Glossary
Glossary
The lingo, demystified. Community slang, scientific terms, and what they actually mean.
Looksmaxxing
The practice of maximising one's physical appearance through deliberate techniques across grooming, skincare, training, nutrition and, at the extreme, aesthetic procedures. Originally forum slang, now a mainstream content genre.
He spent a year looksmaxxing and his jawline finally caught up with his cheekbones.
Softmaxxing
The non-invasive half of looksmaxxing. Skincare, sleep, posture, diet, training, mewing, grooming. Reversible, cheap, and where most of the realistic returns actually live.
She refuses injectables and just softmaxxes with sleep and SPF.
Hardmaxxing
The invasive half. Botox, fillers, laser, hair restoration, orthognathic or maxillofacial surgery. Higher leverage, irreversible by default, and only sensible after the basics are in place.
He hardmaxxed his chin with filler before fixing his sleep schedule.
PSL
A 1-to-8 attractiveness scale named after the trio of forums PUAHate, Sluthate and Lookism. Codified the looksmax vocabulary and the obsession with millimetre-level facial measurement.
On the PSL scale he reads as a high 6, low 7.
Mogging
Visibly outclassing someone in attractiveness when standing next to them. Comparative, photographic, and a little cruel. The trend's favourite verb.
Standing next to Clavicular, even Sean O'Pry was mogging the room only barely.
Mogged
Passive of mogging. Being visibly outclassed by someone next to you, in the photo, on the panel. The receiving end of a frame mismatch.
He was mogged into oblivion by the new model at the show.
HTN
High-tier normie. A man who is solidly above average in attractiveness without being canonically Chad. The realistic ceiling for most healthy, well-groomed adults.
He is a clean HTN, not a Chad, and his dating life reflects that.
MTN
Mid-tier normie. The statistical middle of the male attractiveness distribution. Neither penalised nor rewarded by the lens, just present.
Most of the men in any given office are MTNs.
LTN
Low-tier normie. Below-average male attractiveness as the community ranks it, usually due to one or two visible structural traits rather than overall composition.
An LTN with a great frame can still outperform a tall HTN.
Chad
The community's top-tier male canon. Square jaw, hunter eyes, positive canthal tilt, defined cheekbones, broad frame. A composite, not a real person, used as a measuring stick.
He is a Chad in every metric except height.
Stacy
The female counterpart to Chad. High harmony, neotenous features, hourglass frame. Equally a composite, equally fictional, equally used to rank real people.
Stacy is a category, not a person, and most days that is forgotten.
Becky
Community label for a mid-tier woman. The female counterpart of normie. Charged language, useful only as a marker of how the lexicon flattens people.
The forum thread called her a Becky and the thread was the problem.
Femcel
Female involuntary celibate. Community jargon, originally a small offshoot of the manosphere lexicon. Charged term, often used to dismiss women's complaints about dating.
She wrote about loneliness and the comments called her a femcel.
Incel
Involuntary celibate. The original PSL-adjacent community whose lexicon seeded looksmaxxing. Politically loaded, and the source of most of the trend's least defensible framings.
The vocabulary is incel-origin even when the TikTok is friendly.
Halo effect
Psychology term. A single attractive trait causes observers to assume other unrelated positive traits, like intelligence or trustworthiness. The cognitive backbone of why looks compound.
The halo effect is why a strong jaw also reads as confident.
Frame
Shoulder, clavicle and torso width relative to head and waist. Popularised by the Clavicular cycle as the new face. What you cannot easily change after puberty.
Frame is the lever the gym actually moves.
Clavicular
Braden Peters, the looksmax icon whose visible clavicles and frame ratio dominated 2026 New York Fashion Week. The name became a shorthand for the frame-first era.
The Clavicular era moved the conversation from face to frame in one season.
Canthal tilt
The angle of a line drawn from the inner corner of the eye to the outer corner. Positive when the outer corner is higher. A core looksmax trait, measurable in millimetres.
His canthal tilt reads as a clean positive five.
Hunter eyes
Deep-set eyes with a positive canthal tilt, lateral cheekbone support and a flat upper-lid platform. The looksmax canon for the male eye area.
Hunter eyes are mostly orbital structure, not the eyes themselves.
Positive tilt
A canthal tilt in which the outer corner of the eye sits above the inner corner. Read by the community as more masculine and more attractive in male faces.
A small positive tilt does more for the face than most people realise.
Negative tilt
A canthal tilt in which the outer corner of the eye sits below the inner corner. Read as more childlike or, in the looksmax lexicon, less ideal in male faces.
A slight negative tilt reads as softness, not a defect.
Recessed chin
A chin that sits behind the vertical line of the lower lip in profile. A frequent target for filler or genioplasty in hard maxxing. Often misdiagnosed in well-postured faces.
He thought his chin was recessed; it was just his neck posture.
Gonial angle
The angle at the back of the jaw where the mandible turns from horizontal to vertical. The looksmax sweet spot sits around 115 to 122 degrees in the community canon.
A sharp gonial angle is what reads as a defined jaw under the skin.
fWHR
Facial width-to-height ratio. The width of the face at the cheekbones divided by the height from upper lip to brow. Used in research and, loosely, in looksmax discourse.
A high fWHR correlates with the perception of dominance, for better or worse.
Dimorphism
The degree to which a face carries male-typical or female-typical features. High male dimorphism is the canonical Chad reading; high female dimorphism is the canonical Stacy reading.
Dimorphism, not symmetry, drives most of the attractiveness signal.
Harmony
Visual coherence across the thirds of the face and between features. The trait that explains why some uneven faces still read as beautiful and some perfect ones do not.
Harmony is what turns a list of features into a face.
Angularity
The sharpness and definition of facial features, especially the jaw, cheekbones and brow. Often confused with low body fat, frequently dependent on it.
His angularity is half bone and half cut from training.
Mewing
Holding the tongue flat against the palate, lips closed, teeth in light contact, while breathing through the nose. Named after orthodontist John Mew. Adult skeletal effect is contested.
He has been mewing for two years and his jawline is sharper for it, modestly.