The pseudoscientific attractiveness scale that grew out of incel forums and is now making money for looksmaxxing influencers

If you have teenagers in your life, they’ll probably have heard of the PSL scale. Or at least the language associated with it. Chad. Stacy. Normie. Subhuman.

The PSL scale is a pseudoscientific attractiveness rating system used by looksmaxxers, men in a part of the manosphere who sometimes use extreme methods to change their appearance. The scale purports to rank people into different categories based on their physical appearance, with looksmaxxers deeming that the higher up the scale a man is, the more attractive he will be to women.

The roots of this rating system lie in misogynistic online forums used by incels or involuntarily celibates, but now it’s all over social media, where teenage boys post photos of themselves, asking to be ranked. PSL apps are also available which will rate a person’s photograph, and give them AI-powered advice, sometimes for a fee, on how to “move up” the scale.

So how did the language of incels, and this one way of quantifying attractiveness and beauty, become so mainstream?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Jordan Foster, an associate professor of sociology at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, who researches social media, beauty and masculinity. He explains the origins of the PSL scale, where it fits into the manosphere, and how some looksmaxxing influencers are making money off it.

PSL is an abbreviation of three, now defunct, online incel forums. Foster says that a precise dialogue emerged from discussions on these forums about what features constitute attractiveness and beauty, which turned into a pseudoscientific rating system. “So there might be notions, for example, that a strong brow bone or a stronger jawline is going to communicate a certain amount of testosterone and that this is going to suggest something about your virility or your fitness.”

Foster suggests the idea that beauty can be quantifiable in this way emerged as some men came to terms with “a topic that has historically been taboo and feminised”. He says looksmaxxers realised that if they wanted to have a discussion about beauty, they needed to communicate it in a language that is traditionally more palatable for men. “How do you do that? Wrap it in the guise of science.”

Listen to the interview with Jordan Foster on The Conversation Weekly podcast and read an article he wrote with his colleague Jillian Sunderland at the University of Toronto . This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from NBC News, The Social CTV, CTV News, Tamron Hall Show, Saturday Night Live, BrettMaverick and PrestigeClipper via TikTok.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Jordan Foster receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.