Yes, I'm Still Better at Culture Than You

…

Recently, the esoteric racist (or something) Emil Kirkegaard cited old survey data that suggest women don’t like the bodybuilder physique, even though men think they do.

Some of the commenters said that’s just because the photos in the survey didn’t control for whether a man has tattoos or not. But the finding was consistent even when they used illustrations to control for tattoos and other extraneous variables.¹

Kirkegaard says this is because the bodybuilder physique signals that a man only hangs out at the gym all day and wouldn’t deign to spare any time for a romantic partner:

It is not necessarily because they aren’t strictly speaking physically attractive, but that bodybuilders have other personality traits women don’t like. Mate choice is a package deal, so even if women prefer men as strong as possible, women also prefer men who spend their time on them and their families instead of going to the gym 20 hours a week. After all, lifting weights costs money (gym membership, equipment, and especially opportunity cost) and produces only a temporary gain in muscle, so there are clearly diminishing returns to this behavior and it probably turns negative. If a man spends 50 hours in a gym/week, he has no time to make money in a job.

But this overcomplicates things. A much more reasonable explanation is that the lean twunk physique simply looks better.²

I don’t think it makes much sense to assume, as Kirkegaard does, that women prefer men “as strong as possible.” Why would that be? Men have never looked that strong at any point in our evolutionary history until they started using anabolic steroids like 50 years ago. Until then, the ideal male body was a guy with a handlebar mustache in a singlet or very high trousers who ate a lot of disgusting meat slop and occasionally tossed around a medicine ball. In fact, nobody even knew what a tricep was until Arnold Schwarzenegger invented it in 1977.

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

If women only preferred the less muscular body type because it’s a signal of romantic commitment, you’d think that in contexts where men’s romantic commitment isn’t part of the equation (like hookup culture) there would be a lot more women on the prowl for roided up bodybuilders.

But do you really think Schwarzenegger in his prime would have done better on the apps than, say, Michael Phelps? Or even the notorious chlamydia superspreader Timothée Chalamet?

My hypothesis: If you actually collected the data, women’s preferences would be basically indistinguishable from above.³

Admittedly, I am not a woman — or at least not an adult human female or adult female humanoid.⁴ However, on account of my certain proclivities, I still think you should take me at my word on this. Gays are the one demographic that’s both a producer and consumer of male sex appeal — that is, attracted to men, and therefore instinctively knowledgeable of what’s attractive about men — and therefore ought to have uniquely good instincts about what to do to attract those who are attracted to men.

If you don’t believe me, open Grindr in any major American city and set the age range from 20 to 40. You’ll be greeted by dozens of headless torsos like the ones above, basically in proportion to how many women say they want them.

In fact, it’s basically written into the culture at this point that it’s straight to be gay. Why, don’t you believe the science? Don’t you trust the experts?

There are therefore two paths for the heterosexual man. One is to remain in denial — and of course, reap what you sow.

Look at all those views.

And the other is to take your cues from the gays.⁵ Ahem —

1. Presumably, you could replicate the study even better today using AI-generated images.

2. You’ll have to excuse me for using this term as I don’t know what else to call it.

3. Granted, I searched Google Scholar and asked Elicit for a research report, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s addressed the question before. But… come on. The answer here is obvious.

4. Apologies to everyone who thinks I’m secretly Glenn Close.

5. On the other hand, if you’re a gay man looking for advice, you can email me a headshot (or, if you’re in the 72.5% or 11.8% at the top of the article, any picture of your choice), a list of your interests and opinions about the intellectual history of foreign policy in American libertarianism since 1898, and your latest donation receipt for the EA Animal Welfare Fund.