1) "Women rate muscular men as sexier, more physically dominant and volatile, and less committed to their mates than nonmuscular men."

2) "Women indicate that their most recent short-term sex partners were more muscular than their other sex partners."

3) "Muscular men … report more lifetime sex partners … and more affairs with mated women." ("Muscular men were twice as likely to have had more than three sex partners than less-built types.")

4) "Men with moderate muscularity are rated most attractive." [1]


He said prior studies concluded a man's desirability was influenced more by his earning potential and commitment. His study found physical characteristics mattered more. [2]

http://www.slate.com/id/2170016/ , etc al


[1] ie, there's a sweet spot. it's not a linear 'more muscle' => 'more babes' (though many men don't seem to think nonlinearly)

[2] My opinion is that there's another variable. That a woman's own potential income influences where on the physical/resources desirability scale she is. In a society where women are either not allowed or have substantially lower incomes, earning potential (and commitment thereof) are prized in men. In societies with more equality, the hetero woman need not look to a man for resources and will seek out the physical beauty (hence the advent of the metrosexual). Really rich women have no need for earning at all, and will dally with commitment-less boy toys.

Also, what is muscular?  Arnold muscular?  or fit, muscular but wears tight t-shirts all the time.  Hmmm.

I think 99% of males could get by with being muscalar if they dressed like fruits but choose to wear baggier, more comfortable clothing.

each woman has a preferred musculature in men, the range of which goes from "lean/ripped" to ah-nold-ish.

women also have preferred bodyfat as well (surprisingly, some women don't like seeing every surface vein on your body being completely exposed).

there's probably an ideal somewhere in between the extremes.

this ideal is most likely much more preferrable than the extreme cases of very little muscle combined with extremely high or low bodyfat.

my guess is that there's very little variance between this ideal and the boundaries of what women prefer.

so, in conclusion, as long as your bodytype fits the preferred range of a decent number of women (5%?), your body type is not severely disadvantaged by any other body types.

American men dress like fruit? Like apples and oranges or something?

I was thinking more "richard simmons"

ok, that was a bad example

I'm tall, and sometimes tall women flirt with me very aggressively.  I guess they don't like dating a man who is shorter than them, so their field is narrowed quite a lot. As a male I am not used to someone pursuing me so actively. It is really flattering, even if it's based on a shallow physical level.

Though it can be a creepy, since I wear a wedding ring.

I don't know if it's muscularity so much as body proportions.

Someone who has shoulders wider than their waist is probably going to be more attractive than the reverse.  They don't have to be Hulk Hogan -- just have the right proportions.

I think Desmond Morris did a study of this on women -- on their waist to hip ratio.  No matter what the society, if a woman's ratio fell within a certain range, men considered her attractive.

Hey, it's obvious that a 20kg ball will drop twice as fast as a 10kg ball.

Did they do a comparitive study with gay men?

I'm more likely to sleep with a man if he is muscular and tallish.