Looksmaxxing glossary

Index of looksmaxxing anatomy, ratio, hair, and skin jargon

Looksmaxxing glossary

Charcoal study of facial thirds (Astra, 2026); the glossary is measurement talk, not a rating mill.
Field	Looksmaxxing
Related	Looksmaxxing; Facial skeleton; PSL scale

This is the working glossary of looksmaxxing measurement talk: bones, orbits, fat, ratios, hair fall, plates. Scene slang is labeled as slang. Anthropometry is labeled as measurement. Ideal numbers from rating apps are not medicine.

Parent pages: Facial skeleton, Orbit, Midface, Hairline, Hair drape, Cranial suture, Growth plate.

Skull and facial bones

• Facial skeleton — the bony mask the forums mean by “bone.”
• Frontal bone / forehead — upper third; trichion to glabella.
• Glabella — skin/bone between the brows.
• Brow ridge (supraorbital ridge / torus) — the shelf over the eyes.
• Zygomatic bone (zygoma, malar) — cheekbone; bizygomatic width.
• Zygomatic arch — the bar from cheek to ear; temporal hollow sits above it.
• Maxilla — midface block; recession talk lives here.
• Palatine bone — back of the hard palate; palate expansion territory.
• Nasal bone — bridge; see nose.
• Mandible — lower jaw; ramus, body, gonial angle, chin.
• Hyoid bone — horseshoe in the anterior neck; not joined to any other bone.
• Sphenoid bone — skull-base keystone; pterygoid plates; spheno-occipital synchondrosis.
• Temporal bone — side of the skull; temple hollow.
• Occipital bone — back of the skull (rarely rated).
• Clavicle — not a facial bone; Clavicular took the name from biacromial width. See frame (body).

Cephalometric landmarks the boards recycle: nasion, glabella, trichion, subnasale, stomion, pogonion, menton, gonion, zygion, orbitale, porion. See Riedel's line. Masseter is muscle width, not a landmark. SMAS and platysma are the facelift/neck planes.

Orbit (all of it)

See orbit for the cavity as a whole.

• Roof — frontal bone + lesser wing of sphenoid; supraorbital rim.
• Floor — maxilla + zygomatic; infraorbital rim; infraorbital foramen.
• Lateral wall — zygomatic + greater wing of sphenoid.
• Medial wall — lacrimal, ethmoid (lamina papyracea), maxilla; thin.
• Aperture / orbital box — the opening you see; deep-set vs proptotic.
• Orbital vector — globe vs rim (negative vector = globe in front of rim).
• Palpebral fissure — the eye opening; length, height, almond vs round.
• Canthal tilt — lateral vs medial canthus.
• Medial canthus / lateral canthus — inner and outer corners.
• Hunter eyes / prey eyes — slang bundles, not zoology.
• Upper eyelid exposure (UEE) — visible pretarsal skin; hunter-eye talk wants little.
• Scleral show — white under the iris; tired/negative-vector tell.
• Tear trough / infraorbital hollow — groove at lid–cheek junction.
• Orbital fat pads — upper and lower; bags vs hollow.
• Canthoplasty / canthopexy — surgery on the outer corner (medicine, not a drill).

Ratios and thirds

• Facial thirds — trichion–glabella, glabella–subnasale, subnasale–menton.
• Facial convexity — G–Sn–Pog profile angle (forehead–nose base–chin).
• Ricketts E-line — nose-tip-to-chin tangent; lips judged against it.
• Midface / midface ratio — compact vs long midface; several incompatible formulas.
• Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) — bizygomatic width over upper-face height.
• Bizygomatic width — zygion to zygion.
• Bigonial width — gonion to gonion; jaw width.
• Bigonial–bizygomatic ratio — jaw vs cheek width.
• Gonial angle — ramus vs mandibular body at the angle.
• Mandibular plane — lower-border slope.
• Ramus height — vertical back of the mandible.
• Facial fifths — eye-width units across the front.
• Interpupillary distance (IPD) / inner canthal distance.
• Waist-to-shoulder ratio — body V-taper; not a face metric.
• Ogee curve — S-curve temple → cheek → hollow.

Fat

• Facial fat — compartments, not one blob.
• Buccal fat — deep cheek; buccal fat removal is surgery.
• Hollow cheeks — mid-cheek valley; leanness vs a pad excision.
• Cortisol face / moon face — medical moon facies vs ordinary puff; see debloat.
• Malar fat pad — superficial cheek prominence.
• Submental fat — under the chin; neck.
• Periorbital fat — lids; too little reads cadaver, too much reads bag.
• Body fat — the boring lever that shows or hides bone.

Brow

• Brow ridge
• Eyebrow — set, thickness, arch vs flat, “brow frauding” (dye/fill).
• Glabella

Hair

• Hair — hub: line, drape, density, loss.
• Hairline — juvenile, M-shape, temples, widow’s peak, fivehead.
• Norwood scale
• Hair density — follicles per cm² vs hair caliber (shaft thickness).
• Hair drape — how hair falls: triangle hair, flow, curtains, 90-degree, weight, connection.
• Triangle hair — inverted-triangle mass on top; a barber diagnosis, not a bone.
• Haircut, beard, hair transplant, minoxidil, finasteride, SMP

Skin and treatments

• Skin / skinmaxxing
• Skin clarity — texture, pores, pigment, redness, “glass.”
• Acne, retinoid, isotretinoin, sunscreen
• Facials — peels, extractions, devices; softmax, not bone.

Soft tissue (syringe, suture, lift)

• Facial filler — HA, CaHA, PLLA, PMMA, fat.
• Hyaluronic acid filler / hyaluronidase / vascular occlusion
• Nasolabial fold / marionette lines / jowl
• Thread lift — PDO thread, cog thread, mono thread, screw thread
• 9D facelift — marketed name, not a CPT
• Facelift / deep plane facelift / ponytail lift
• Blepharoplasty / canthoplasty / neuromodulator
• Full list: list of soft-tissue procedures
• Paranasal implant — piriform / nasal-base projection; not a cheek implant.

Smile

• Buccal corridor — dark space at the smile corners; arch width, not a facial exercise.
• Teeth

Eyes (color and contrast)

• Eye color — iris, contrast, catchlights; not a surgery.
• Limbal ring
• Sclera color (bloodshot vs white)

Plates, sutures, fusion

“Plate fusing” in this scene means two different clocks:

1. Long-bone growth plates (epiphyses) — height; they close after puberty.
2. Cranial sutures and synchondroses — skull/face. The ones the forums name:
   • Midpalatal suture — palate expansion / MARPE / MSE.
   • Circummaxillary sutures — maxilla to neighbors.
   • Spheno-occipital synchondrosis (SOS) — cranial base; midface folklore.
   • Pterygomaxillary fissure/suture — LeFort territory.
3. Surgical plates (titanium hardware after bimax) are implants, not growth plates. See bimaxillary osteotomy.

Boards (history)

• PSL forums — PUAHate, SlutHate, Lookism.net
• Looksmax.org — living English forum
• Incels.is — incel-identity sister
• List of looksmaxxing websites

Pairing and rank slang

• Game is cope — slogan that pickup skill cannot substitute for looks; recorded as a claim, not a finding.
• Looksmatch — someone rated about as attractive as you; also overmatch / undermatch.
• Sexual market value (SMV) — attractiveness as capital (metaphor).
• Hypergamy — “dating up”; manosphere use.
• PSL scale — harsh forum 1–8/1–10.
• HTN / MTN / LTN — high/mid/low-tier normie.
• Chad / Chadlite / Stacy — cartoon top ranks; Gigachad is the joke ceiling.
• Becky — average-looking female rank below Stacy; high-tier Becky is still a cartoon.
• Failo — one trait treated as tanking an otherwise strong face.
• Ascension — slang for arriving at the looks the scene wants.
• Gymcel — incel identity whose stack is the gym; training is gymmaxxing.
• Fraudmaxxing — fibers, contour, angles; softmax the boards call fraud.
• Looksminimizing — the self-mog.
• Leanmaxxing — leanness until bone shows; crash is starvemaxxing.
• Skinmaxxing — sunscreen / retinoid / acne as a named softmax.
• Sleep / sleepmaxxing — sleep; the slang word redirects here.
• PSL god — holy-grail face; pin-ups Sean O'Pry, Francisco Lachowski, Jordan Barrett, David Gandy.
• Mog / frame mogging / jestermaxxing
• Geomaxxing · gymmaxxing · moneymaxxing · auramaxxing · scentmaxxing
• Twinkmaxxing · crymaxxing
• Incelosphere — journalistic name for the incubator cluster
• Liquid rhino — unlicensed nose filler; described as harm
• Orthognathic surgery — the real name for bimax / BSSO / Le Fort
• Mog — to look better than the person next to you.

Body (not face, still rated)

• Frame (body) — biacromial width, clavicles, wrists, ribcage.
• Waist-to-shoulder ratio / V-taper
• Shoulder pads — cloth that fakes width.
• Physique, height, posture, chin tuck, neck, hyoid bone

See also

• PSL scale
• Looksmatch
• Sean O'Pry
• Facial harmony
• QOVES Studio
• Facial masculinization surgery
• List of looksmaxxers

References

Scene usage as documented on this wiki’s term pages; classical landmarks follow craniofacial anthropometry (Farkas and later cephalometrics). Rating-app cutoffs are products.