, either by brands or by ourselves. Just because optimisation is continually presented to us as inherently valuable does not mean that our own value is determined by how much we can improve, achieve or produce.
As previously mentioned, maxxing does not have to be quite so serious. It can simply be a way of motivating yourself, developing new habits or taking an interest in your own wellbeing. But I am afraid to tell you that your body was not designed to be maximised. Everything in moderation, as they say. Personally, I would rather avoid burning myself out in pursuit of an impossible ideal, particularly when the only real winner, once again, is the system.
