We're Not Trying to Be Healthy, We're Trying to Be Hot

Wellness has undoubtedly been the hottest trend of the past few years. People are going sober, joining run clubs, lifting weights, and basking in the glow of their artificial sunlight lamps in hopes of becoming their best selves. But the newest fad isn't cortisol cocktails or shaker weights; it's amino acid chains designed to supposedly make you healthier, stronger, and hotter.

You may know them as peptides, the fastest and most affordable way to reach peak attractiveness. According to the wellness gurus of TikTok, injectable peptides can allegedly do everything: slow aging, reduce inflammation, build muscle, and promote visceral fat loss.

Even though most of these drugs are not FDA-approved, getting your hands on them is easier than shopping on Amazon. Of course, there's the traditional method of consulting a doctor and obtaining a prescription. However, you can also find them readily available online, often listed as research chemicals.

On Reddit, users share the best websites for buying peptides in forums like r/Biohacking. The most commonly name-dropped one is Peptidepole, a "Chinese bio-peptide manufacturer with products professionally tested by independent institutions," according to its Telegram bio. Simply message them on Telegram, send payment via crypto, bank transfer, Bitcoin, or Cash App, and wait anxiously for your box of magical chemicals to arrive.

If online isn't your thing, don't worry. There are dozens of offices in Manhattan offering peptide treatments. "The high-net-worth way is you go to a bullshit health clinic," says Michael Hulcher, a fitness professional based in New York City. Hulcher has been using peptides for years, primarily to manage Crohn's disease and support his bodybuilding career.

"All these places are kind of sketchy," Hulcher says. "I'm sure they're run by very fine people, but it's no different to me than the big dude in the back corner of your gym 20 years ago who would sell you steroids in the parking lot."

Since peptides are so easy to access, the question is no longer how do we get hot? But how hot can we get? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth it?

In a city like New York, where competition is high and opportunities to become as attractive as possible are even higher, it only makes sense that people are injecting themselves with peptides.

"I think late-stage capitalism, looksmaxxing, and peptide therapies are all circling the same thing, which is that everybody's trying to optimize their potential as a signal to the opposite sex that 'I have value,'" Hulcher says.

Looking at this trend from a broader perspective, it's easy to see that, at the end of the day, many of us simply want to be as attractive as possible in hopes of finding love. As sad as it may be, the modern dating pool is undeniably in the trenches, leaving many singles desperate to find any possible advantage. Hulcher has his own take on this:

"Everybody's trying to find somebody to couple up with, and so you're trying to maximize across the spectrum. These days, it's not enough to make 80 grand; you've got to make 280. And it's not enough just to be generally healthy; you've got to have an extra 40 pounds of lean mass and walk around with 8% body fat. The goalposts just keep moving."

Some of the fundamentals of good health are regular exercise, balanced nutrition, adequate sleep and recovery, and stress management. So where do peptides fit into this? And how did they become part of modern wellness culture? The shameless promotion of these drugs has undoubtedly altered how we define health and wellness. "It's all these people trying to optimize and cut corners," Hulcher says.

To better understand why everyone is so obsessed with peptides, it's important to look at how performance-enhancing compounds have evolved over the years. It started with oral compounds known as SARMs. "They would affect the body more or less like regular steroids, but without giving you the same side effects," Hulcher says. "Then peptides came along and more or less dominated that space." With few known side effects, peptides appear to be the newest miracle drug. "Now, note, there are no long-term studies on this. So we're just kind of guessing and hoping," Hulcher says. "The barrier to entry in terms of danger has been lowered so dramatically that people are completely willing to inject themselves with things they don't really know much about."

We've found ourselves buying serums from China and visiting wellness clinics in pursuit of incredible results while reducing the effort that previous wellness trends demanded. It seems we've reached this so-called "peak" standard of existence, but at what cost? For now, all we can do is wait and see whether the long-term effects eventually catch up with us.

But how far is this going to go? How much are we willing to risk and inject into our bodies just to maintain a standard of beauty that seems to rise every month? And what does peak hotness and wellness even mean anymore? It feels as though we're drifting farther and farther away from what it actually means to live a balanced, healthy lifestyle and becoming increasingly focused on being the most optimized person in the room. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle once required a considerable amount of effort. It gave us purpose and goals to work toward, making the process challenging but ultimately rewarding. Now, peptides promise to eliminate much of that effort while delivering even better results.

In theory, that means we can spend less time worrying about looking and feeling good and more time focusing on other important aspects of life. Or, perhaps more likely, we'll spend that extra time searching for the next breakthrough, the next peptide, and the next way to optimise ourselves even further.