These Apps Measure Your Manhood (And It's Really Dangerous)

If algorithms are accused of promoting risky eating behaviors among young women, they do not spare men either. They too are faced with unattainable “beauty” standards on social networks. Except that among them, it is masculinist and misogynistic discourse that appears implicitly.

Applications to measure virility

After having scrutinized our health, our sleep and our productivity, certain mobile applications now offer measure the virility rate of their users. A discreet but thriving market, reveals Martin Weill’s survey broadcast this week on TMC, which reflects a profound change in male models and gender roles.

To measure your virility, simply download a dedicated application, take a few selfies, and entrust your image to the AI. The software will scan the eyes, jaw, skin texture, general shape of the faceand assign a score supposed to reflect the user’s virility. In addition to being completely unfounded, the experience poses several problems: the use of personal data remains unclear on all the applications that we have tested, and if this rating will inevitably create complexes among Internet users lacking confidence, it is also accompanied by dedicated exercises and programs (all paid) to improve its score, and therefore its rate of attractiveness among women.

The advice given is, at best, absurd, but often dangerous, riding on masculinist discourse and the redpill movement to push Internet users to become the “best version of themselves“, with a lot of sporting, nutritional and sexual routines. But the race for numbers does not stop there. Some applications go further, promising to assess the masculine aura and optimize testosterone levels. Everything is good to shape an ultimate male, where red meat becomes the magic potion dedicated to boosting male hormones.

If certain influencers are content to advocate superficial but always dangerous changes – square jaw, high cheekbones, shaved eyelashes… the masculinist nebula which revolves around these services does not hesitate to disseminate highly problematic practices. We can in particular cite the “mewing”, which consists of placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth to reshape the oval of the face, but also the tendency of “bone smashing” involves hitting your bones with hard objects in the hope of creating calluses, and therefore, a “more attractive” male profile.

A mirror distorting virility

The digital environment particularly encourages introspection. Powered or not by AI, many platforms offer questionnaires to determine if the user is a “Giga Chad” or a “Simp”, lucky to social hierarchy based on masculinity.

Masculinity, tradwives… a backlash in the face of social progress

The rise of virility applications is at the heart of a broader reactionary movement, which is multiplying communities antagonistic to the model of deconstructed men, sometimes nicknamed “soy men”, and devalued by masculinist movements. On social networks, hashtags and forums explode, documenting the physical transformations of (very) young men in search of a alpha ideal, false and unattainable. In parallel with this resolutely evolutionary spectrum, certain women are also rehabilitating via TikTok and Instagram the figure of the tradwife, modern housewife, symbol of the return to tradition and domestic values.