Women, are you attracted to muscular guys?

Post Reply New Topic

So if it's so hard to get the thinner athletic build, why are there so many guys who have it?

Here's my explination. Guys like you and I are mesomorphs. We can bulk up because that's part of our natural state.

The younger of my half brothers does cycling. He's a natural ectomorph. Yes he has visible muscles but overall he's thin and wirery. His cyclying coach made him start carb loading becuase he was in danger of becoming underweight.

There's no way he'll ever have a pot belly. He has visible muscles but not so big that girls see him as a threat or a jock. His girlfriend is much hotter than any girl I've ever dated. I guess that's because skinny girls like skinny guys, right?

Like many men he was born with the athletic build. It's very difficult for you or me to get an athletic build because we're mesomorphs. It would go against our nature. For an ectomorph, it's already in their nature.

We are victims of bad timing. 50 years ago girls really liked mesomorphs. Now girls really like ectomorphs. The reasons for this are cultural, not biological. We were born at the wrong time, into the wrong culture.

Also 50 years ago, a guy could have a round belly and still be considered strong. Think of the Skipper from Giligan's Island or Hoss from Bonanza. In the present day culture, for a guy to be considered strong he has to have a single digit bodyfat percentage.

Nowadays our idea of he bodybuilder is a guy with a big chest and a petite waist. I think that looks unnatural and even feminine. Nowadays bodybuilders dehydrate themselves before a comp to make their muscles pop out. Being dehydrated weakens the body. It is not a sign of strength.

Compare the modern bodybuilding culture with the circus strong man from 100 years ago. Look at how he doesn't have veins popping out of his biceps and how he has a slight pot belly. His bodyfat percentage is up in the double digits.

Here's a more modern example. Olympic weight lifter Lasha Talakhadze. Notice how he doesn't have the triangular torse tappering down to a narrow waist like bodybuilders do? Who do you think is stronger? The winner of Mr Universe or this guy?

I've observed that as well. Why is that?

What do you define as 'athletic'.

You seem to be defining skinny as athletic.

I don't consider a skinny guy athletic just because his muscles are showing. I just consider him skinny. Weak. A twig.

There's a difference between 'un-athletic skinny' and 'athletic skinny'.

Compare this guy:



To this guy:



I consider this type of body athletic:



Athletic to me just means 'Physically fit, trained and conditioned to excel at a particular sport, or have an overall fit body that is versatile and helps one compete better in most to all physical activities'.

Jacob from Twilight, or Taylor Lautner, is not a professional athlete, but his body is athletic because it helps him do better at physical things. He did all his own stunts in the Parkour movie Tracers.

"So if it's so hard to get the thinner athletic build, why are there so many guys who have it?"

There aren't.

Skinny is not 'thin but fit'. Skinny is skinny, and 'Thin but fit' is 'thin but fit'. Imo.

Young girls and women today seem to like just a regular skinny guy, he doesn't even have to be a fit one.

There are males who are naturally skinny due to high metabolism and nothing else. There's skinny guys who don't exercise at all.

There's plenty of activities I could do better at than a skinny ectomorph. The only real difference is he has less body fat and more visible muscle.

If anything, in some sports having overall more size and mass, fat or muscle, helps.

Who would do better at NRL? A stocky guy with a fair bit of fat or a skinny guy with low body fat but lanky and fragile bones?

The guys you are showing are an extreme, powerlifters.

They specifically train to have as much muscle as possible at the cost of also having a very high amount of body fat.

I think what's most insulting is that guys with body like Jacob from Twilight can still get less attention than a skinny guy no stronger than his girlfriend.

Phelps has the record for most medals in the Olympics.

Of course he's going to get more attention.

It depends on your genetic makeup, some people are more lean proportionate naturally.

There are many exercise routines that can be done with calisthenics and you can achieve an athletic body without the use of a gym, steroids or supplements. They are typically a myth used to sell people a product that believe there is a magic fix, most men won't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Flex Wheeler after three courses of steroids.

Last edited by Synth.osx on 19 Oct 2016, 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Males tend to have a higher metabolism and a lower percentage of body-fat. At least where I live there are quite a few young woman who are a little chubby and some who are overweight. There also are lots of slim girls. However, there are significantly less chubby or overweight young men. A lot of these men are just slim and not particularly sporty but that still makes them look fitter than a chubby girl. If young women on average are fatter than young men this will inevitably lead to more couples with a girl who has significantly more fat than her boyfriend.
It also seems that a few men like heavier girls. Some, albeit definitely not all, of the thin guys with thick girls might prefer her that way.



I think that's true. A lot of young women prefer a guy who has very little fat as long as he doesn't look anorexic. How good a guy is at sports usually isn't a criterion. (but it also is irrelevant to how 'good' he is as a boyfriend ('good' in the sense of loving, supportive, pleasant to be around, entertaining etc. ) (neither is skinny or any other physical feature))
But not all girls are into the same kind of guy. There are girls who like a bit of belly fat on a guy because they think it makes a nice cushion. There also still are young women who like a stronger guy regardless of whether he has very low body fat or a little bit more.

One of the reasons why you see a lot of couples with a skinny non athletic guy might simply be that there are a lot of skinny non athletic guys. Not all of their girlfriends will be exclusively into this body-type though.

Also, I think self-confidence and social skills have a much higher influence on how easily someone finds a girlfriend/boyfriend than looks, both in men and in women (maybe that's unfortunate because it's not easier to improve than ones looks). Some skinny guys will have as much of a hard time trying to get a girl as you. I don't think I've ever met a self-confident, extroverted person who couldn't easily find a girlfriend/boyfriend. Neither the self-confident, extroverted women nor the self-confident extroverted men need to be particularly good looking to have a parter if they want to.
One of my cousins is a strong but not particularly thin guy. He has a new girlfriend about every two or three months and sometimes two at the same time (or that's what he says; he might be exaggerating a bit). Still he occasionally expresses worry that he mightn't be able to find the right woman but all in all he doesn't have any difficulties getting a girl. He seems to think that women are totally into strong men and some are but, given that a lot of strong men don't have an easy time finding a girl, his body probably is not the reason why he can easily get a girl.

The men in the photos were never regarded as bodybuilders, they are powerlifters. Bodybuilding involves achieving the perfect symmetry and proportion and every muscle is judged on the striations and contours of the muscle from every indentions. The men in the photo are considered endomorph, not mesomorphic. If you look at photos of Mr.Olympia in the sixties, it is important to note that proportion still played a huge role in the definition of a bodybuilder.

Bodybuilding is a science and involves more calculation than people realize and that's why it is considered to be more desirable, it is not just a case of gaining muscle mass.

For men that are naturally ectomorph, it is much harder to achieve a bodybuilding physique. Please go to bodybuilding.com and ask them if achieving a Brad Pitt from Fight Club is more difficult than achieving the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime or Ronnie Coleman.

Yes, steroids and supplements are not necessary.

Nor is gym exercises.

But lifting weights in the gym, along with adequate diet and rest (note: I'm not saying anything about roids or supplements), is one of the more efficient ways to gain strength and activate muscle hypertrophy the quickest.

It specifically targets individual muscle groups instead of the less specific-ness of some 'natural' forms of exercise.



Personally, all I was saying is that the vast majority of people can not gain much natural strength from physical athleticism, if 'natural strength gain' is defined as 'does not lift weights unnaturally in the gym, and does not use steroids (because one can gain plenty of muscle using steroids without so much as lifting a finger).

There were women here who mentioned earlier they want a guy 'naturally strong' from the physical activities and sports he chooses to do, and not 'unnaturally' fit from the gym. This is an unrealistic ideal and difficult to achieve unless you specifically have a hard labor job.

For most actual athletes, gym time is necessary. Even swimmers like Michael Phelps spend time in the gym. Some form of structured training is necessary beyond their sport alone.

You're making a false comparison here.

Me and Boo aren't saying it takes less time to look like Brad Pitt from lifting weights in the gym, we're saying it actually takes longer to look that way if you DON'T workout in the gym that it does to look like Taylor Lautner (Jacob from Twilight) if you do work out in the gym.

Doesn't matter if you have good genetics and an active lifestyle.

It took Taylor Lautner only about 6-10 months to achieve the physique he has now, from gym time and strict diet and rest.

To get a body like Brad Pitt from crossfit, bodyweight exercises or calisthenics? Well, you tell me if it would take a shorter amount of time or not. I can't see how, even if it is significantly less muscle mass to gain.

All I know is plenty of the people on Bodybuilding.com say Mister Pitt's physique only takes a few months.

Yes, it does take a long time to build muscle from working out in the gym, but it is quicker and more efficient than playing sports or trying to gain muscle naturally purely alone.

Doesn't matter if it's strength training, crossfit, calisthenics, even bodyweight exercises. These all have 'rules' and 'structure' and require a strict healthy diet to become fitter by using any of these methods, therefore they are 'unnatural'.

There's people I knew in high school who played on a sports team and, outside of that, did not give a damn about diet, calories, or exercised at all aside from their team training sessions.

The only guys that could pull this off were skinny soccer players, tennis players and such. Most of their strength was just the natural strength that comes with puberty, the only difference between them and a regular skinny kid was skill in the sport.

The football players specifically had to spent time in the gym and work on diet to gain sufficient muscle and mass to excel at their sport.

It's exceptionally rare for someone to gain the Brad Pitt physique 'naturally'. Many men of ancient and modern hunter-gatherer tribes are skinnier than that, and they are as 'natural' as they come.

Also...the beauty standards imposed on males in media (and especially in movies and ....porn) are by far narrower.

Honestly, for me it's not easy to decide which of these body-types looks best. Most of these men have good looking bodies (I can't say they're all good looking because I don't like some of their faces).
The guys you classified as very lean mightn't be quite as noticeable as the others at first sight but the one in the 2nd picture still is nice to look at.
If it's a lot of random guys on a beach I'd probably already be more likely to glance at the somewhat lean and intermediate guys but I'd not look at these particular guys for too long because I don't like their faces. (Yeah, this is about body types and not faces but it is really difficult to ignore the faces. When I look at these pictures I automatically look at the faces.)
The somewhat muscular body-type is probably the most noticeable in a still positive way (doesn't necessarily mean it's the best but it's still nice to look at and just very noticeable). On a beach I'd probably also glance at the very muscular ones but that's just because they look unusual. It's like some people might look at a girl who has hair that reaches down to her knees when she walks by but it might just be because it's really unusual to have that long hair and not because it makes her more beautiful.

Yet, I think the very lean guys would more quickly become less attractive if they gained weight in the form of fat than the more muscular ones.

^ this is only relevant for which guys I like to look at. When it comes to dating the only one I might like less than the others is the very muscular one.

Why is it always males this and females that?

Can't we all just agree that both genders are subjected to unfair potrayal in media, advertisements and porn. We are expected to attain impossible standards of people who look good or exercise for a loving.

It's why both men and women can suffer with eating disorders and issues with their body image.

If anything, the reason we men complain about it so much that it affects men as well is the very fact that many people don't acknowledge this or aren't aware of it.

Women already have plenty of awareness and campaigns for body image issues and disorders, men still lack such support or don't have as much support.

And if anything some of us have noticed that, in our personal experiences there are some average or overweight/obese women who want to date a fit and muscular male even though he had put far more time, dedication and effort to earn his body than she did.

There is no male fat acceptance movement, there's a few articles online I've found where average men pose like male models and/or are heavily photoshopped to show what Hollywood does to men's bodies to make them look better, but for every male article like this there's at least 10 women's articles.

For example, there's this article: http://www.boredpanda.com/male-supermod ... rwear-ads/

Yes, but both the majority of men and the majority of women don't meet the beauty standard.

This:

is good enough for the majority of men who are into slim women but most of these women don't really meet the female beauty standard. Many have small breasts, a narrow hip, not a thin enough waist or any other 'flaw'. A BMI between 18 and 20 doesn't mean perfect built.
Either way it'll be easier for women than for men to conceal their 'imperfection' with the right clothing and make-up. A lot of women wear bras that make their breasts look twice their actual size and don't have all that smooth skin beneath their make-up after all.

But most people would be single if any gender had this narrow expectations in how a potential partner has to look like. Most men and women are fine without looking like TV-stars unless it's their own insecurity about their looks that makes them not be fine.

Talk about picky. That's ok, I'm picky too. After reading that I'm never going to feel guilty about not being attracted to fat girls again.But I'm not that picky. I don't fuss about breast size. Big or small, I like 'em all.

I don't worry about wide hips vs narrow hips because hip size is determined by the width of the hip bones (one time I told a girl she had wide hips and she thought I was calling her fat, not so, the hip bone is made of bone, not fat).

Some would argue wide hips are an indicator of reproductive fitness. Maybe so but that's not a concern for guys like me who don't plan on kids. I once dated a young woman who was infertile and that actually made me like her more.

For me not being fat and not being older than 30 are the primary indicators of beauty (also no tattoos or piercings in places other than the ear prefered). Of course this is all a matter of personal taste.Alliekit I agree with this entirely. If your post had a thumbs up button I'd click it.I understand. It seems sort of one sided when you hear talk of women being held to unrealistic beauty standards when both men and women are held to unrealistic beauty standards.

It seems quite jarring when you hear that not being held to unrealistic beauty standards is an example of male privilege when it happens to both men and women.Some obese women may want to date fit men but some obese women are dating fit men and vice versa.
Why do you think this is?Good. I don't want men (or women) to be influnced by an ideology that attempts to justify an extremely unhealthy lifestyle, that denies scientific research that certain health problems can be caused by obesity and that promotes mediocraty. We should all strive to be better than what we are.

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 19 Oct 2016, 6:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

But not equally, I find there are far more women meet the different beauty standardS, petite, tall, thin, large, BBW, curvy ...whatever... except maybe the morbidly obese.

The male beauty standard nowadays is just one: Tall, swimmer build, handsome face and six-packed. All male sex symbols nowadays have these 3 physicals.
When was the last time you have seen an ad "all men are good looking"? - There's none, the male beauty standard is extremely narrow.