Pretty Boy

A pretty boy has smooth, neotenous face, there is no "bare minimum" of facially masculine features to be maximally attractive to women. As the Incel Wiki Team has created maximally feminized male faces, massively more feminized than Chico Lachowski himself, using the latest Facial AI software and a hyperbolically, ultra feminized male face managed to reach the top all time leaderboards of Photoeval.com, an anonymous rating site were women vote on men's pictures. Pretty Boys usually have a nose that's smaller than the average man's, by no means has he exaggerated facial masculinity

A Pretty Boy or a Valentino is a facially-aesthetic, somewhat or even highly feminine, androgynous or neotenous version of a man who is an "8" or above on the Decile Chart. Pretty Boys lack the warrior skull shape, high testosterone levels, and high human growth hormone levels, and body muscularity required to be Chad or Gigachad or labeled as a "robust pretty boy". The term is a near-synonym of the word "Chadlite." However, the SMV of the Pretty Boy has a higher derivation from his facial aesthetics than the typical Chadlite. Hyper feminized Pretty Boys who are incels are called cutecels. The Incel Wiki Team has actually also analyzed, prestigious, poor, and regular high schools, specifically their Seniors in their High School Yearbooks, and the Pretty Boy Archetype is indeed the most common form of handsome man by the widest of margins. Also the official literature on adolescents shows unanimously on every study done, that hyper feminized adolescent male faces are considered most physically appealing to both young and older women. Notably a smaller than average nose even for an adolescent male was rated most physically appealing to women.

A small male nose is an objective measurement of overall low not high testosterone development, despite this girls view adolescent feminine male faces as "the most masculine" due to the Halo effect, not because of objective facial masculinity as measured by the difference between genders in facial morphology. To men this makes little to no sense however makes perfect sense under female logic also known as XYZ theory, that certain masculine traits (X) combined with feminine (y) = cooler/more masculine etc. (z) than x or y alone, for example androgynous heartthrob singers/dancers Chris brown, Michael Jackson , and Prince. There is a stereotype among many cultures that handsome men are more likely to be gay/bisexual and there is truth to this, as adolescent males rated by University Students to be the most facially appealing are much much more likely to have gender identity disorder. On all five adjectives (attractive, beautiful, cute, handsome, and pretty), boys with gender identity disorder were judged to be more facially appealing than were the clinical control boys. Also adolescent boys self reporting that they are highly physically attractive were five times more likely than other boys to have experienced child sexual abuse by males, they were also more likely to be robbed as well as assaulted by males.

The low testosterone means pretty boys/ the average handsome man in general is naturally physically weaker than average as well. In any case the overall low testosterone levels of the average pretty boy/handsome man would also mean brain development is affected most likely in the direction of being "anti autistic" or "hyper neurotypical", and or more holistically feminine brained than normal. Indeed in both a Turkish and East Asian sample of men, those with higher 2d 4d ratios, meaning a longer pointer finger compared to ring finger which means more prenatal estrogen exposure in ratio to testosterone, ended up as adults, having less wide, less long, smaller more neotenous/babyish faces. In the Turkish sample specifically they also grew up to have a linearly smaller adult nose, longer eyelashes, and a linearly more positive canthal eye tilt, as well as linearly more feminized eyes in general essentially, creating an overall "angelic" appearance. Which is the polar opposite of the high prenatal testosterone low 2d 4d men.

And finally the most controversial finding, men with higher 2d 4d ratio again more prenatal estrogen exposure relative to testosterone are more likely to grow up and identify as homosexual "bottoms", meaning that they only receive during homosexual sex, and are exclusively homosexual. Overall the evidence for the homochad hypothesis is extremely robust, and while surprising to most men, female readers most likely would not be, as Yaoi also known as boy love and other male on male romance fan fics are extremely popular among women. In fact on the anonymous photo rating site Photoeval.com women rated Kpop singer Jimin (who is discussed throughout this article) as ridiculously attractive, nearly perfect scores under the context of him being a romantic, sensual, bisexual lover. Graphic sexual descriptions do dramatically bad and sensual descriptions are rated most attractive by women. It has been observed that men with lots of reproductive success, "hyper reproducers" are never pretty boys, as in you wont find a pretty boy with 10+ kids. and in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study attractive men had no more children than average looking men.

Anecdotally, women on average rate the most driven to achieve reproductive success of men as very facially unattractive sometimes insanely low physical evaluation scores especially over the men in questions lifetime as even the better looking hyper reproducers don't age gracefully, all due to the men in question's higher facial masculinity. Basically facial masculinity is inconsistent. A facially masculine man may be high ranked by one sample or demographic of women or bottom of the barrel to another, while facial feminity is entirely consistent as in a very feminine faced men will generally do well across all demographics of women especially when rated by women aged 40+. 40+ year old women linearly with age, rating facially feminine men as ideal is extremely disheartening to most husbands meaning that nearly all husbands wont be seen as facially attractive by their wives anymore by middle age if they ever were to begin with and even silverfoxes would ideally have feminine facial traits for example the long eyelashes of a 20 year old.

To sum up what typically makes a male face handsome it is clearly first and foremost and primarily being born as cute (feminine) a baby as humanly possible and retaining those youthful/feminine characteristics over a lifetime, secondarily handsomeness is about objective sexual dimorphic masculine features at puberty. This is why when using the tool Faceapp gender flipping male models most often produces a beautiful female. As for whether or not facial femininity on a man is an indicator of low or high mutational load, its very clear at this point in the Incel Wiki Team's research that it is an indicator of high mutational load at the extremes due to the gender identity disorders and general homochadery. In official studies general good looks is very weakly correlated with low mutational load but clearly that falls apart at the extremes most often, with high facial masculinity being a much better indicator of lowered mutational load even when the man in question is a masc faced ogre due to the greater fighting ability, physical fitness levels, and raw strength, much higher reproductive success, and reproductive drive etc.

Pretty Boys that are feminized more than the average pretty boy but by no means to the level of a cutecel- who is mainly just low facial masculinity (things like small chin and jaw, recessed facial bones) not necessarily high facial femininity, (full lips and lashes and pretty eyes ie. 2 different scales), are the main archetype of man women seek out on social media also by the widest of margins, especially on Tiktok and Facebook, with the defining features being longer eyelashes and plumper lips. Chads and Gigachads, while still very attractive and desirable to women, primarily have a male fanbase online. And finally, Silverfoxes are most desired by women among the older crowd online. Women primarily view extremely high facial masculinity in its isolation as being indicative the man is very physically strong and that he can satisfy their B.D.S.M fantasies and not much else positive.

Even though in scientific studies and anonymous ratings of pictures, lean, with the absolute most muscular bodies, even to the levels of Anabolic Steroid usage, are rated consistently nearly universally attractive and sexy to women by women, when asking thousands of women which sports specifically are the sexiest, bodybuilding and other hyper muscular sports such as rugby are consistently ranked bottom of the barrel and soccer most consistently ranked near and at the top. On Lip Stick Alley an anonymous forum for African American women, they have a vehement hatred of bodybuilders despite nearly never having dated one, because of the hyper large muscles as they view the men having them, as extremely self absorbed, selfish, and arrogant, the worst personality type possible from most women's point of view, the opposite of empathetic and caring.

Basically they perceive hyper muscular men as having the same personality as Zapp Brannigan from the TV show Futurama but without the self aware comedic over the top-ness. This "horned halo" paradox is similar to when girls "pass" instead of "smash" etc. on a man they rate as attractive and very attractive because "he looks like a player" or otherwise looks very successful with women in some way, hyper muscularity takes that "horned halo" trope to its utmost extreme. Also, in one particularly famous study women did not rate the absolute "sexiest" (most dimorphic and masculine face in this study) male face as being suitable for any type of relationship, not short, not long, or as a friend, it was also rated most "attractive" on an anonymous site girlsaskguys.com so it is to a degree, reasonable to assume very tall and or muscular/dimorphic male bodies would be treated similar. The most sexy and or attractive faces not actually being chosen as mates leads into oofy doofy theory, the theory that average and or below average looking men are disproportionately chosen as mates in real life despite not being seen in a positive light.

Finally, despite African American women anecdotally, being said to have the strongest preference for physical, facial, behavioral masculinity, and dark skin, on Lipstick Alley's forum their ideal man physically would be a soccer playing, 5ft 10, mulatto, pretty boy with beautiful shiny hair, that gets his nails done, according to most of their polls, on what type of man is consistently rated most highly. It is likely African American women don't often actually choose these men as mates in real life even when the men in question are straight, is due to the fact higher 2d 4d digit ratio (more estrogen to testosterone ratio in the womb), the most likely man to grow up to be a pretty boy is also likely to earn less income and less likely to be able to afford a family since a higher 2d 4d digit ratio is linked to linearly lower income in both genders..

In summary, women do not care much about facial masculinity, or masculinity in general, it just so happens masculinity ((S.T.E.M., Hunting mindset etc.)) in men is correlated with a higher income, wanting to father more kids, having more surviving kids in harsh conditions and having more sons to carry on their genetic legacy, so evolution requires men be masculine and hyper masculine regardless of women's tastes . Humans are substantially self-domesticated and therefore neotenous (meaning they retain youthful features) such that neoteny is also attractive in men. Youth may also be attractive in men because smooth, homogenous skin may be objectively aesthetical.

Characteristics

A Pretty Boy is a male who possesses the angel skull of a female, and his sex hormones appear to be in balance. His face looks beautiful and highly aesthetic, while at the same time, he is masculine enough to be clearly distinguished as a male. He is usually tall, slender with almost no fat and little to no muscle, and little body or facial hair. An example is the male model known in China simply as Xing Ye (a commoner's name now famous if one was to simply just google the name Xing Ye). His claim to fame is his Photofeeler photo where girls left custom comments saying he is exceptionally, ridiculously pretty and attractive as an androgynous model essentially, and from the Incel Wiki team's vast hundreds of Photofeeler experiments, he had the comments from girls that described him as the "prettiest" . We originally were going to make Xing Ye the thumbnail for the Pretty Boy page; however, Xing ye has no free photos, all of his photos are copyrighted, meaning he has no "candid" photos, despite being the scientific objective archetypal "Pretty Boy" as per women's comments. Instead, Francisco Lachowski is the thumbnail because he is considered the archetypal pretty boy to a Western Audience, and he has free photos available that are professional yet also considered "candid" on Wikimedia Commons, thus it is acceptable to use Chico's photo as the thumbnail and not Xing Ye's.

A study on facial masculinity and femininity has shown the masculinity of the father's face is passed on to both their sons and daughters. This may be beneficial to the male offspring (despite weak or non-existent relationships between male facial masculinity and their attractiveness as judges by women) though it seems to be generally detrimental to the men's female offspring, as higher levels of facial masculinity in women are generally associated with lower perceived facial attractiveness.

A study on the inheritance of parental facial attractiveness and their adult children's facial attractiveness, at the collegiate age, shows about 70% of daughter's facial attractiveness is inherited from the parent's genes with the father's genes playing a slightly larger role in the daughter's facial attractiveness compared to the mother's genes. With the rest of the variance being epigenetic in nature (diet regimens, stress, nutrition status, toxin exposure levels, pharmacological medications, grooming, etc.) In contrast, about 10% of son's facial attractiveness is inherited from the parent's genes with the mother's genes playing the majority role in the son's facial attractiveness compared to the father's genes, with the rest of the variance being epigenetic. The Incel Wiki team created an edited photo of Supermodel Desmend Wyer which women on the popular rating site Photofeeler rated a statistically perfect 10/10 the first 10 votes, and remained a 10/10 up to 80 votes. The image is a 45-year-old looking Silver Fox, in the physical aesthetic shape of an extremely healthy and physically fit 25-year-old. Thus one explanation is that women find high levels of anti-aging hormones, as extremely attractive. Which could possibly explain why only 10% of men's facial attractiveness is heritable. It's possible 90% and 30% of men and women's inherited facial attractiveness, respectively, boils down to inherited anti aging hormone levels. Making anti aging hormone levels another X factor, asthey are not directly sexually selected for until around middle age and older. Anti aging hormones or not, it's clear from that experiment and our others that genes for retaining youthful characteristics in older age, in men, is extremely attractive to women. A follow up meta-analysis of attractiveness heritability, this time among twins, shows that the attractiveness level between identical, same sex, twin siblings when acne, grooming, smiling, and BMI are not controlled for is mostly genetic and when those factors are controlled for, the difference in attractiveness levels is still mostly genetic for identical twin brothers, but not identical twin sisters. The variance between the attractiveness levels of non-identical and/or non-same sex twins is found to be mostly epigenetic, when acne, grooming, smiling and BMI are not controlled for as well as when those factors are controlled for.

Facial masculinity and facial femininity are two separate scales. Low facial masculinity does not automatically mean high facial femininity. A person's face can be low in both facial masculinity as well as facial femininity; in other words, having an overall androgynous appearance. The facial masculinity of moms has no effect on the facial masculinity of offspring.

It is arguable to what extent facial masculinity is correlated with a man's beauty, while most research clearly shows that facially feminine women are nearly universally considered more attractive. A guy with a hyper-masculine face could still be considered ugly or unattractive. Such a man is known as an ogrecel. The Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev (who suffers from a congenital pituitary gland disorder, leading to excessive human growth hormone production) is a good example of this archetype.

Causes

Pretty boys are indeed primarily caused by non-dominant and or non-aggressive looking men reproducing. The son's prettiness is exacerbated if the mom has a face high in femininity (which is highly correlated with beauty, as well as excessive estrogen levels). Some pretty boy exacerbating factors are environmental pollutants like synthetic estrogens found in plastic softeners, fraternal birth order, unnatural diet, the mother having excessively high estrogen levels while pregnant, mutational load (inbreeding), natural genetics, autism, or any combinations of the above. Informal physiognomy experiments done by the Incel Wiki team suggest pretty boy/male model-looking guys as well as pretty/model-looking girls have been assortatively mating (beautiful people mating with other beautiful people) and thus very likely do have a higher mutational load, which is associated with a higher rate of homo/bisexuality.

Indeed, an informal study again done by the Incel Wiki team showed only 11 out of 50 top male models of all time have children (normally rich, successful males are near guaranteed to have children), even though on average, handsome men are less likely to be gay, according to the prominent evolutionary psychologist, Satoshi Kanazawa.

In the closet, homo/bisexuality appears to be over-represented among pretty boys as well as professional male models. Another exacerbating factor in the creation of pretty boys is a constant depressed mood, producing higher levels of cortisol and the subsequent lowering of testosterone that results from high cortisol levels, leading to a higher Cortisol/T ratio, which results in an incomplete level of masculinization of the face and body during puberty. This is why sadboys and emo guys are always feminine or androgynous-looking. For example, there are no cases of emo bodybuilders because lifting weights elevates one's mood, raises self-esteem, and also has testosterone boosting and anti-depressant effects.

Pretty boys may also have a genetic predisposition toward depression, as well as substance abuse. These traits are usually passed on from mother to son since these traits significantly lower male fertility but not female. The results of the parental facial masculinity and femininity study show that since masculine facial features are only inherited from paternal DNA, a man cannot reproduce a massively more masculine-faced son from mating with a masculine-faced woman. A man's facial masculinity thus comes from secondary, indirect factors such as regression toward the mean, recessive genes, genetic mutations, inbreeding depression, outbreeding depression, atavisms, and any other currently unknown factors as well. Essentially through the primary, direct factor of male choice, sexual selection.

The best men can do is to reliably reproduce pretty boys/chadlites and Stacys, as well as Gigastacys. On the other hand, again, because masculine facial features are only inherited from paternal DNA, women can select men that have both masculine and/or beautiful faces. Thus under female mate choice, women can reliably reproduce any form of Chads (lite, Giga, pretty) as well as any form of Stacys.

Behavior

Pretty Boys tend to have an excessive interest in "The Arts," this includes, but is not limited to: music (instrumental and vocal), dance, drama, folk art, creative writing, architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, graphic design, industrial design, costume and fashion design, motion pictures, television, radio, film, and video. Their excessive interest is thought to be because of both socialization and hormonal profile.

Pretty Boys have a protruded maxilla. A protruded maxilla increases the volume of the resonance chamber (the mouth.) This leads to richer vocalization, so Pretty Boys just look like singers and therefore are encouraged to become them. It is thought that exposure to high estrogen, feminizes their subconscious behavior, and their singing voice, making their adult singing voice beautiful instead of sexy. Justin Bieber is an example of a Pretty Boy who has a protruded maxilla. He also has a beautiful singing voice.

Male Social Hierarchies

The Dominance Hierarchy vs The Prestige Hierarchy

Despite the vast majority of women fawning over him, a Pretty Boy can range from near the top of a male social hierarchy, to absolute rock bottom, depending on the Pretty Boy's degree of feminization. Pretty Boys are "8's" on the Decile Scale but generally are treated as if they are "5"s by other males. They are less likely to be hypermasculine, and are often have weaker muscular potential. However, since they are biologically wired for Prestige, they are more likely to attract female attention. Due to the inability to differentiate the Prestige Hierarchy from the Dominance Hierarchy (see here), vast majority of bluepilled, and even some redpilled men have absolutely no clue how high a Pretty Boy's SMV is, most men are completely blindsided when their girlfriends and wives are cheating on them with a Pretty Boy. Generally, Pretty Boys are like chameleons in Male Social Hierarchies; they tend to blend in among men but stand out to women. One of the major benefits of such a system, is that the Chad cannot hurt him, lest he risk scorn and shunning from females.

If a woman is cheating on her partner, it is most likely with a Pretty Boy.

Historical Examples

When Justin Bieber first became famous, men threw him under the bus, poured gasoline over it, and set the bus on fire, all while taking selfies on a flip phone. When Robert Pattinson starred in Twilight and girls went crazy over him, guys were outraged like angry feminists, but when action hero Gigachad face duo Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise starred in Interview with the Vampire, girls went crazy over them, guys didn't say a word.

Mating strategy

Some Blackpill theorists suggest Pretty boys are "alpha-beta males" in that they spread their genes through a short term mating strategy like Chad does but reproduce a large number of sexy daughters instead of sexy sons.

Correlations between Digit Ratio (symbolic of testosterone exposure), Gender Dysphoria and Homosexuality risk, IQ, Socio-Economic Status, and Facial Feminization has been made, suggesting that Pretty Boys are less likely to be biological reject, but as a counter-force against the Alpha's propensity towards Pedophilia and Aggression. TBD.

This explains why Gymmaxxing works well for Pretty Boys, as they are selectively preferable to the Uglycel who are more likely to be biologically over-masculine.

Research

Women's attraction to facially feminine males

The earliest looks studies done in 1997, concluded that feminine-faced males were more attractive than masculine-faced males. However, other research conducted since has found that hyper-masculinity is more correlated with sexual success in certain mating contexts (short-term relationships).

The original looks studies from 1997 were extremely flawed due to the researchers confusing femininity for beauty. Beauty is a stand-alone trait that has an overlap with femininity. Beauty is attractive in both sexes. Some facial features, such as full lips, are inherently beautiful and attractive to both men and women. Any facial morph where the more "masculine" face has thinner lips, is going to be rated as less attractive. When the feminine/beautiful traits are left alone, but the masculine traits exaggerated, the face is more attractive. Autistic people have an extremely hard time distinguishing femininity from beauty due to being bad with faces (Prosopagnosia, face-blindness).

In short, women couldn't care less if a dude looks like a chick as long as the guy has some super masculine features, such as a strong jaw, chin, hunter eyes, very large full eyebrows, etc. Although in one case Jimin from the kpop boy band B.T.S. scored an 8/10 in raw sex appeal on Photofeeler, on a screenshot from their Dynamite music video, at the climax of the video where he is covered in facially feminizing makeup and singing in a countertenor, Jimin has no masculine features whatsoever other than he happens to be male. 1 off cases like that suggest facial masculinity is more so a by product of increased testosterone, increased height and higher overall natural strength and athleticism, traits women are only weakly attracted to, rather than crucial for sex appeal and attractiveness, with the caveat being enhanced strength and athleticism, through lifting weights is very overall attractive to women especially by the time a man reaches his 40s and older, based on Photofeeler tests us at the incel wiki have run, on photos with the caption "rate raw sex appeal in place of attractiveness." With the results being that even Silverfoxes such as Pierce Brosnan, lose all their raw sex appeal from facial attractiveness, as soon as they take their shirt off, if they are not extremely muscular. The results are so extreme its likely that nearly all women will be physically disgusted just sleeping in the same bed with a non muscular man by the time he reaches his 40s and older, meaning testosterone replacement therapy is crucial to not be seen as only a betabux as an aging man.

Further testing on Photofeeler and a different rating site, Photoeval, with even raunchier, even more sexually forward captions, as well as subtle raunch shows, that even being slightly, overtly sexually forward, causes the most handsome men in the world to lose the overwhelming vast majority of their sex appeal, although still above the perfectly average looking male, and with the raunchiest captions, only heightened muscle mass to the degree of steroid use causes ratings to still be relatively higher, with some facial aesthetics in play as in don't be hideously ugly. Women's insistence men put up an extremely prosocial, asexual front, and a study that showed the frequency and or quality of sex doesn't stop cheating nor does being deeply emotionally bonded lead to greater relationship stability , indicates women want nearly all men to ideally frame sex in the most prosocial way possible, which realistically is framing sex in the context of starting a family, as a married betabux that behaves rather asexually after the kids are born. Their exception, allowing ridiculously muscular men to sexually assert themselves can be partially explained by evolutionary psychology as in hunter gatherer tribes, pure upper body strength is the number one factor in being a successful hunter. Still there are some holes in this as the Incel Wiki Team tested photos of men lifting cars and pulling planes in World's Strongest Man competitions and we originally found no attraction from women to feats of strength, suggesting the massive muscles they like are just aesthetically pleasing for the sake of being aesthetically pleasing, until we did further testing, creating 1 to 2 page long monologue bios to add context to the feats of strength and it boosted the athlete in womens eyes only when pulling a plane, and lifting a 600 pound barbell overhead but not lifting a car. This was the preliminary testing to adding "David Goggins" type motivational descriptions 1 to 2 or even 3 pages long to various photos to add even more context. and "Prosocial Motivational", the type of personality David Goggins, John Cena, Dwayne the Rock Johnson etc. have does the best out of a realistic personality a man could have, essentially a jock mentality.

a large international study, involved over 10,000 participants from 43 countries and 22 languages. It aimed to examine how well people’s ideal partner preferences match with their actual partners. The study found that, "A good lover" is the number 1 highest ranked trait a woman prioritizes in a male, both men and women tended to underestimate how important attractiveness ((good looks)) is when they state their preferences.

Women voted Jimin from a screenshot of the Dynamite music video, as the best lover, from a panel of various looks and looks levels including conventional/classic handsomeness, by a wide margin on photoeval and its not virtue signaling since he scored high on photofeeler too and on every context we've tested he scores high. and facial femininity in general scored higher as a lover than facial masculinity but then roided levels of body masculinity does the best as a lover body wise and on other even raunchier sexually forward tests.

So it looks like the ideal male in women's eyes would be a long haired ((could also be a high top fade or a bowl cut as long as its long)) pretty boy that could pass as a girl from the neck up and a bodybuilder body, but years ago we tested those photos and they didn't do amazing on photofeeler, so we moved on, as only 1 test for super long hair women left 0 complaints on, and then that same picture with a different context they complained, we know pretty boys are attractive to women because tiktok, kpop and in real life observation but that's not the same as a scientific test to determine if the appeal is niche or not, we also moved on because no big name attractive guy literally looks like a girl but after years of research we coined the Attractiveness-Based Complacency Bias":

that attractive individuals become complacent and less driven to control the means of production due to their perceived attractiveness. basically the observation that handsome men are drastically underrepresented among people behind the scenes that control the means to earn money, the most attractive aspect of Net Worth and Pretty Boys take this bias to the utmost extreme as they have the least financial prospects due to them disproportionately coming from poor backgrounds,

as the tiktok e boys come from about 30 thousand per year neighborhoods male models 40k actors 50k. the Pretty Boys lack "leadership facial physiognomy" as tested in the business section of photofeeler, so that explains scientifically some, not all of why their financial prospects are so poor and why they arent "leading men" in Hollywood as in the guys more feminine looking than Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp etc. also long hair is considered unprofessional looking. And they may be disproportionately lower/average IQ since no notable pretty boy as in again prettier than Depp, Leo etc. actually looking like a girl has ever risen up from their adversity to do well in academics as a public figure.

So ultimately since pretty boys are the extreme of the bias the pattern looks to be long haired, buff, girl faced, pretty boy the most directly seductive to women least financial prospects and bald, fat, masculine faced, multi billionaire the least directly seductive to women, greatest financial prospects and since chad/chadlite/gigachad have hype masculine "high competency, high leadership physiognomy faces" they are in the middle leaning toward pretty boy. Clearly women don't value high competency, leadership etc. from a purely sexual hedonistic orgasm point of view that much because classically handsome men lose nearly all of their "attractiveness" points under sexually aggressive/forward/raunchy circumstances, which makes it clear most women aren't actively thinking about sex or getting laid just monetary provision and non sexual traits primarily, however roided muscular men do well on the bdsm/rape tests etc. meaning body masculinity to women is primarily/only seen in a sexual light not indicative of being a masculine provider.

This all sheds more light on the "Fabio Effect" the observation that some men are treated much much much better in real life explicitly for their looks than their ratings on Photofeeler would suggest, named after Fabio because he's the worlds most successful male supermodel but his scores on feeler were outlierly high but no where near the top. Pretty boys most likely to experience that, then theres the "anti fabio effect" getting treated way below your rating site looks level, which seems to happen to the sea of self identified incels or "fakecels" that blatantly look like classic male models.

Considering "a good lover" is indeed the most prioritized trait in male as far as women are concerned, Men can google and use the Kunyaza sexual technique to give women an orgasm over 90% of the time within a few minutes. Testing of the description of the Kunyaza technique on photeval shows very physically attractive women to be the most sexually receptive, the same findings on the reproductive success page part titled "The End of Hidden Ovulation". It's very clear that higher estrogen exposed women are most sexually receptive. Fat women have the most testosterone and estrogen, therefore the most sexually receptive women should be beautiful faced and "thick". Normally the Incel Wiki team would test the "thick" part to make 100% certain however for whatever reason the vast majority of Photoeval women are relatively thin.

It is also possible that in line with women downplaying their own and men's sexuality they may interpret a "good lover" as just a guy thats rose pedals on the bed, and gifting flowers level romantic, with no sexual connotation which would explain why on photoeval using romantic sexual captions doesnt do well even for jimin, as he didn't reach the leaderboards despite scoring the highest under that context. This would also explain why the Kunyaza technique and its tutorial videos are very obscure and haven't gone viral at all even among women. This would be in contrast to how men rate, with the sexual implication of a "good lover" being highly sought after. As the all time leading score on Photoeval was from Gigastacy Alica Schmidt with the caption "High I'm Alica Schmidt I'm an Olympic runner, primarily in the 200 to 800 meters, Now Holistically rate me as a mother, a girl you'd like to get pregnant, how well I'd do in bed with you, and finally my ability to bear you physically strong sons." With the "how well I'd do in bed with you part" being synonymous with being "a good lover." As far as men are concerned.

In light of the "a good lover" tests not being particularly cared about by women on photoeval the Incel Wiki team tested physical strength even more. Women Rated sheer height, size and width ((Greg Kovacs)) along with objective measurements of strength primarily and speed secondarily ((Mariusz Pudzianowski)) and ((Žydrūnas Savickas)) as more desirable than the most "attractive" and highest "raw sex appeal" body ((Bob Paris)) , whom only beat out ((Brian Shaw)) whom is likely perceived to be the slowest speed wise. Ultimately this test shows that women penultimately care about and desire context more than anything, the more context the better, women rating the objective highest stats in strength and speed as most desirable over the best looking can ironically be explained by being a form of Fisherian runaway, ironic because the original basis for runaway selections focus was on just looks. Also this test shows many fat guys are desirable to women not just because they are seen as prosocial but also because fatness is correlated with physical strength.

The test also reveals what most people are aware of already, bodybuilding as a sport being primarily about male gaze, male intrasexual competition, and males criticizing and competing with other males, for the attention of primarily other males, and not necessarily about maximizing desirability to women, in which case simply focusing on being the strongest most fast strongman would be more desirable. At least at first glance as the Incel Wiki team also had women rate headshots with the caption "Just rate how strong I look physically, in place of attractiveness, I repeat only rate how strong I look physically in place of attractiveness." In contrast to "a good lover" Jimin for once scored one of the lowest and the highest scorers were very very close to making it to the leaderboard, still within the top 1%. Weak faces tended to be extreme passing for a girl looking pretty boys and Blackopps2cel in his most famous picture, the strongest faces tended to have correlating features with attractiveness such as beautiful/handsome head hair, and beard hair quality etc. despite the caption telling women to not take attractiveness into account they couldn't help themselves its a part of how they interpret strength based on aesthetics from the face and hair. Also heightened facial masculinity while normally having nothing or near nothing to do with "attractiveness" is important for perceived physical strength. Its worth noting that the strongest faces did the worst as "a good lover" even when they were also highly "attractive" this is likely because women see that terminology and don't equate it to sex but gifting flowers for valentines day etc. level romance, and equate that behavior with pretty boys. Also among men silver hair didn't take away from perceived strength, meaning the silverfox creates a universal halo effect. Having the strongest body primarily fastest secondarily objectively as well as strongest face + head hair rated by women not men, is likely the most accurate measurement of true physical sex appeal in a male, with "attractiveness" playing a factor although "attractiveness" as far as women are concerned is mostly about how "angelic" and nice etc. of a personality a man is perceived to have not much on true sex appeal.

Romance novels often use long-haired, aesthetic, Chads with added rippling muscles as cover models to appeal to women's B.D.S.M fantasies, the long hair is supposed to bring in readers that would like a touch of femininity on top.

Previous studies (done as early as 1997) on sexual dimorphism showed feminine preferences in female faces and mixed findings in male faces. A 2014 study on preferences for sexual dimorphism on attractiveness levels in male faces found both male and female participants preferred masculine faces to androgynous faces when the faces were highly attractive, but there were mixed results at lowers levels of attractiveness.

Rarity of pretty boys

As stated in the opening paragraphs the Incel Wiki Team has analyzed prestigious, poor, and regular high schools, specifically their Seniors in their High School Yearbooks, and the Pretty Boy Archetype is indeed the most common form of handsome man by the widest of margins. Midjourney A.I blended face averages of said seniors revealed, The average White American Pretty Boy looks nearly identical to former N.B.A. Basketball player Kris Humphries, whom is genetically diverse but obviously "white passing". It is a common stereotype that genetically diverse individuals are better looking and our analysis corroborates this. The genetic diversity in most cases creates a koinophilic appearance were features are spread out the most evenly, nothing too far or too near, too big or too small in proportions etc. for example if the nose is small other features will be "in proportion to the small nose" etc. Also the average Native American Pretty Boy Senior indigenous to the United States has the same looks as comedian George Lopez. Meaning that at an all native high school George Lopez would be one of if not the best looking guy at the high school. The next looks level above him would be famous native models Mario Lopez, and Jay Tavare whom would be candidates for the best looking native guys in the city, state or country.

To put this all in perspective Hollywood, Social Media, Video Games etc. Nearly only promotes, and people nearly only consume content from the top 1 %ile, top 0.1%ile, and rarer of good looking people while the top 2%'ile and more common of men for their ethnicity like Kris Humphries and George Lopez respectively don't even get the status of Hearthrob Hottie or in the case of Kris Humphries barely known for his good looks, and George Lopez not at all.

The Incel Wiki Team has long suspected for years that the truly average looking man is much worse looking than rating sites would have one believe, essentially that the average man is closer to a 4/10 and lower on anonymous rating sites like Photoeval and Photofeeler, which does seem to truly be the case. The official looks studies put a 6.6/10 in "attractiveness" as the bare minimum for a guy to be considered "sexy" by women, which is outlier good looks on photofeeler. Now comparing those photos of men that score around that level from photofeeler scores to high school seniors shows they are "only" the best looking guys in high school, with some schools not even having 7+/10 photofeeler looking guys. Which actually means a 6.6/10 on photofeeler in reality is around the top 1% in looks. A 7+/10 in attractiveness on photofeeler would be best looking in the city, state, country and more so 8+/10 internationally. In other words there are really three main top looks levels, high school level, Mr. X Country for example Mr. America male beauty pageant winner looking, and finally international able to win Mr. World good looking. Now those competitions select for more than just the upper echelon of looks they are still the best measuring tool since looks does come first.

Clearly for straight heterosexual males to register another man as a possible threat to him in good looks, a man they feel they need to hide their girl from, the perceived threat needs to be in the top 1 %ile of good looks, where women see "attractiveness", heterosexual men see likability niceness, good morality, most importantly competence, especially hyper competence if his face is good looking and hyper masculine and his body extremely muscular. Most modern top video game characters rated whos the best, by both genders are Gigachad, characters like Chris Redfield, or the entire cast of Mortal Kombat etc. It is likely genetically diverse for their race, muscular men are seen as so attractive and or competent by men and women at every task is a bias that stems from our hunter gatherer ancestry. It's likely that its just fisherian runaway being applied to the fantastical, fantasy aspects of the modern world, in essence evolutionary mismatch across multiple cognitive domains, especially since the best pure athletes all over the world are very obviously full race not super mixed race populations, blacks in running speed whites in strength/powerlifting etc. For example, being a special forces operative hunting international bad guys all over the world would require all the necessary traits to hunt down a simple animal but heightened to the extreme, and we expect our ideal "hunter" operative to look like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Pat Tilman, Mark Vanderloo etc. Its likely following female logic that the attraction women have to genetically diverse male faces has an element of pure cosmetics to it-as in its attractive because its "pretty" and "koinophilic"- a weak heuristic for quality without much information known before hand, and not super advantageous not necessarily the handicap principle but close enough. Since its largely form over function weather its from mental or physical health, in practice on photoeval most of the top guys are genetically diverse as revealed in interviews despite them being white professional male models, even the sole jacked black guy on the leaderboard was a male model not a working athlete, the top guy chico lachowski is the prime example, genetically diverse, he works out and boxes but doesnt actually compete, male models are similar to action figures or dolls that are never taken out of the box and when they are they dont usually perform stellar in athletics its likely ancient hunting on their ancestral lands would have been no different.

Behavioral androgyny, 'homosexual genes', and sexual success

Despite mixed results on facial androgyny, research has shown behavioral androgyny to be linearly correlated with more opposite-sex partners.

There is considerable evidence that human sexual orientation is genetically influenced, so it is not known how exclusive homosexuality, which tends to lower reproductive success, is maintained in the population at a relatively high frequency. One hypothesis proposes that while genes predisposing to homosexuality reduce homosexuals' reproductive success, they may confer some advantage in heterosexuals who carry them. However, it is not clear what such an advantage may be.

A study done in 2008 on genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality increasing mating success in heterosexuals, shows that psychologically masculine females and psychologically feminine men are (a) more likely to be gay but (b), when straight, have many more opposite-sex partners. The study shows that both these relationships are partly due to pleiotropic genetic influences common to each trait with statistical modeling of the twin data. They also find a trend for heterosexuals with a non-heterosexual twin to have more opposite-sex partners than do heterosexual twin pairs.

These results suggest that genes predisposing to homosexuality confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which helps explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population. This study doubles as evidence for genetic determinism.

In a study done by the Department of Psychology, University of Göteborg, Sweden. Photographs of physically attractive men and women were presented as depicting homosexuals and heterosexuals to subjects on the University of California at Berkeley campus who were generally judged to be nonhomophobic opposite-sexed students. The analysis showed that the 62 women rated 3 men as significantly more physically attractive when they believed the men were homosexual than when they believed the men were heterosexual. The 65 men did not rate photographs of 3 women as more physically attractive when they believed the women were lesbian compared to when they believed the women were heterosexual. The results illustrate an effect of the "gay-pretty-boy stereotype," namely, that women judged to be nonhomophobic perceived homosexual men as more physically attractive than comparable heterosexual men.

Studies done on hand attractiveness show women prefer men to have androgynous-looking hands, specifically large palms, and very long, thin, slender fingers, and "aristocratic" looking fingers. Despite this preference for androgynous male hands, women also want these androgynous hands to be extremely strong! Handgrip strength is positively correlated with reproductive and sexual success, as well as women's positive appraisals of male's dance movements.

Though, it is not known how much of this greater reproductive success can be attributed to a direct female preference for men with strong hands, with much of it likely due to grip strength being correlated with other desirable traits, such as overall health, and high pubertal or prenatal androgen exposure. Traits that are either help court women directly via forwardness or help men prevail over male rivals in intrasexual competition.

The androgynous hands, can better be described as hyper feminine as only one trait the large palm is masculine, anecdotally women also care a lot about the quality and "prettiness" of men's fingernails. There are official studies showing that holistically more masculinized hands more specifically wider hands compared to length is correlated with higher brain systemizing traits and the opposite hands, what females rate as attractive longer hands compared to width equates to lower mental systematizing on average, in essence equating to an extreme feminine minded brain instead of extreme or regular male.

Emotions

The results from a survey of over 1,500 people subscribed to ELITESINGLES magazine demonstrated 81% of women with partners who took the survey stated that they would like their partner to show more emotion. Despite women overwhelmingly claiming that they prefer a man who is open about his emotions, 16% of men (around 1 in 6) wrongly believe that women find emotional men less attractive.

A human being is capable of expressing over 400 different feelings and emotions The women are not saying they want their partner to verbally express their emotions more, like "I am sad." They are saying they want their partner to be more non verbally expressive of their emotions in general, in a showy way, such as a professional actor, singer, or motivational speaker would. When their partner is angry, they want the man to yell and fly into a rage, or when the partner is happy, express this through nonverbal cues such as winks, smiles, dancing, etc. Basically, women want their partners to be more dramatic and entertaining.

Women want men to be able to seamlessly transition from stoic and cool to cocky, amazed, amused, or anyone of the hundreds of emotions a human is capable of, at all the appropriate moments, at a moment's notice, something that autists are incapable of doing. Which is another reason women have a burning hatred for autists.

The studies on "seductive" nonverbal male behavior indicate that being able to perfectly control the pitch of your voice is an ability that objectively massively helps in getting a woman into bed, the typical most successful courtship is to actually pitch the voice up as a man to make the voice sound warmer and friendlier at first acquaintance, then gradually perfectly pitch it to baseline after becoming acquainted, and then lower the voice from baseline as the seducer becomes more intimate/moves to a private setting/as the conversation goes on. The official literature blatantly states that overwhelming majority of men are bad at the nonverbal "dance" of seduction. As it is very layered in that it involves physiologically syncing things like heart rate to the woman and complex improvisational body language as in there's no way to reliably min max body language cues as the seducers intentions become more obvious it becomes more and more clear to the woman and thus loses "mystery" "aura" "vibe" etc. Researchers through observation created outlines of typical courtship "scripts" that people near universally adhere too which typically follow three phases:

first meeting/first date/ the interview stage in a public place, second meeting/second date/back to the apartment/semi private or private place, and finally the literal bedroom.

The first stage is about appearing, and presenting as most prosocial, maximizing trust basically like a typical job interview, except if things are going good your holding hands, so as to be "allowed" by the girl to enter stage 2, and is the one that's actually commonly min maxed with success, as men often orbit for months to "build rapport", taking pictures with their dog, smiling, and general social status maxing through normal well known social avenues, in the first stage of seduction/flirting men most commonly aren't even seen as sexual beings yet by women but women are seen that way by men.

Phase 2 in the semi or private setting is most often when the man compliments the girl calling her beautiful, puts his arm around her and generally initiates more intimate physical contact, this is where things most often go awry and as the researchers say "unscripted" events happen such as the girl saying "things are moving way too fast" although the researchers never go into why stuff like that happens, there can be many reasons, the man is abnormally seductive and they genuinely just met and its jarring to her, the girl genuinely likes to take things slow, the man isn't physically attractive enough for the girl to want to continue, the man is high trust but not high enough raw sex appeal etc. This is also where men get coercive with sayings like "I'll only put the tip in", "I won't cum inside", "it'll feel better with the condom off" etc. The 2nd stage is largely about not being physically rejected.

Which is perhaps surprisingly easy to accomplish as researchers have showed women the most popular sexual dimorphism chart on the internet, who'd they have for a short term relationship like one night stand, and long term relationship, relative to the most dominant looking man, the most average looking man, and the most androgynous looking man, and for short term relationships and long term women chose the faces that were most similar to the average man just moderately thinner in the face, basically the facial difference from the average guy going from no abs to visible abs to 6 pack for long and short term respectively. Women did not choose the androgynous ((most friendly)) face for anything other than a friend and women did not choose the most dominant ((whom they voted the highest raw sex appeal)) face for any relationship in fact that face was labeled "enemy" by women suggesting ((probably falsely so)) that he would be some type of violent domestic abuser, and the girls weren't willing to even take the slightest chance on that. In any case us at the Incel Wiki Team applied that dimorphism chart to many popular faces such as Chico Lachowksi, Pat Tillman, Atesh the Male Model, Blackopps2cel etc. using the latest AI image and video model "Sora" and to us it looks like it would probably get the same results using a different set of varying dimorphic faces if the official study was redone. The most dominant attractive faces ie.Chad and Gigachad not nearly being chosen as partners in real life by women as much as men think, despite high ratings especially on anonymous rating sites but other men falsely believing chad and gigachad to be totally irresistible to women can be attributed to men halo effecting Chad and Gigachad, a deeper introspective theory as to why Chad and Gigachad have a simultaneous halo effect and horn effect ie. A horned halo is that it has to do with female logic in that women did not choose the most masculine least feminine (x) and not the most feminine least masculine (y) but a mix of both x and y. In any case the results of that study indicate those 2 archetypes Chad and Gigachad will actually struggle at every phase of courting a woman where as a Pretty Boy would have to deal with getting called gay or friendzoned by women, so excel at phase 1 however struggle with phase 2 and 3.

Phase 3 in the bedroom is simply holding the girl's hand or carrying her etc. to the bedroom and getting undressed, again the key here is to not get physically rejected.

Head hair

On the anonymous rating sites Photoeval and Photofeeler long head hair on a male is near unanimously voted as feminine and unattractive on a male, although in real life many long haired pretty boys are thirsted after, well the results of a study on men's head hair attractiveness and socio sexuality of women shows that "liberal, sexually assertive" women, ie. Sluts are the ones that prefer long hair on a male, so women that would take the male role and chase the long haired men and are therefore likely sexually fluid/bisexual.

Scents and flowers

A study was performed on the effects of flowers on mating attractiveness and behavior, that included 18–25-year-old women (N = 600) walking alone in a shopping mall. These women were subsequently approached by a physically attractive 20-year-old male-confederate soliciting them for their phone number. The women were more likely to agree to the confederate's courtship solicitation when solicited in the area of the flower shop compared to a cake shop, or a women's shoe shop. Positive mood induced by exposure to flowers was used to explain these results.

In further experiments, women's perception of male attractiveness and women's potential mating behavior was found to be positively affected by simple exposure to flowers. In Study 1, women who were exposed to flowers while they watched a video of a man perceived the man to be more attractive and sexier. They also reported being more inclined to accept a date from him.

In Study 2, women who were exposed to flowers responded more favorably to an explicit solicitation from a male confederate in a subsequent interaction. The results show that simple exposure to flowers had a significant effect on women's perception of mating attractiveness and behavior. The results suggest physically attractive men wearing flower scented perfume would possibly be viewed as even more sexually attractive.

Still the Incel Wiki Team did an internal investigation were we asked women on the anonymous photo rating sitePphotoeval which is more attractive on a man Creed Aventus Cologne Bottle (a high status hyper masculine cologne) or a pink perfume bottle, and women significantly voted the high status hyper masculine cologne much higher however they also did like men wearing the pink perfume bottle higher, so its likely that the flower studies just showed smelling generally good is better than no smell.

The rise of androgynous men

Androgyny has been gaining more prominence and notice in popular culture since the early 21st century, concurrent with the rise of feminism and matriarchal society. The rise of the metrosexual man in the first decade of the 2000s has been described as a related phenomenon associated with this trend. The androgynous trends in fashion hit the public mainstream in the 2000s (decade) that featured men sporting different hairstyles: longer hair, hair dyes, hair highlights. Men in catalogs started wearing jewelry, makeup, visual kei, designer stubble. These styles have become a significant mainstream trend of the 21st century, both in the western world and in Asia. The androgynous K-pop culture has now officially infected the western world through the cellphone app Tik Tok in the form of E-boys, who are the male equivalents to female Instagram models.

For decades the Manosphere has been afraid that women's selection for hyper-masculine men would lead to extinction through nuclear war or some other form of violent collapse of civilization. The reality appears to be men are becoming more behaviorally androgynous (highly masculine in some ways and highly feminine in others), and society is not collapsing but slowly grinding to a halt. It will come to a standstill as more men stop working jobs that benefit, innovate, or bring value to society in some way and instead focus on LDARing, NEETing, or spending all their time looksmaxxing. The inevitable and eventual result is nearly every male in western society spending every ounce of their free time looksmaxxing in an effort to pass on their genes. Western society is becoming an distorted, funhouse mirror image of society within the Wodaabe African tribe, the most matriarchal society on the planet, with the vainest men.

Where the Wodaabe have a unified, symbolic, holistic culture around copying the mating patterns and aesthetics of the egret bird, the West and similar societies have only science and pseudo-science but no shared cultural identity. For example, if we were like the Wodaabe, then Fabio Lanzoni, the original male supermodel, at the height of his popularity would have become a cross-cultural symbol of unification among men towards attracting women. The hair, the muscles, the romantic affect. There would be festivals where men roleplay as romance novel heroes, engage in athletic and artistic competitions, and women judge. A male beauty pageant, yes, but one that actually gets you wives and girlfriends, embedded in the communal calendar, anticipated year-round, and sanctioned by tradition.

Instead, We have thousands of isolated men staring at themselves in bathroom mirrors, calipers in hand, measuring their own cheekbones against internet-derived standards that will be obsolete within months. We have forum threads where a 19-year-old asks whether his canthal tilt is “positive enough” and receives conflicting opinions, each citing a different study, each convinced of its own objectivity. We have men spending four hours a day in the gym and three hours on skincare, yet unable to articulate why they are doing so beyond a diffuse anxiety that they are, at this very moment, falling behind in a race nobody defined. This is not the Wodaabe path. It is the pathology of disenchantment.

The Wodaabe man copies the egret bird because the egret bird is meaning. It is fertility, it is the coming of rain, it is the boundary between earth and sky, it is the elegance his grandfather copied and his grandson will copy. He does not need to know the bird's mating call frequency in hertz. He does not need to analyze the geometric ratio of its wing span to its body length. He becomes the bird through ritual, and the ritual is shared, and the sharing is the point.

The Western man copies nothing. He compiles. He scrapes data points from a dozen conflicting sources—TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, the remnants of old forums, the ghost of GQ, obscure scientific studies—and assembles them into a personal optimization protocol. There is no community validation because there is no real community, only men with a crab bucket mentality that kick out members for achieving the goals, they themselves want. There is no ritualism because there is no calendar "looksmax event". There is only the permanent, low-grade panic of the algorithmically-mediated self, forever in beta testing etc.

Fabio Lanzoni could have been the West's egret bird as he was, for a brief window in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the closest thing the West ever produced to a unified male aesthetic symbol. The hair—, flowing, unmistakably deliberate. The physique—muscular but not grotesque, built for romance novels not powerlifting competitions. The face in that precice mascthetic Goldilocks zone: strong jaw, heavy brow but soft eyes. The affect— on women unabashedly romantic, performatively sincere, utterly without irony. He was on 400 romance novel covers. He was on I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! commercials. He was recognizable to grandmothers and teenage girls alike. He was also, crucially, a role. Not a checklist of traits to be approximated through surgery and starvation, but a character you could play: the conquering lover, the rescuing prince, the man who arrives on horseback and speaks in declarations. Men did not look at Fabio and think, I need to measure my zygomatic arch. They looked at Fabio and thought, I wonder if I could pull off that cape.

But the West has no mechanism for transforming a commercial image into a sacred symbol. Fabio was a product, not a totem. His face sold butter, then it sold cologne, then it sold nostalgia. When his moment passed, there was no ritual to preserve him. No generation of fathers taught their sons the Dance of Fabio. No women gathered annually to judge which local man best embodied the Spirit of the Romance Cover. The market simply moved on, and Fabio became a punchline, and the aesthetic void he left was filled not by a new symbol but by a thousand competing micro-templates: the metrosexual, the hipster, the lumbersexual, the e-boy, the K-pop idol, the TikTok pretty boy, the gymcel, the androgynous alt model, the dark triad "Chad", the Zaddy for girls with daddy issues, the Silver Fox. Each comes with its own set of measurable metrics, its own forums, its own contradictions. Each is consumed and discarded by the attention economy within months. The result is the "looksmaxxing" mindset: a desperate attempt to construct, from first principles and fragmented data, a personal optimization algorithm that substitutes for the missing collective ritual. This is why Western men are not truly becoming like the Wodaabe, despite the superficial resemblance. The Wodaabe man is vain, yes. He spends hours applying makeup, arranging his hair, practicing his expressions. But his vanity is ceremonial. It is performed for a specific audience, on a specific date, within a specific tradition that gives his efforts meaning regardless of outcome. Even the losers of the Gerewol return to their community with their dignity intact; they have participated in the renewal of the tribe.

The Western looksmaxxer, by contrast, experiences his vanity as existential maintenance. He does not prepare for a ritual; he prepares for all of life, which is to say, for no moment in particular. He must always be camera-ready, because the camera is everywhere and the judgment never stops. He cannot rest, because resting is falling behind. He cannot claim victory, because victory is defined as a moving average.

And what do women actually want, when the algorithmic noise is filtered out?

The Incel Wiki Team's analysis of anonymous female voting on Photoeval.com—specifically the preferences for the monarchy hyper-royalty aesthetic, the silk/satin/velvet textile attire, the Versace hair and beard ornamentation, and the Sistine Chapel full-back tattoo—reveals something the looksmaxxing forums cannot compute. The interconnected role of Fashion.

The man in the hyper-royalty attire is not a man with superior shoulder waist-to-hip ratio. He is a sovereign, a figure from a story about limitless wealth and arcane power. The man in silk and velvet is not a man with low body fat percentage. He is a ceremony, a being who exists beyond the realm of labor and utility. The man with the Sistine Chapel tattooed on his back is not a man with symmetrical hairline. He is a cathedral, a living vessel for the central drama of Western civilization—the touch of God and Man, creation itself rendered on his skin.

These are not just only metrics. They are narratives. They are symbols as dense and meaningful as the Wodaabe's egret bird. And they are being selected by women—across cultures, across skin tones, across ages—when the anonymity of the rating site frees them from the performative preferences of the social world.

This is the evidence that the symbolic path is not dead; it is merely inaccessible to men who have been trained to see themselves as biological products rather than living stories.

The Western man who attempts to embody the hyper-royalty aesthetic is not engaging in the same act as the Wodaabe man copying the egret. He is engaging in consumption. He buys the thawb, the keffiyeh, the signet ring, the velvet, silk or satin. He posts the photo. He waits for validation in the form of likes and comments, and sure they may arrive but there is no community in the West that shares the meaning of these objects; there is only an audience that registers them as exotic or aesthetically pleasing. He has acquired the signifiers without being the signified.

The distortion in the mirror is this:

The Wodaabe man copies a bird and becomes a vessel for fertility, beauty, and divine order. The Western man copies a emperor and becomes a customer, a consumer.

This is the "grinding to a halt" that the Manosphere dimly perceives but cannot name. It is not just that men are ceasing to work or innovate. It is that the work of self-presentation—which, in a healthy culture, is a ceremonial labor with communal payoff—has become an infinite labor with no payoff except the temporary postponement of obsolescence.

Men are spending their lives optimizing a product (the self) that never ships, for a market (female approval) that never closes, using tools (science, data) that are exquisitely designed to measure everything and meaning nothing to symbolic meaning.

The Wodaabe system works because it is finite. The ritual ends. The winner is chosen. The loser goes home. Everyone returns to ordinary life until next year. There is closure, and closure enables psychological peace. The Western system is infinite because it is market-based rather than ritual-based. Markets never close. Algorithms never stop updating. There is always a slightly better jawline, a slightly lower body fat percentage, a slightly more fashionable haircut, a slightly more expensive skincare serum. As looksmaxing hero "Patrick Bateman" would say. However the man who "wins" today will be obsolete tomorrow, because obsolescence is how the market drives consumption.

The ultimate irony is that the "primitive" Wodaabe system is more sophisticated than the "advanced" Western one.

The Wodaabe understand something the West has forgotten: that human attraction is not just a biological computation but also a symbolic conversation. We fall in love with phenotypes sure, but we also fall in love with stories. The handsome man is not just the man with the optimal ratio of androgen receptor, he is also the man who successfully embodies a narrative that his culture has deemed beautiful.

The West, having destroyed its shared narratives through 500 years of disenchantment, now attempts to rebuild them from the rubble using the only tools it trusts—science and data. But science cannot tell you why the egret is beautiful. Data cannot tell you why the Sistine Chapel moves you. These things are not legible to the metric mind. The "looksmaxxing" project, in its current form, is doomed. It will produce men with perfect cheekbones and empty eyes. It will produce men who can recite their own hormonal history but cannot hold a room with their presence. It will produce men who are, in the clinical language of the blackpill, "chads" and yet profoundly unattractive in the way that matters most: they have no story to tell.

The question is whether Western men will learn to read their votes—and whether they can overcome 500 years of disenchantment to become, once again, the egret.

500 years of symbolic aesthetic self removal in the west

Before 1500 in the symbolic universe, man does not possess meaning—he participates in it.

The pre-modern Western male understood himself through a web of fixed, sacred, communal narratives. He was not an individual optimizing his personal brand; he was a knight, a craftsman, a king, a peasant, a priest. These were not job descriptions or lifestyle choices. They were ontological categories. His value was not earned through achievement metrics but conferred by his faithful embodiment of a role within the Great Chain of Being. His body was not a project. It was a vessel. His clothing was not a signaling mechanism. It was a uniform. His courtship was not a negotiation between autonomous agents in a frictionless marketplace. It was a ritual—sanctioned by family, church, and community; governed by custom; dense with symbolic meaning.

The pre-modern man would have understood the Wodaabe instantly. He would have recognized the Gerewol as kin to his own May Day festivals, his chivalric tournaments, his saints' feast days. He would have seen the egret bird and thought, without irony: Yes. This bird is beauty. I will become it.

Then the West began its long divorce from the symbolic order. In 1543 Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus. The Earth is no longer the center of the cosmos. Man's home is removed from the center of the universe. The cosmos is no longer a stage for divine drama but a mechanism to be charted. 1637 Descartes declares "Cogito, ergo sum." Truth is located in the individual mind's capacity for reason, not in inherited tradition or revelation. The self becomes a thinking thing rather than a node in a sacred network. The body becomes a machine attached to the mind, not a vessel for spirit. 1687 Newton publishes Principia Mathematica. The universe operates according to discoverable physical laws, not angelic intervention or divine will. Nature is drained of spirit. It becomes a resource, a puzzle, a system to be mastered—not a teacher bearing symbols.

And thus we have The Cumulative Effect:

By 1700, the Western mind has acquired the conceptual tools to see the world as disenchanted matter in lawful motion. The symbol of the aesthetic self has not yet been killed, but its authority has been fatally undermined. The knight still exists, but he is beginning to look like a man in costume rather than a man in truth.

What the Wodaabe would not understand: The idea that the egret is "just" a bird—a biological organism with no message for humanity. Then in 1760–1840, The Industrial Revolution. Production moves from the home and workshop to the factory. The craftsman, whose value was in his unique, inherited skill, is replaced by the worker, whose value is his interchangeable labor. Man becomes a unit of production. 1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations. Value is redefined as market price, determined by supply and demand. All things—including human labor, human time, and eventually human bodies—become commodities to be priced and exchanged. 1789 The French Revolution. Hereditary aristocracy is abolished in the name of merit and individual rights. The ancient symbolic hierarchy (king, noble, peasant) is replaced by the abstract category of "citizen." Man is now legally defined by his universal rights, not his particular role. Then finally in the 1830s we have the rise of the popular press and mass advertising. The first glimmerings of the modern attention economy. Human desire becomes a resource to be harvested and sold.

The Cumulative Effect:

The Industrial Revolution completes what the Enlightenment began. The pre-modern man was defined by his station—a complex, inherited, meaningful identity embedded in family, craft, and community. The modern man is defined by his function—what he produces, what he earns, what he consumes. The body begins its long transformation from vessel to tool. Strong bodies are valued because they work longer. Healthy bodies are valued because they cost less to maintain. Beautiful bodies? Not yet a category of value— as that requires another century.

What the Wodaabe would not understand: That a man's worth could be separated from his community's judgment of his beauty, courage, and ceremonial skill. That a man could be "successful" while being considered ugly.

Next is The Biologization. 1859 Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. Man is no longer a fallen angel or a divine creation. He is an animal, descended from other animals, governed by the same blind mechanisms of variation and selection. 1871 Darwin publishes The Descent of Man, explicitly applying sexual selection theory to human beauty. Attraction is no longer a mystery, a gift of the gods, or a matter of ineffable chemistry. It is a biological computation. 1880s The rise of scientific racism and eugenics. Human value is quantified, ranked, and measured. Skull shapes, facial angles, and cranial capacities become data points. 1899 Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams. The inner self is no longer a soul to be saved but a psyche to be analyzed. Human motivation is reduced to drives, complexes, and repressed instincts. Love is sublimated lust. Ritual is neurotic compulsion. Art is wish-fulfillment. 1904 G. Stanley Hall publishes Adolescence, formalizing the study of developmental psychology. Even the life stages of man become objects of scientific management. There is a correct way to mature, and deviation is pathology.

The Cumulative Effect:

This is the crucial pivot. Darwin and Freud, working from different directions, complete the de-sacralization of the human.

Darwin removes the soul from biology. Freud removes the soul from psychology. What remains is a biochemical robot, programmed by evolution, driven by unconscious impulses, and utterly alone in a universe without inherent meaning. Attraction is now fully legible to the scientific gaze. It is not a symbolic conversation between two souls participating in a cosmic drama. It is a mate selection algorithm running on organic hardware.

The Wodaabe man who becomes the egret bird is not, from this perspective, performing a sacred ritual. He is displaying fitness indicators—symmetry, health, coordination—through the medium of culturally-specific courtship behaviors. His symbolic consciousness is an illusion; the real work is happening at the genetic level.

What the Wodaabe would not understand: That their most sacred ceremony could be translated without remainder into the language of evolutionary psychology. That the egret could be reduced to a "sexual signal."

Next is The Commodification of Aesthetics. 1920s, the rise of Hollywood and the celebrity system. For the first time in history, millions of people can gaze upon the same faces daily. A new aristocracy emerges: the aristocracy of the screen. 1930s The Great Depression and the New Deal. Economic anxiety becomes permanent background radiation. The fear of falling—in class, in income, in status—becomes a defining feature of the middle-class psyche. 1940s–50s The Golden Age of Advertising. Edward Bernays (Freud's nephew) applies psychoanalysis to consumer behavior. Human desire is now explicitly understood as a resource to be extracted. Products are sold not on utility but on psychological association: cars = freedom, cigarettes = sophistication, deodorant = sexual success. 1960s The Sexual Revolution. Courtship rituals, already weakened, are discarded entirely. Sex is separated from marriage, marriage from reproduction, reproduction from community sanction. Mating becomes a private transaction between consenting individuals. 1970s The rise of the fitness industry.

The body is now explicitly a project. Men who had never considered their appearance are told that they can—and should—reshape their bodies through effort and consumption. 1980s The supermodel era. Male beauty acquires a commercial ceiling. Fabio, the first male supermodel, sells 400 romance novel covers and a butter substitute. His image is ubiquitous, but it is product, not symbol. 1990s the internet arrives. Information about attractiveness—previously confined to magazines, films, and local observation—becomes globally accessible and infinitely searchable. Men can now compare themselves to every attractive man on Earth, 24/7. 2,000s the first mainstream studies with publicity about attraction are published. The scientific study of male beauty, once the province of eugenicists, is rehabilitated as legitimate evolutionary psychology. The metricization of the male face begins in earnest.

And finally in the 2,000s we have the rise of the metrosexual. Male vanity is mainstreamed and commercialized. Men are now explicitly encouraged to consume skincare, fashion, and grooming products. The male body is fully incorporated into the beauty-industrial complex. 2004 Facebook launches. Identity becomes a profile. The self is externalized, curated, and performed for an audience. 2007 The iPhone. The algorithm follows you everywhere. Every swipe, every like, every linger on an image is recorded and fed back into the system that determines what you see next. 2009 The launch of Photofeeler. For the first time, men can receive anonymous, quantified feedback on their appearance from strangers. The rating is no longer a social judgment; it is a data point. 2012 Tinder. Courtship is fully gamified. Mating decisions are reduced to binary yes/no judgments on photos, processed at swipe speed. The algorithm determines who sees whom, and the user adapts his behavior to please the algorithm.

2010s The rise of the incel community and blackpill ideology. The logical endpoint of the disenchantment project. A subculture that has fully internalized the Darwinian-Freudian-consumerist model of the human and found it unbearable. Man is a biological robot competing for mating opportunities in a zero-sum market. His value is his position on the bell curve. If his metrics are insufficient, he has no recourse but despair. 2018–Present TikTok and the e-boy aesthetic. Male beauty is now a genre of content. The e-boy is the first male archetype to be born entirely within the algorithm—optimized for short-form video, designed to trigger specific engagement metrics, and obsolete within months.

The Cumulative Effect:

We have arrived at the present moment. The Western male is the most visible, measured, and self-conscious man in human history. He has access to more information about his own appearance—and more tools to modify it—than any man who has ever lived. And he is, by many metrics, more anxious, isolated, and uncertain than his pre-modern ancestors. Why? Because he has no ritual. No calendar. No community. No shared symbol that transforms his individual vanity into collective meaning. He has only the algorithm, which tells him that he is never enough, and the market, which sells him the tools to try again tomorrow.

By the end of the 20th century, the transformation is complete. The pre-modern man was a soul in a vessel, embedded in community, governed by ritual, seeking meaning. The modern man is a self with a body, competing in markets, governed by data, seeking optimization. Every component of the old symbolic order has been replaced by a secular, scientific, commercial equivalent:

What the Wodaabe would not understand: That a man could spend forty years "optimizing" his body for female approval and yet never once participate in a communal ritual where that body is publicly evaluated by women who know his family, his history, and his role in the tribe. That he could die without ever knowing whether he "won."

See also

• Cutecel
• Neoteny