This article is interesting. I quote:
Men and women had rated images of slender or slightly chubby masculinity at least as highly as those with well-defined six-packs, said the study leader, Phillippa Diedrichs, suggesting successful [ad] campaigns did not have to portray only rock hard biceps and rippling abs.
My lady can't bear overmuscled men, and I have to confess I find an ordinary bloke's body, even one with a little fat on it, much more attractive and desirable than a muscled hunk. I dunno. Maybe it's insecurity ("Why would he be attracted to me?"); maybe it's the thought that to get there he's had to work many hours and if he's obsessing about working out, where's his space for obsessing about me; and maybe it is just that an ordinary bloke is more, well, real. Less artifice, perhaps.
As Robert Herrick (died 1674) said:
A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.
The principle applies every bit as much to men as women.
Faces matter more to me, and eyes. Windows to the soul. Sometimes that seems true. I know a straight bloke who is no beauty by the standards of the world but who is very warm and loving. His eyes are beautiful. He has a flat stomach but is not especially muscular, he doesn't work out. He's a dad and a husband and really just a regular bloke. I find him ridiculously desirable. Go figure.
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