I’m sitting in a Discord chatroom looking at a picture of a pouting, topless man, side-on with an olive wreath tattoo framing his collarbones. “Now I’m going to show you one from before…” Ali, 21, uploads another image into the chat. It shows him years earlier: a boy with a plain expression and youthful softness. I ask what it’s like looking at both photos. “Every single thing in my life changed. Looks are genuinely everything. Everyone treats you better, even your family,” he says.
Ali is part of the looksmaxxing community, an internet subculture with the singular focus of men maximising their physical attractiveness. Clicking through the various channels of Looksmaxxing.org’s Discord, you’ll see anything from ‘mog-battles’, a Zoolander-esque face-off between different members, to ‘looksmaxx’ tips, a database of infographics pointing members to desired eye-brow shapes, eye-lash thickener and safe-steroid use. One of the most valued channels, however, is the ‘face-rating’ section, where members can score each other on a scale of one to ten, with prices ranging from free to €30. Ali is one of a few members labelled as a verified face-rater, a privileged role that qualifies a person to ‘legitimately’ rate the faces that are uploaded to these chatrooms.
Ultra, 23, started learning about facial harmony after his algorithm recommended videos by the dentist, Dr Mew, who has since been struck from the dental register. “At 15, I found his content on mewing, orthotropics, and how making postural changes, usually with your tongue, can lead to better bone development and increase your attractiveness as you grow older,” he says. Micro-movements like mewing are diligently practised and repeated in the pursuit of perfection. Whether this ‘perfection’ is achieved is at the mod’s discretion, but most of the raters I spoke to had knowledge of certain equations and theories of attraction, and possessed a deep familiarity with the beauty standards held by the community. Years of focusing on the minutiae of facial development had sculpted Ultra and Ali into experts on what it takes to ‘ascend’.
“Mouth width should be equal to your nostril width multiplied by 1.618. That’s the ideal value,” – Reddit-rater XprinceDurante
Platforms like the looksmaxxing subreddit link the success of your own ‘ascending’ journey to your legitimacy as a rater, while the Discord offshoot preferred raters go through a series of tests before being verified. Ali is the point of entry for new raters in Looksmaxx.org Discord. “If someone wants to be a verified face-rater, I tell him to DM me and show me what you got. I’ll send him a face to rate. Multiple faces, multiple tests,” he explains. If they pass, prospective faces can register a ticket, post an image, and wait for one of these raters to give an ‘eyeball’ score along the numerical axis of desirability. In the eyes of the group, their ratings are gospel.
There are two distinct rating systems in the looksmaxxing universe: PSL (an acronym drawn from forums PUAHate, SlutHate and Lookism) and Decile. The Decile system is a standardised scale for rating attractiveness that goes from one to ten, whereas PSL is only from one to eight, a more “brutal” system designed to “tie into how people’s faces will affect their dating success rather than being kind,” says Ultra. Brian, a 28-year-old retired face-rater, pulled up a PowerPoint presentation on Zoom to show me where various faces scored on the PSL scale. “Scoring three to four is what we would call a sub five, people considered objectively unattractive. Fives are the average male, and sixes is what they call a high tier normie,” he says. A high tier normie, or HTN, can step up the ranks if he has charisma, qualifying as a ‘Chad light’, and men that score eight are instantly deified as ‘Chads’.
‘The Golden Ratio’ provides the basis for these ratings, a formula based on symmetry and proportion that can be traced all the way back to 300 BCE, in Euclid’s Elements. The ratio states that when a line is divided into two parts in a ratio of 1:1.618, it creates the ideal proportion. Found repeatedly in natural life, the mathematical aesthetic present in petals to pinecones, it is now repurposed by looksmaxxers to render attractiveness objective. “Mouth width should be equal to your nostril width multiplied by 1.618. That’s the ideal value,” says Reddit-rater, XprinceDurante. “Similarly, you have facial thirds and fifths, they should all be equal, whatever the value is. Mathematically speaking, you add those different types of harmony, and then you take the average. That’s the rating system.” Depending on what someone scores, the raters suggest recommendations vary between ‘soft-maxxing’ or ‘hardmaxxing’, meaning either subtle, sustainable changes or surgical intervention.
“Even attractive people post on our subreddit asking, ‘am I ugly?’ They ask that question because it’s never about the looks. Looksmaxxing is about validation” – XprinceDurante
Protruding cheekbones, a sharp jaw line, hunter eyes, a face that says, “I will make healthy babies, if I reproduce with you,” are the answers Brian gives when describing the ideal masculine face. For this community, looks are tied to your reproductive value, inferring that if you score low, your genes are not as desirable to pass on. While the raters I spoke with insisted that all races can be attractive, the rating systems are structured through a Western, white lens: “If they see someone Jewish, they’re gonna tell him or her to change your race. Or if they see a Black person, [they say] change colour, be white,” XprinceDurante says. Technical terms used to describe traits of non-white people such as ‘recessed palate’ or ‘protruding upper third’ are loaded with a subtext of inferiority. The ‘legitimate’ raters have allowed racist sentiment to be dressed up in pseudo-scientific truths; a form of intellectualising that ended up sounding a lot like eugenics.
All of these looksmaxxers noted that at the heart of this community lies insecurity, a feeling they related to and the reason why most of them wanted to offer their services. Ali’s descent into this world, for example, came after being romantically rejected. Insecurity is also often what fuels those who post their selfies. “People don’t just want to improve their face, they want to feel good about their face. Even attractive people post on our subreddit asking, ‘am I ugly?’ They ask that question because it’s never about the looks. Looksmaxxing is about validation,” says XprinceDurante. Many of the young men I spoke to had considered quitting, finding themselves instinctively rating in public, or developing unhealthy obsessions with their own appearances. Ascending never seemed to be the end – the boys who subjected themselves to these rating systems were then tasked with finding their value outside of them. Perhaps becoming a verified rater offers some control over the compulsive nature of this community, providing a method to the madness whilst drawing others into your dysphoria.
During these conversations, I am reminded of my teenage years asking boys to rate me out of ten in playgrounds and over text, now grateful that those numerical scores were not presented as objective truths. At any rate, it’s easy to see the appeal. Raters offer a service that satisfies the deepest itch of human insecurity: the desire to know how we’re seen.
