Incels & Body Dysmorphia

#TransparentTuesdays

Hi friend,

I sincerely hope you’ve never traversed the horrifying corner of the internet where “incels” hang out, but I have… and I have thoughts.

For anyone who is (blessedly) ignorant about incels and incel culture, let me catch you up real quick:

The term incel stands for “involuntary celibate,” and it refers to people who self-identify as being unable to attract sexual or romantic partners, despite wanting them. The vast majority of the time, this means straight/cisgender men who are upset that women won’t date them or sleep with them. 

Decades ago, the movement started as an online support community for people who were struggling with feelings of rejection and frustration around not being able to find a partner. Since then, however, it has morphed into a thriving subculture marked by resentment, misogyny, and an eerie kind of obsessive fatalism, all wrapped in the language of pseudo-science and the self-delusion that incels are “just being objective.”

For example, many people in this community are utterly convinced that if a man is born without certain physical features, no woman will ever see him as desirable, and there is nothing he can do about it so he should just give up.

This incredibly dangerous community fosters misogyny and violence by encouraging men to think of women as shallow, evil, subhuman creatures who take pleasure in denying them the sex and attention that they feel they “deserve” and are entitled to, and choosing instead to bestow it onto undeserving assholes who meet a hyperspecific “masculine ideal of desirability.” 

There is a lot to be said about the incel community’s terrifying “radicalization” pipeline, how they’re preying upon men’s insecurities under patriarchy, their link to gun violence and violence against women, and their normalization in/impact on the wider culture. 

But for today I just want to focus on one small part of the incel story, which is their absolutely unhinged and ridiculous view of the “masculine ideal.”

If you were to spend any time in the incel corner of the internet, for example, you would see endless conversations about men’s jawlines, bone structure, height, muscle ratios, and hairlines, as well as absurdly detailed aspects of a man’s appearance like eye spacing, cheekbone angles, and brow ridge prominence. 

This is all because the incel community believe that women will/can only ever be attracted to men who fit a very specific “masculine ideal” aesthetically, and they’ve all decided together (without the input of women, I assure you) that they know exactly what that ideal looks like. They are extremely confident in both the “biological truth” of this masculine ideal, and the “objective fact” that any man who fails to meet this ideal is absolutely doomed to live a life of rejection and loneliness, because no woman will ever touch or love him.

They’re wrong on both counts, of course. 

But when a person believes the stakes are that high—and that the way they look will play such a massively significant role in their ability to access love and connection—they will naturally become obsessed with how they look.

That’s what we see in the incel community:

• Charts and images tracking and comparing the “ideal” facial proportions, and an obsessive focus on “flaws” that can’t be overcome. 

• Advice being given about how to “fix your flaws” to become more attractive wherever they deem possible. (For example: by getting hair plugs or jaw filler.)

• Enthusiastic rankings of each other’s appearances, and claims that a fraction of an inch in skull width, or the exact angle of your browbone, will determine your entire fate. 

It sounds obsessive and absurd, and like… yeah. It is. 

But beneath the pseudo-science and the misogyny, what’s really happening here is actually a pretty familiar experience: self-objectification and body dysmorphia.

Incel men may think they’re inventing brand new concepts, but women everywhere have experienced this for ages. 

If you’ve ever worried about not being attractive enough to find or keep a partner, felt like your value/security was dependent on your appearance, or felt insecure about the ways in which you “fail” to meet conventional beauty/body ideals… well, then odds are good you’ve probably found yourself obsessing over minute or invisible “flaws” at some point, too. 

As I talk about in my book Body Neutral, it’s actually normal to become hyperfixated on tiny details about how you look, when you’ve learned that your appearance determines something important about your value, your character, or your ability to get what you want and need in the world. (This is exactly why I advocate for body neutrality, and help people overcome body image issues by learning to strip their body/appearance of false and inflated significance, moral judgment, and meaning!)

I think the big difference between traditional body dysmorphia and what’s happening in the incel community, however, is that their dysmorphia is being framed and affirmed as an objective, rational, or even biological  “truth.” So instead of saying “I feel inadequate because of my appearance, and anxious that I’ll never find love,” these men are saying “women are wired to only want men with a certain face or body, so it’s a biological fact that I’m doomed and will die a virgin.”

These men insist that they’re actually seeing reality more clearly than everyone else, so it’s harder for them to even notice that what they’re dealing with is a feeling of insecurity, and distorted self-perception. So instead of seeking healing, support, or freedom, they’re just going to continue doubling down on self-hatred by disguising it as “biology.” 

And through that hyperbolic and fatalistic lens, it’s not hard to see why a man who doesn’t fit this supposed “ideal” might be encouraged to kill himself, or to lash out with violence as revenge for the injustice of being born unlovable. 

The sexism and the pseudo-science in this community reinforce each other: if women are shallow and biology is destiny, then there’s no point in self-compassion, personal growth, curiosity, empathy, or respect. Only resentment remains.

This is one of the scariest parts of the incel mindset: the way ordinary human pain (insecurity, loneliness, fear of rejection) gets hardened into ideology. The vulnerability of feeling unattractive—which we all experience at times—is transformed into a justification for hatred and violence.

As a potential victim of these men’s violence and a body image coach, I find the increasing popularity of this community both utterly terrifying… and desperately sad. 

It’s also wild to think about how absurdly wrong the incel community is about what women find attractive and desirable, but I suppose that’s kind of the whole point. If these men knew, respected, listened to, understood, or spent time with actual women, then they wouldn’t have been indoctrinated into this community in the first place. 

You only need to ask a few straight or bisexual women what they find attractive/desirable in a man to disprove the whole incel theory, though. 

You might hear some answers about the way he looks, since many people do have a physical “type,” or find themselves drawn to certain features. But I’ve never met a woman who talked about only being attracted to men with a prominent brow ridge, a short philtrum, or the right zygomatic bone angle. (And yes, these are all things I’ve seen incels discuss, at length.)

Plus, even when a woman has a “type” or aesthetic preferences, it’s often true that she also has examples of being attracted to someone who goes against that type or doesn’t have those features. And far more often than not, when asked what they find most attractive in a man, women will say they’re looking for things like: sense of humor, respect, kindness, shared values, being a good listener, empathy, passion, and emotional availability/maturity.

That’s because sexual and romantic attraction are about so much more than just aesthetics! Research shows that our experience of attraction is heavily influenced by how we perceive the other person in terms of familiarity, compatibility, and safety, as well as by personality, mannerisms, confidence, voice, and pheromones!

After all, have these men never seen a short guy with a weak chin or receding hairline, and a girlfriend? Do they not know a single man whose appearance doesn’t meet conventional beauty/body ideals, but still has an easy time connecting with women? Have they never heard women gush over Michael Cera, Harry Styles, Adam Driver, Peter Dinklage, Timothée Chalamet, Benny Blanco, or Benedict Cumberbatch?

If only incels could get curious about what those kinds of men might be doing or embodying that attracts women, then they might be able to dismantle the beliefs that are driving their body anxiety, shame, obsession, and dysmorphia, and eventually find some healing, relief, and authentic self-worth.

That won’t happen for most of them though, because they’re desperately committed to the idea that their beliefs are “objectively and biologically true.” Freedom and healing requires us to first acknowledge that our beliefs might be social conditioning rather than facts… and then getting curious about them. 

As a body image coach, I’ve helped countless clients do this, and I’ve seen how powerful it can be. When we first start working together, new clients will often report that it feels “objectively true” to them that their worth, value, or character is determined by their appearance or body size, and that looking a certain way is the only way to get what they want and need. 

By exploring these beliefs with curiosity, humility, and self-compassion however, the beliefs lose credibility and power over time, until one day my client wakes up and wonders “how could I have ever thought that was true?”

I wish I could end this with an elegant solution to the “incel problem,” but I don’t have one. Because when your entire sense of self (and community belonging) is built around being more objective, rational, and intelligent than everyone else, then even if your beliefs are utterly ruining your life… defending and justifying them will feel like the most important thing in the world. 

So instead, I’ll just finish with a few universal reminders to anyone who has ever found themselves placing false or inflated significance and meaning onto their body or appearance:

1. Stop mistaking body dysmorphia for truth. 

2. Stop outsourcing your worthiness to your appearance. 

3. Stop conflating rejection with “evidence” of what you deserve, or what you’re capable of.

We are so much more than how we look, and our appearance does not determine our destiny.

Big hug,

Jessi

PS If you’re looking for support and guidance in overcoming your own body insecurities, anxieties, or dysmorphia, I can absolutely help you with that! Apply for coaching with me here to learn more!