Looksmaxxing: Where Self-Improvement Turns Ugly
Words by Urvi Kulkarni (@urvikul)
Let’s face it: our looks matter. How we appear impacts how others treat us, what opportunities open up to us, and even the salaries we’re offered. The online Looksmaxxing community, however, has taken this unremarkable truth to an entirely new level. It's a slippery slope: what begins as self-improvement can transform into narcissistic obsession.
Looksmaxxing is the practice of optimizing appearance to become one’s most attractive self. Maybe that sounds harmless to most. However, the Looksmaxxing community finds its origins in Incel culture, formed by involuntarily celibate men who believe themselves to be severely mistreated by women as a result of their unattractiveness, with discourse taking place on online forums such as PUAhate, Sluthate, and Lookism.net. These forums are where online users, largely male, identify desirable facial characteristics, judge the appearance of others, and offer advice on how to achieve self-improvement, transforming insecurity into an all-encompassing identity. These men seem to believe that society has rejected them solely due to their appearance and are lured in by Looksmaxxing’s promise of completely transforming their social and romantic spheres.
One forum I came across on Lookism.net was titled “Rate Me,” where users post photos of themselves to be rated and given advice on what to fix about their faces and how to go about ascension.
The rating system follows the “PSL scale,” which orders men from 1 to 8, ranking them as “PSL gods,” or most attractive, to “Chads,” or moderately attractive, to Sub5s, or unattractive. The PSL Scale is essentially a caste system of decimal point measurements based on a strict criterion of defined traits. Looksmaxxing proves to be extremely problematic: it rests on an ideal of masculinity by treading the waters of racialized aesthetics.
The ideal man is not simply attractive; he is engineered. Favorable nose dimensions, lip ratios, jaw sharpness, and eye-to-mouth angles are outlined with great precision. These strict beauty standards don't just come from thin air. Instead, they echo historical ideals of eugenics packaged in the vocabulary of self-improvement. By championing those with “desirable traits” while excluding and ridiculing those who are unable to meet its criteria, the logic of Looksmaxxing is simply a revival of a racialized hierarchy that categorized who was worthy of humanity in society.
Those in the pursuit of such idealized traits to reach ascension can find themselves on a very concerning path. What starts off as seeking out orthodontic treatments or using minoxidil for hair growth can quickly slip into "bonemashing" to pronounce one's cheekbones, and even the use of meth for hollowed cheeks. Even more concerning is how easily Looksmaxxing rhetoric is being adopted on a mass scale with the help of social media. Incels have been able to disseminate their worldview by watering down their original vocabulary to resemble scientific objectives, similar to how eugenics became popularized in the past.
In the end, Looksmaxxing promotes itself as empowering to young men just to trap them in an insatiable cycle of perfectionism. Its greatest deception lies in promising ascension, only to deliver ultimate self-loathing.
