LOOKSMETER · GLOSSARY
Looksmaxxing terms, translated
The looksmaxxing vocabulary is half anthropometry and half forum slang, and both halves get used loosely. Here's the complete glossary with honest definitions - what each term means, and how seriously to take it.
Scales and scores
The measurement vocabulary - what the numbers people throw around actually refer to:
PSL
The 0.25-8 attractiveness scale this niche runs on, stricter than a casual 1-10: most people sit 3.0-5.5. Named for the forums where it emerged. Full breakdown in our PSL scale guide.
Tier names (Chad, Stacy, Chadlite, Normie...)
Labels for PSL bands: Mid Tier Normie (~3-4.5), High Tier Normie (~4.5-5.5), Chadlite (~5.5-6), Chad/Stacy (6+), True Adam/Eve (7+, essentially theoretical). Sub5 means below 5 - which, on this scale, is most people.
Decile speak (top 10%, 1 in 100...)
Percentile framing of the same idea. A useful sanity check: any tool calling most of its users top-20% is flattering them by definition.
Rate me / RTM
Threads where strangers score your photo. Free, brutally variable, and heavily influenced by photo quality - the argument for a fixed-rubric score as your baseline instead.
Practices
What people actually do - ranked here by how honest the practice's own marketing is:
Looksmaxxing
The umbrella term: systematically improving your appearance. See our full looksmaxxing guide.
Softmaxxing
The non-surgical levers - body composition, skin, hair, grooming, posture, style. Where nearly all realistic gains live. Full guide on the site.
Hardmaxxing
Surgical and medical interventions - rhinoplasty, jaw surgery, implants, filler. Real risk, real cost, licensed-professional territory, and the standard advice is to exhaust softmaxxing first.
Mewing
Tongue-on-palate posture claimed to reshape the face. Fine as posture; no adult evidence for bone change. Our mewing guide has the honest breakdown.
Bonesmashing
Striking the face hoping bone 'remodels' stronger. It does not work, it damages soft tissue and risks fracture, and no version of it is worth attempting. Listed here only so you know what to avoid.
Gymmaxxing / weightmaxxing
Training and body-composition work. The single most effective 'maxx' - facial definition is substantially a body-fat story.
Moneymaxxing / statusmaxxing
Improving income, career and social standing rather than the face. The community's backhanded acknowledgment that attraction runs on more than bone structure.
Ascending
Actually improving - visibly, measurably. The goal state of all of the above. Our ascend guide covers what a realistic plan looks like.
Anatomy vocabulary
The measurement terms borrowed from anthropometry and aesthetics discussion:
Canthal tilt
The angle between inner and outer eye corners - positive, neutral or negative. Notoriously mismeasured from selfies; full guide on the site.
Hunter eyes / prey eyes
Community labels for a deep-set, hooded, positively-tilted eye area vs an open, rounded one. Five separate markers, usually mixed in one face - both have full guides here.
UEE (upper eyelid exposure)
How much mobile eyelid shows between lash line and brow. Low reads 'hooded', high reads 'open'.
Gonial angle
The angle at the jaw's corner below the ear. Sharper angles read as stronger jaws; it's skeletal and not exercisable.
Facial thirds / midface ratio
Proportion measures dividing the face at brow and nose base. Harmony between thirds matters more to raters than any third's absolute size.
Philtrum
The groove between nose and upper lip. A long philtrum is a frequent forum fixation; observers barely register it.
Dimorphism
How strongly features read masculine or feminine. One of the four categories a PSL score rates, alongside Harmony, Angularity and Miscellaneous.
Social vocabulary
The comparison and perception slang:
Mog / mogging
To visibly outclass someone side by side - heightmog, facemog, framemog. Full guide on why the framing measures the wrong thing.
Halo / failo
A halo is a trait that lifts how everything else about you is judged (height, hair, NT-ness); a failo drags everything down. Rooted in the real halo-effect literature, then stretched far past it.
NT
'Neurotypical' - socially fluent, at ease. The forums' grudging admission that vibe changes how a face is received.
Looksmatch
Someone at your own attractiveness level; the community's presumed natural pairing.
Blackpill
The fatalist ideology that looks are destiny and effort is pointless. Its factual claims cherry-pick the attraction literature, and its practical advice - give up - is the one strategy guaranteed to produce its own prediction. This site's entire premise is the measured middle: some things change, some don't, and knowing which is which beats both cope and despair.
Frequently asked
What does PSL mean in looksmaxxing?
PSL is a 0.25-8 facial attractiveness scale named for the initials of three forums where it developed (PUAhate, Sluthate, Lookism). It's stricter than casual 1-10 rating: most people land between 3.0 and 5.5, and scores above 6 describe genuinely rare faces. See our full PSL scale guide for every tier.
What does sub5 mean?
Below 5 on a rating scale - used in the community as shorthand for below-average attractiveness. Worth knowing: on the strict PSL scale the majority of ordinary, perfectly normal-looking people are 'sub5', which says more about the scale's calibration than about the people.
What does NT mean in looksmaxxing?
NT stands for 'neurotypical' and is used in the community to mean socially normal - relaxed body language, ordinary conversational instincts. Forum wisdom holds that being NT amplifies looks ('NT halo'), which is one of the community's more accurate observations: presentation and social ease measurably change how attractiveness is perceived.
What does it mean to be looksmatched?
Two people are looksmatched when they're roughly equal in attractiveness. The community treats matching as the natural equilibrium for couples; research on assortative mating partially supports the tendency while showing far more variance than the forums allow.
What is a PSL god?
Community shorthand for someone at the extreme top of the PSL scale - 6.5 and above, the faces used as rating anchors. By the scale's own distribution they're a fraction of a percent of people, which is worth remembering when forums treat them as a reference point for normal.
Keep reading
This page is general information about facial aesthetics terminology, not medical or cosmetic advice. Scores from our tools are AI-generated estimates for entertainment and self-reflection.