Looksmaxxing glossary

The basics

Looksmaxxing

Looksmaxxing is maximizing your appearance as far as it will go. That covers sleep, skin, hair, training and style at one end, and cosmetic surgery at the other.

-maxxing

A suffix meaning deliberate effort in one area, so gymmaxxing is training, dietmaxxing is food and sleepmaxxing is sleep. It was borrowed from min-maxing in role-playing games, where you spend every point you have on the stats that actually do something.

Softmaxxing

Low-risk, reversible changes: skin, hair, fitness, grooming, style. Nothing in it needs a surgeon and nothing in it is permanent.

Hardmaxxing

Permanent change, almost always surgical. It is an adult decision with real risk and real recovery, and the person to have it with is a qualified surgeon.

Glow up

A visible improvement in appearance over time. It is the mainstream word for the same thing this site calls looksmaxxing, and it arrived from the opposite direction.

Genetic potential

Your genetic potential is the best version of what you were born with, before effort, fat, sleep and grooming are accounted for. It names a ceiling worth reaching, not a cage you are stuck under.

Halo effect

A documented bias where one positive trait colors how everything else about a person is judged. It comes from social psychology rather than from this community, and it is why a single feature can move the whole impression.

Lookism

Treating people differently because of how they look. The word predates this community and is used well outside it, including in the research.

Facial harmony

How features work together rather than how each one scores on its own. It is the reason a face can measure well everywhere and still not read as a whole.

Sexual dimorphism

How strongly a feature reads as typically male or typically female. Brow ridge, jaw width and chin size are the ones usually meant, and the effect on rated attractiveness is one of the findings that has replicated across cultures.

Neoteny

Youthful features kept into adulthood, usually described around the eyes and the midface.

Community slang

Mogging

Mogging is community slang for being visibly outshone by someone better-looking nearby. It works as a verb in both directions, to mog and to get mogged, and it is a clipping of AMOG, alpha male of the group, which came out of pickup forums a decade before this one.

Mogger

The person doing the mogging. A description of a photograph, not a rank anyone holds.

Height mog, face mog, frame mog

Mogging narrowed to one attribute. A height mog is a visible height gap in a photo, and the same construction gets built on face, frame, hair or style.

PSL, the PSL scale

PSL is a community rating scale, named after three forums, that scores faces roughly 1 to 8. The forums were PuaHate, SlutHate and Lookism, all largely gone now, and the scale has no published definition and no calibration behind it, which is why two people using it in good faith will rate the same face a point apart. The PSL score test reports a range for that reason.

Chad, Chadlite, Gigachad

Chad is the community’s shorthand for a very good-looking man, now widely used well beyond it. Chadlite marks a step below and Gigachad a step above, and all three are cultural archetypes rather than anything measured.

Looksmatch

A looksmatch is someone at a similar level of attractiveness to you. It works as a description of two people standing together. It is not a ceiling, and nobody can tell you yours from a photograph.

Halo

A single feature good enough to lift the whole face. The community uses it as the opposite of a failo.

Failo

A failo is a single feature unusual enough to drag down the overall impression.

Cope

Cope is community shorthand for something people tell themselves because the real answer is harder. It is a fair word for a product or a technique, and the jaw gadget market runs on it. It is not a word for a person.

Frauding, heightfrauding

Frauding is concealing something, usually height, with shoes, angles or lighting.

Looksmaxxer

Someone working on their appearance deliberately. In our community that covers everything from a first skincare routine to a second jaw surgery, which is most of why one word has to stretch so far.

The eye area

Eye area

The eyes plus the brows, lids, under-eye and the spacing between them, taken together rather than one at a time.

Canthal tilt

The angle between the inner and outer corners of the eye. Surgeons measure it and have published normal bands for it, and no study has linked the angle to how attractive a face is rated, which is worth knowing before you read anyone treating it as a verdict. The canthal tilt calculator gives you the published bands and says what they are.

Positive and negative canthal tilt

Positive means the outer corner of the eye sits higher than the inner corner, negative means it sits lower, and neutral means the two are level.

Hunter eyes

Hunter eyes is community shorthand for deep-set eyes with a positive tilt and little visible upper eyelid.

Prey eyes

Prey eyes is the community’s contrast term for rounder, more exposed eyes. It describes a shape, and that is all it describes.

UEE

UEE is upper eyelid exposure, how much of the eyelid is visible when the eye is open.

Scleral show

White of the eye visible below the iris when you look straight ahead.

Orbital rim, infraorbital rim

The bone around the eye socket, and the part of it directly under the eye. When that lower rim sits back rather than forward, what a reader notices is the hollow above the cheek, not the bone.

Brow ridge

The bony shelf above the eyes. It is one of the features that reads as dimorphic, which is why the community talks about it as much as it does.

IPD

IPD is interpupillary distance, the gap between the pupils. It is one of the twelve proportions in the facial ratios calculator.

The jaw, chin and midface

Maxilla

The upper jaw. It carries the top teeth, the floor of the nose and most of the midface, which is why the community talks about it more than any other bone.

Mandible

The lower jaw, one continuous bone from chin to ear on both sides.

Ramus

The vertical section of the lower jaw, running from the corner of the jaw up to the joint in front of the ear.

Gonial angle

The angle at the corner of the jaw, where the vertical ramus meets the horizontal part of the mandible. Cephalometric norms for it are published, and the gonial angle calculator measures both sides separately because they are rarely identical.

Gonion

The point at the corner of the jaw itself, which is the landmark the gonial angle is measured from.

Jawline

The visible edge of the lower jaw from chin to ear. How defined it looks is a product of the bone under it and the fat and skin over it, and only one of those three moves quickly. The jawline test scores the three inputs separately.

Forward growth

How far the maxilla and mandible sit forward in profile, rather than down and back. It describes a profile; it is not something you do.

Recessed

Set back relative to the rest of the profile, said of a chin, a maxilla or the rim under the eye. It is a position, not a diagnosis, and how much it shows depends on everything around it.

Midface

The region between the eyes and the mouth. Its length relative to the rest of the face is one of the measurements in the facial ratios calculator.

Lower third

The bottom third of the face, from the base of the nose to the chin.

Cheekbones, zygomatic

The bone under the eye that shapes the upper cheek. Zygomatic is the anatomical name for it and zygos is the community’s shorthand.

Ogee curve

The S-curve that runs from the cheekbone down into the midface, seen in three-quarter view rather than head-on.

Buccal fat

The fat pad in the cheek. It is what gives a face fullness there, its removal is surgical and permanent, and faces lose volume in that region with age regardless.

Submental fat

Fat under the chin, which softens the line between the jaw and the neck.

Philtrum

The groove between the base of the nose and the upper lip.

Face shape

The outline of the face read as a category: oval, round, square, heart, oblong, diamond. It is most useful as a guide to haircuts and glasses, and the face shape tool measures the outline rather than guessing from a photo.

Proportions and ratios

Facial thirds

The face divided into upper, middle and lower sections, measured between the hairline, the brow, the base of the nose and the chin. The rule that the three should be equal is a Renaissance drawing convention, and when 153 real faces were finally measured against the canons, the vertical thirds were the worst-performing of the nine. The facial thirds test shows yours against that.

FWHR

Facial width-to-height ratio: cheekbone width divided by the height from brow to upper lip. Meta-analysis found it predicts how threatening a face looks, and that the sex difference assumed under most popular writing about it did not hold up. The fWHR calculator sets out both.

Golden ratio

The number 1.618, proposed as the proportion an attractive face is built on. A systematic review found the golden proportion does not predict facial attractiveness, and when researchers measured which spacing actually rates best, the answer was the average face rather than phi. The golden ratio calculator reports both figures side by side.

Symmetry

How closely the two halves of a face match. It is one of the few items on this page with replicated research behind it: symmetry and averageness are both rated attractive, in both sexes, across cultures. The face symmetry test scores five feature groups separately.

Averageness

How close a face sits to the mathematical average of many faces. Composites built by blending many people rate more attractive than almost every individual face used to build them, which is the least intuitive finding in this whole field and one of the best supported.

Facial attractiveness score

Any single number a tool hands you for a face. It is only worth as much as the method behind it, which is why the attractiveness test publishes its four components and their weights on the page rather than returning a figure from nowhere.

Habits and techniques

Mewing

Resting the whole tongue against the roof of the mouth, lips closed, teeth lightly together. It is a posture habit rather than a bone treatment: the evidence for adult bone change from tongue posture is weak, and it is still worth building for breathing and swallowing. Dr Mike Mew, whose name is on it, answers for it here.

Tongue posture

Where the tongue rests when you are not doing anything with it.

Orthotropics

A school of thought in orthodontics that treats jaw growth as a response to posture and breathing rather than as something settled at birth. It is the tradition mewing came out of, and it is contested inside dentistry rather than only outside it.

Hard mewing

Pushing up hard instead of resting. Sustained force moves teeth, which is the entire principle braces work on, so the thing at risk here is your bite.

Mastic gum, chewing

Chewing something hard to load the masseter, the muscle on the side of the jaw. What gets bigger is the muscle. It is not a route to changing the bone underneath, and the jaw joint is a joint like any other.

Microneedling, dermarolling

Controlled injury to the skin to prompt it into repairing itself. The depth is what separates the procedure from the injury, which is what makes it a professional one.

Heightmaxxing

Heightmaxxing is the community’s term for attempts to gain or appear taller. Adult height does not change without surgery, so everything in this category except that surgery changes how tall you look rather than how tall you are.

Hair and skin

Norwood scale

The standard clinical classification of male pattern hair loss, running 1 to 7. It describes a pattern. It is not a label for a person, whatever the forum does with it.

Hairline recession

The hairline moving back over time, usually at the temples first.

DHT

Dihydrotestosterone, a hormone the body makes from testosterone, and the one male pattern hair loss is linked to.

Minoxidil

A topical hair loss treatment, sold over the counter in the United States. Whether it suits you, and what it does over what timescale, is a question for a doctor or a pharmacist rather than a thread.

Finasteride

A prescription medication used for male pattern hair loss. Prescription-only is the useful part of that sentence: there is a conversation to have with a doctor about it, side effects included, and no dose you should take from a forum.

Hair transplant

Surgery that moves follicles from the back of the head to the front. It relocates hair rather than creating it, which is why a surgeon cares how much you have left to move.

Retinoid, retinol

Vitamin A derivatives used on skin to speed up cell turnover. Strengths run from over the counter to prescription-only, so which one is a question for a professional, and skin needs two to three months before anything can be judged.

SPF

Sun protection factor, the number on a sunscreen. One study of 298 women put roughly 80% of visible facial aging down to sun exposure, which makes this the least glamorous entry on the page and one of the most useful.

Hyperpigmentation

Dark patches left behind by sun, inflammation or acne.

Body and frame

Frame

Your skeleton: shoulder width, height, wrist and clavicle. It is fixed once you have finished growing. How you dress it is not.

Body fat percentage

The share of your body mass that is fat. It moves in weeks, which is faster than anything structural on this page, and the body fat calculator estimates it from three tape measurements.

Shoulder-to-waist ratio

Shoulder circumference divided by waist. The wedge shape it describes is one of the better-replicated findings on male attractiveness, though the two papers behind it measured waist-to-chest and shoulder-to-hip rather than this exact ratio. The shoulder-to-waist calculator works it out and says what the research supports.

V-taper

The same wedge, named for the shape rather than for the ratio.

BMI

Body mass index, weight divided by height squared. It is a population screening tool, so it reads a lean and muscular person as overweight. The BMI calculator gives the WHO category and says where the measure fails.

Gymmaxxing

Training, with appearance as the stated goal rather than a side effect. The -maxxing suffix is doing the same job it does everywhere else.

Procedures

Rhinoplasty

Nose surgery. Its scope runs from a small reduction to rebuilding an airway, and the recovery differs as much as the scope does.

Genioplasty

Chin surgery, in which the chin bone is cut and repositioned rather than built up with an implant.

Bimax

Bimax is short for bimaxillary osteotomy, jaw surgery performed by a maxillofacial surgeon. Both jaws are cut and moved, it is normally planned jointly with an orthodontist over months, and the recovery includes weeks on a restricted diet.

Orthognathic surgery

The clinical name for surgery that repositions the jaws. A bimax is one kind of it.

Canthoplasty, canthopexy

Surgery at the outer corner of the eye. It is what actually changes canthal tilt, and it is eyelid surgery rather than a cosmetic tweak.

Blepharoplasty

Eyelid surgery, done to remove skin or fat from the upper or lower lid.

Buccal fat removal

Removal of the cheek fat pad. It is permanent, and the face keeps losing volume in that region with age afterwards.

Fillers

Injectable gels that add volume. Most are temporary, so the cost is a recurring one, and who holds the needle matters more than which brand is in it.

Botox, botulinum toxin

An injectable that relaxes the muscle it is placed in, used on expression lines. It is prescription-only and it wears off.

Limb lengthening

Limb lengthening is major orthopedic surgery that breaks and slowly extends the leg bones. Recovery is measured in months rather than weeks, much of it on crutches and in rehab, and it carries the complication profile of major bone surgery.

Words that rank people

Everything above describes a face. These describe a person, and telling the two apart is the most useful thing on this page. They are defined here because you will meet them within about a minute of reading any thread. What none of them can do is tell you what is possible for you.

Normie

Community shorthand for average-looking, and the middle of the PSL scale. Worth remembering that on a scale describing a population, average is where almost everyone is.

LTN, MTN, HTN

Low, mid and high tier normie: the community’s subdivisions of average. They sound precise and nothing defines them. There is no published line anywhere that says where one ends and the next begins, which is why the same face gets all three from three different people.

SMV

Sexual market value, the community’s term for how desirable a person is taken to be. It borrows the vocabulary of a market to make an opinion sound like a measurement, and that is the whole trick of it.

Blackpill

The blackpill view holds that bone structure decides how a life goes and that effort past a point is wasted. It is common on the forum, and on the evidence as we grade it we do not think it holds. Bone structure is real. It is not the only thing being read, and the parts that are not bone are the parts that move.

Ascension

Community shorthand for crossing from one level of attractiveness to another, usually told afterwards as a before-and-after. The work in those accounts is real and worth reading. The framing is what to watch, because it turns a long run of ordinary decisions into a single moment that either arrives or does not: Orka goes through his one at a time, with the reasoning behind each.

“It’s over”, “never began”

Two community phrases for the same idea, that the outcome was settled before you started. They get typed as a joke most of the time. They are worth noticing on the occasions somebody means it.

The -cel suffix

A suffix taken from “incel” and attached to almost anything, usually to name a group of men as having failed at something. It is the clearest signal in the whole vocabulary that a conversation has stopped being about faces.

Foid

Short for “female humanoid”, and members use it to mean women in general. The construction is the whole of it: the word is built to say that the person being described is not quite a person, which makes it a fact about whoever typed it rather than a description of anybody.

Moid

Short for “male humanoid”, the same construction pointed the other way, and more common in women’s forums than in this one. The pair is worth seeing together: neither one names a feature, a measurement or anything a person could act on, which is the difference between an insult and an observation.