Glow Up for MenGlossary
Looksmaxxing glossary: every term, explained honestly
Short answer
Looksmaxxing slang comes from forums and TikTok. The core terms: softmaxxing (improving looks through habits), hardmaxxing (surgery and extreme methods), mogging (outshining someone), PSL (a strict 1–10 face rating), LTN/MTN/HTN (normie tiers), Chadlite and Chad (top tiers), hunter eyes and canthal tilt (eye-shape terms) and mewing (tongue posture). Most are memes, not measurements.
The basics
- Looksmaxxing: improving your appearance as much as you realistically can. Full explainer.
- -maxxing: suffix meaning “taking something to the max”. It gets attached to almost anything: gymmaxxing (training), sleepmaxxing (sleep habits), skinmaxxing (skincare), leanmaxxing (lowering body fat), hairmaxxing (haircut and hair care), stylemaxxing or fashionmaxxing (clothes), jestermaxxing (being funny), moneymaxxing and statusmaxxing (career and social standing).
- Softmaxxing: the habit side: skin, hair, body fat, posture, sleep, grooming and clothes. Low cost, low risk. Softmaxxing guide.
- Hardmaxxing: surgery, injectables, drugs and other invasive methods. Expensive, and some changes are irreversible.
- Glow up: the visible change after a stretch of good habits. The healthy goal of all this. 30-day glow up plan.
- Ascend / ascension: moving up a tier, i.e. a clear improvement. “He ascended” means a big glow up.
- Looksmatch: someone at a similar level of attractiveness; forum shorthand for dating “in your league”.
Ratings and tiers
These labels are internet shorthand, not measurements: the same face scores differently depending on the photo and on who is rating. The full breakdown, and why a score misleads you, is in the looksmaxxing scale.
| Term | What it means on forums |
|---|---|
| PSL | A strict 1–10 face rating, named after the initials of old looksmaxxing forums. A PSL 5 is meant to be average, so the numbers run lower than everyday “out of 10” talk. |
| Sub-5 | Below average on that scale. |
| LTN / MTN / HTN | Low-, Mid- and High-Tier Normie: below average, average and above average. |
| Chadlite | Very attractive, one step below “Chad”. |
| Chad / Gigachad | The top of the meme scale. Gigachad is the exaggerated internet version. |
| Stacy / Becky | The female equivalents in the same slang: a very attractive woman and an average one. |
| Normie | An average person, in looks or in general. |
Face and body terms
- Hunter eyes: deep-set eyes with little visible upper eyelid, a straight or slightly upward tilt and low, straight brows. Mostly genetic. What you can and can't change.
- Prey eyes: the opposite label: rounder eyes with more visible eyelid and more white of the eye showing.
- Canthal tilt: the angle between the inner and outer corner of the eye. Positive means the outer corner sits higher; negative, lower. It's bone and soft tissue: no exercise changes it.
- Maxilla: the upper jaw bone. “Forward growth” and “recessed maxilla” are forum terms for how far forward the middle of the face sits.
- Jawline, gonial angle, ramus: the outline of the jaw, the angle at its back corner and the vertical rear part of the jawbone. Body fat and neck posture change how they look more than anything else. Jawline guide.
- FWHR: facial width-to-height ratio. A forum metric that gets far more weight online than it deserves.
- IPD: interpupillary distance, the space between your pupils.
- Frame: shoulder width, collarbones and overall build. “Frame mogging” means looking bigger next to someone.
- Halo effect: a real psychology term: one positive trait colors how people judge the rest of you. Forums stretch it to claim looks are everything; it works with confidence, kindness and humor too.
Methods (and which ones to skip)
- Mewing: resting your whole tongue on the roof of your mouth. There's no solid evidence it reshapes adult bone. What the evidence says.
- Bone smashing: hitting your face to “remodel” the bone. No evidence it works and a real risk of injury. Skip it.
- Thumb pulling: pushing on the palate with your thumb to “expand” it. Unproven; skip it too.
- Jaw training / hard gum: chewing tough gum for hours to build the jaw muscles. It can overload the jaw joint.
- Leanmaxxing: lowering body fat so your facial structure shows. Reasonable done slowly; crash diets and long fasts aren't.
- Skinmaxxing: cleanse, moisturize and wear sunscreen every day. Simple routine.
- Posture: not slouching or pushing your head forward. One of the fastest visible wins. Exercises.
Attitude slang
- Mog / mogging / mogged: to outshine someone on looks; “mogged” means outshone. Mogging, explained.
- Mogger: the person doing the mogging. The “mog face” meme is someone staring into the camera with their jaw set.
- Cope: a comforting belief used to avoid a hard truth. Forums use it to dismiss everything (“grooming is cope”), which is its own kind of cope: grooming visibly works.
- Copium: an extra-strong dose of cope.
- It's over / we're so back: a meme pair for despair and hype, often about the same photo an hour apart.
- Mirin': “admiring”, from gym slang (“you mirin'?”).
- Rotting / bedrotting: losing whole days to the bed and the phone. The opposite of what helps.
- Blackpill: the fatalistic belief that looks are fixed and decide everything. It's tied to some of the internet's most toxic spaces and is bad for your mental health. If it starts to feel true, talk to someone you trust.
Some forums that coined these words also host harmful content. Knowing the slang is useful; adopting the ideology isn't.
Frequently asked questions
What does PSL mean in looksmaxxing?
A strict 1–10 face rating used on looksmaxxing forums, where a 5 is meant to be average. It depends heavily on the photo and on who is rating, so treat it as slang, not a measurement.
What do LTN, MTN and HTN mean?
Low-Tier Normie (below average), Mid-Tier Normie (average) and High-Tier Normie (above average). Above them sit Chadlite and Chad.
What does “mogged” mean?
Outshone on looks, usually by someone standing next to you. “Frame mogged” and “height mogged” narrow it to build and height.
What does “cope” mean in looksmaxxing?
A comforting excuse to avoid a hard truth. Online it's often thrown at anything, including habits that genuinely help, like skincare or training.
Is looksmaxxing slang harmful?
The words mostly aren't. Some ideas behind them are: the blackpill, bone smashing, crash diets or rating yourself obsessively. Keep the vocabulary, drop those.
Keep reading
Want to make it a habit? Looksmaxxing: Glow Up Coach gives you one small challenge a day and an AI coach to help you stick to it.