The ‘Dad Bod’ Attraction: Sex, Power, and Fit Dads
Why are six packs going out of fashion like sharpie brows?
What’s an ‘attractive man’? Depending on whether you’re a bloke or not, your answer might well be very different. When asked to identify men they consider attractive, heterosexual men are far more likely to select very muscular men than heterosexual women are. What? I hear you say. Women find muscles attractive! Well…probably less so than you’d think.
First of all: please be aware that all of this is based on the median average. If I went into an in-depth discussion of the Kinsey scale and body positivity, we’d be here until Christmas. I digress. Having asked around, heterosexual women attach a lot of tropes to muscular men, most of which were rather pejorative. Muscular men are arrogant. Muscular men are promiscuous. Muscular men have few prospects. Muscular men struggle with being physically violent. Muscular men are controlling and scary. Muscular men are stupid. Muscular men are really boring. In fact, around half of them said they actively avoided men who appeared shirtless or at the gym in their dating profiles. What did they have to say positively about muscular lovers? The response was far more muted: they are better in bed.
And yet, somewhat strangely, many of the heterosexual men in my circle actively pursued a ‘muscular’ physique to appeal to what they thought women liked. ‘No one will date you if you don’t have a six pack,’ a male friend confided sadly, on being asked why he’d started working out. This seemed unlikely, given that all of my friends are dating men who probably have a lower muscle mass than a jellyfish. Globally, women select far more for behaviour and resources than physical appearance, whereas men select far more heavily for physical appearance (phenotype). Basically: women value appearance a lot less than men do. This isn’t because women are gold-diggers or men are shallow, it’s more to do with women tend to get lumped with a baby for 20 years and need to be very careful about who they pick to co-parent and share genes with.
So are men just projecting their own feelings of sexual attraction to women into their own image and mating displays? Possibly. But I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s worth remembering that until extremely recently, the vast majority of men that a woman would be exposed to would have had muscle as a display of economic prowess: you’d want to select for the strongest dock-worker, the biggest mammoth-hunter, and the toughest village-raider. Physical strength was completely contingent with success and hierarchy. If you wanted your children (gene vehicles) to do well, you would be actively looking for a big strong hunter/farm laborer to secure food and resources. A skinny hipster who wrote beautiful love poems wasn’t just unattractive, they were a serious threat to your children’s survival.
Of course, times change. Now the men who accumulate high social status, resources, and power aren’t the most muscular men, they are the intellectuals. The men who spend 13 hours a day hunched over a laptop. The men who grew up in the school library. The nerds. Geeks. Weirdos. Being the school jock isn’t enough anymore: you now have to compete with skinny 5ft 6 men who write code in their spidermen pyjamas. Muscular status is not adjacent to wealth: if anything, having a body-type that is equal to spending 8 hours a day in the gym implies you aren’t working in an office or running a top F100 company. Similarly, emotive qualities in men are becoming far more valued: men are expected to participate actively in child rearing, care, education, and emotional labour than they were 100 years ago, resulting in a higher focus on ‘softer’ looking men who can provide that role. So what ‘muscular’ means has changed, and with it, what is sexy.
Another big factor is the androgen in the room: men who are very muscular are way, way more likely to die from a heart attack, develop health complications and die prematurely than men with an average muscle mass. Far from being ‘healthy’, many of the bodybuilders and weightlifters you’ll be aware of died in their fifties and sixties. Muscular men tend to die younger, which, if you’re a woman dependent on a patriarchal provider (even today, men are by far the most prominent income drivers) losing financial support 40 years before you die is a big problem, particularly with children. Muscular men are also more likely to experience feelings of aggression or become involved in violence, which, in an increasingly criminalized society, means a similar loss of resources. The sex selection trade offs from being very muscular are being devalued, and with it the risks are expanding.
Ultimately, what you find attractive, and what you like about your own body, is the only thing that matters. You should never live your life feeling miserable about whether other people find you attractive, or whether you feel ‘good enough’. You are. A woman who falls in love with you won’t do it because you’re muscular adonis, or because you’re a larger or skinnier fellow. Appearances are very superficial, and someone won’t stay with you unless they like who you are underneath. Focus on you.
