If you’re willing to improve your looks by any means necessary, hard-maxxing might be for you.
Hard-maxxing is the practice of improving your physical appearance by any means necessary and mostly involves plastic surgery. Hard maxxing can include face implants, nose jobs, fillers, limb-lengthening surgery, jaw surgery, etc. A hallmark of hard-maxxing is that the enhancement is essentially permanent to some degree.
Hard-Maxxing
In essence, hard-maxxing is the same as plastic surgery. In contrast to “soft-maxxing,” hard-maxxing focuses on changing your flesh and bones for long-term or permanent results. Therefore, most procedures that are classified as hard-maxing are anything that includes long-term to permanent results like implants, reduction surgeries, etc.
There is some debate on whether semi-permanent procedures like fillers count as hard-maxxing. However, since the results of semi-permanent procedures can greatly change your face and typically lasts for a few months or longer, we will briefly discuss them here.
Cosmetic Surgery and Plastic Surgery
Any cosmetic and plastic surgery that changes the way you look with long-term or permanent results is hard-maxxing. Plastic surgeries are the main element of hard-maxxing.
Therefore, anything that changes your flesh and bones like plastic and cosmetic surgery is hard-maxxing. Hard-maxxing can cover minimally invasive to more complicated procedures.
What Is the Difference Between Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery?
Cosmetic surgery is about enhancing your appearance. Typically, it focuses on improving the way you currently look rather than completely altering it. However, it can also completely alter your appearance (like rhinoplasty to make a larger nose much smaller) if desired.
Some common examples of cosmetic procedures that are traditionally part of hard-maxxing include:
- Body Contouring (Liposuction, tummy tucks, etc.)
- Breast Enhancement (Breast reduction, breast lift, breast augmentation, etc.)
- Skin Rejuvenation (Fillers, Botox, laser resurfacing, etc.)
- Facial Rejuvenation (Browlift, neck lift, eye lift, facelift, etc.)
- Facial Contouring (Cheek enhancement, chin enhancement, rhinoplasty, etc.)
Plastic surgery usually focuses on fixing defects to reconstruct your appearance to look normal, restore function, or both. Plastic surgery is usually for people who want to fix facial and body defects caused by disease, burns, trauma, birth disorders, etc. That is why some doctors agree that reconstructive and plastic surgeons are the same.
Some examples of plastic surgery procedures include:
- Scar revision surgery
- Lower extremity reconstruction
- Hand surgery
- Congenital defect repair
- Breast reconstruction
- Burn repair surgery
Depending on how your surgery goes, you may not need to get follow-up surgery. For instance, if you are happy with your cheekbone implants, you may not need another surgery. However, you may need it if you want to correct or enhance the last procedure.
Some less invasive procedures that can count as hard-maxxing (usually cosmetic procedures) are brow lifts, facelifts, breast augmentation, etc.
You may need follow-up surgeries if you want to maintain your results. For instance, most people need a second facelift after ten years.
There is some debate about whether less invasive procedures like fillers and Botox count as hard-maxxing. For example, Botox and fillers use materials that metabolize over time.
However, Botox and fillers can drastically change your appearance and last for several months. In some cases, patients state that their Botox and fillers last for 1-2 years. Therefore, they can be categorized as hard-maxxing.
As most people know, fillers can add more volume to your face. They can help make your cheekbones more prominent, add fullness to the cheeks, etc. Botox is usually to reduce wrinkles, slim down the jaw, treat lazy eye, etc.
Some people use dermal fillers for non-surgical rhinoplasty. These cannot make the nose smaller, but it can add more shape, smooth out harsh bumps, and correct asymmetry.
Permanent/Semi-Permanent Makeup
Permanent and semi-permanent makeup can help enhance your face and correct specific skin issues. Additionally, it can help enhance your face by making you look like you have makeup on 24/7.
For instance, dermapigmentation uses an ultra-thin needle to deposit hypoallergenic mineral pigments into your skin’s dermal layer. It can camouflage scars, stimulate hair on the scalp, etc.
Other common forms of cosmetic tattooing include lip blushing, permanent eyeliner tattoos, freckle tattoos, etc. A popular type is microblading, which is permanent or semi-permanent eyebrow makeup. It can add natural-looking hairs, fill in sparse areas, etc.
While permanent makeup lasts a long time, you may need to get retouches over the years. Most ink used for permanent makeup fades faster than regular tattoo ink.
Mewing
Mewing is another somewhat controversial part of hard-maxxing. While mewing can give you satisfactory results, people are unsure if it falls into the same category as hard-maxxing.
That is because mewing takes a lot longer to show results compared to cosmetic and plastic surgery. Therefore, people are unsure if it should count as hard-maxxing because the results are not from surgery and take a while to appear.
However, mewing helps move your bones, and people can look drastically different after mewing for several years. Additionally, mewing results last a very long time, so we will briefly discuss mewing here.
Mewing works because you correct your tongue, mouth, and jaw posture and add pressure to your tongue’s palate. When you do this, it stimulates your mid-face to move up and forward, enhancing your cheekbones, eyes, etc.
Mewing can also help you strengthen a weak jawline and receding chin. Mewing is more than correcting your posture and putting pressure on your palate. You also need to chew and swallow food and liquids the right way to enhance your lower and mid-face.
If you want to learn all about how mewing affects your face, click here.
So how does correcting your tongue posture along with following the other mewing techniques change your face? Well, for one example, there is clear evidence that people with different tongue-to-palate distances have significant differences in intercanine and intermolar widths (Fatima et al., 2019).
Think about mouth breathers. They often have open mouths, and their tongue rests flat on the bottom of their jaw. The lack of palate stimulation from their poor tongue posture leads to narrow palates, weak jaws, receding chins, long faces, etc.
However, people who have correct tongue posture do not have those features. You can also try to correct the features of a mouth breather by mewing.
To learn more about how to mew correctly, see our guide.
However, it is essential to note that you will not see results overnight. Most children and teenagers need months and years to see results. Young adults and fully-grown adults have to consistently mew for years or decades to see obvious bone changes.
If you want to compare the results of people who mew at different ages, click here.
Supplements
No, we are not talking about your regular vitamins. In this article, the supplements we will talk about will be the ones that can make a drastic change to your face and body, like help you grow muscles, curves, etc. Mostly, this involves stuff like anabolic steroids to increase muscle and bone mass or medications like Melanotan II that can give you a tan without having to be exposed to sunlight.
You will want to consult a doctor about what supplements you should use for your goals. But most doctors will strongly urge you to avoid non-FDA approved supplements that you can find online.
The supplements could be duds – you would waste your money and time waiting for results that will not show. Or it could be worse – you could ingest something harmful for your body, especially with long-term use.
Therefore, you should only take supplements that your doctor recommends. Some supplements you may get from a doctor (depending on what you want) include hormone therapy to increase your estrogen, testosterone, etc.
