Spitemaxxing explained: Why spite is just the start

The ‘maxxing’ trend has well and truly taken hold of the world, and when ‘Spitemaxxing’ landed in our feed, it made us stop. 

Why? Because the term ‘maxxing’ started its life in a space devoted to optimising yourself for other people's approval -  your face, your body, your appeal - and has been rebelliously picked up and faced the other way. Spitemaxxing points instead to an open refusal to be anything but those parts of you that long to be loud, strong, untamed. It’s a delicious piece of mischief we can’t help but delight in.  

But stay with us, because this isn’t really a piece about spite. It’s about what comes after it: the spark of spite initiates something, and when it fades, what’s left is a question of how you keep choosing yourself. 

That takes more than anger. It takes something to draw on.

What is Spitemaxxing? 

In short, Spitemaxxing points to refusal. The term found its moment when Jameela Jamil said she was “done being obedient and compliant" and spitemaxx instead.

We understand the impulse completely. That refusal to be obedient. Refusal to be contained. Refusal to always apologise for simply being who you are. Refusal to quieten our voices and our wild nature. 

For a long time, many of us learned what we thought it took to be part of a room. To read the room first. To become what was expected. What was acceptable. What took up the correct amount of space, made the correct amount of noise, asked for the correct amount of care. And when we didn't quite fit that perfectly smooth and acceptable shape, when we were too much, or too sensitive, too honest, or simply too ‘this’ or too ‘that’, for the moment we were in, we were taught to look for the fault in ourselves rather than in the ever-moving, and often unrealistic, standard we were being measured against.

Part of this runs deeper than what we absorbed from the world around us. For most of human history, being accepted by the group was survival. Our nervous systems still carry that wiring. Which is why taking up space, saying the honest thing, doing it differently, can feel dangerous in the body even when we know, deep down, it’s right. That vigilance we feel is an old alarm going off, and it's hard to ignore. 

In those moments, it’s no wonder we become a faded version of who we are. Not gone, exactly, but a quieter version, less and less, smaller and smaller than the human we are capable of being.

But, you were not made to disappear.

After all, perhaps Spitemaxxing isn't really about spite at all. It's about what happens after that first act of refusal. How do we keep choosing ourselves once the initial spark has faded? Let’s dive into that in more detail.

Spite is just the spark

Spite can be a powerful catalyst. It can wake us up to the moments we’ve become smaller than we were meant to be. It can tell us that a boundary has been crossed or that the system is asking for more than we should give. But there can come a point where the things we're doing are, in fact, for someone else entirely. That energy can become depleting in itself, exhausting because it never really resolves, since the goal was never inside us to begin with.

Turn that same energy inward, though, and something changes completely. It stops being about them and starts being about who we are and how we choose to move through the world. 

Spite is only ever the spark. It gets things started, the flash that says something in here is alive and wants to be heard. But a spark on its own burns out fast. What lasts is what you build after: the resilience, the resource, the strength that lets you keep standing when no one else will. A message you keep sending yourself: I know who I am. I trust myself. I know what I’m worth. And I will not make myself diminished in any way, for anyone, because a system asked it of me.

None of that gets built on empty.

The fuel behind the fire: How nourishment supports Spitemaxxing

The energy you need to go against the grain takes something out of you, the same as any other kind of strength does. There's no version of standing tall in a room, or being the first to go or starting that thing you’ve tried to start a million times, that doesn't ask something of you first. 

For this, you need capacity. The bravery to truly rest after a day of showing up. The steadiness to hold your ground in a conversation without your nervous system treating it like a threat. The strength and vitality to still be standing, literally, decades from now, when refusal will matter just as much as it does today.

Nourishment, in all its forms, therefore isn’t about fixing something that’s wrong with you. It’s about having enough internal resource that tenacity and refusal don’t cost you everything you’ve got. Jameela frames creatine in the same way: not just as something for who she is today, but for the woman she’ll be at 80, strong enough to still carry things, still stand, still refuse, and live a beautiful life on her own terms, for as long as she can. 

The system asks. In spite of that, I…

There are days when the act of refusal looks small. It’s saying what you think without the caveat, because the people who know you already know it comes from love. It’s starting a hobby you’ll never be good at and doing it every week anyway, badly, imperfectly but joyfully. It’s staying completely silent in a conversation because you already know your own truth and have stopped needing anyone else to agree with it. It’s being the least polished person in the room because you’re too busy living. It’s looking at the view instead of your phone. Laughing with your whole face and body. Stopping to help when everyone else has already walked past.

And there are those of us who refuse loudly. The women who once burned for knowing too much, daring to be different, for healing without permission, for holding wisdom the systems of their time couldn’t control. The women decades into themselves, who walk into a room and don’t become less to make anyone comfortable, who’ve simply stopped asking for permission to take up the space they’re standing in. The ones who dress loud on purpose, who are visibly, unapologetically too much for people who were never going to be pleased anyway. Every one of them is doing the same small, enormous thing: choosing themselves over the standard. And each time they do this, someone else somewhere sees that they can choose themselves too. 

Closing thoughts: Affirming your Spitemaxxing

We’ve spent a long time being told that anger isn’t for us. That being loud isn’t for us. Powerful, messy, slow, strong, gentle, whatever doesn’t fit neatly - isn’t for us. Spitemaxxing, in the end, is simply the refusal to keep believing that.

And here’s the thing. You get to choose. Not the standard. You.

Invitation to find your Spitemaxxing affirmation

Complete the affirmation in any form you choose 

The system asks me to….. In spite of that, I….

Here are a few ideas from the Ancient + Brave family to get your inspiration moving; 

The system asks me to push, in spite of that I rest. 

The system asks me to vanish, in spite of that I’m vibrant. 

The system asks me to wither, in spite of that I grow stronger.

The system asks me to be obedient. In spite of that I’m becoming increasingly difficult to diminish.