I think the OP is poisoning the well by saying “overly muscular”.
Nowadays, whenever you see a male actor or model topless, they have some muscle tone; clearly-defined pecs, six pack and shoulders. They may be much slimmer than the classic “beefy” bodybuilder stereotype, but you can bet most of those guys have had to hit the gym for that physique, especially if they are 35 or older.
And IME the majority of women find that physique preferable to no muscle tone at all, or a big belly.
We had a recent thread on the dope about why men desire women with unrealistically perfect bodies but women are OK with men as they are. But I’m not sure that’s so true any more. My current and previous girlfriends didn’t do any exercise and I found their basically “natural” form very sexy. Meanwhile I go to the gym 3 times and run 30km a week to maintain the six-pack they both liked (among other reasons I exercise).
I can quite happily say that I’m not at all attracted to any of the bodybuilder/powerlifter types that I see at my local gym. There are some very well built guys there so there’s always something nice to look at, but the overly-muscled ones? No, you can keep them.
I’ll probably upset some people with the following, but what the heck:
Male and female beauty/attractiveness, to an extent, really work in completely opposite ways. I agree with your observation about the natural feminine form being sexy: I’ve observed the same with my girlfriends. If a woman is naturally beautiful, she is that way by the grace of the gods, and she doesn’t really have to do much, or anything, to maintain it.
Of course, this only works when the woman in question is actually beautiful (as all my girlfriends, obviously, have been). The flipside is that if a woman isn’t attractive by nature, there’s not that much she can do to change that. If she looks like a dog, chances are that no amount of sweating at the gym will do a damned thing to fix it.
For men, it works the other way around: If not maintained, a man’s body doesn’t really have a form at all. It’s more a matter of degrees of decay. If left alone, the male form will simply deteriorate into a shapeless, disgusting blob, especially as we get older. But we men do have the advantage that we’re more in control of our of destinies. If we put in those hours at the gym, we can compensate, by work, for the fact that nature has given us the shaft.
Which gender has been given the worst deal depends on perspective, I suppose.
Martian Bigfoot I agree with you if you put in some “generally-speaking” and “on averages” in there. Also I don’t think any women look like dogs.
I think women can becoming more attractive by working out, particularly in the lower body. I’m just saying an average-sized women is physically attractive to me in a way that an average-sized, doesn’t work out guy doesn’t seem to be to women (I’m not saying the “natural” male form is repulsive or anything, simply not, in itself, attractive generally-speaking).
I can agree with this to an extent, but not in it’s entirety. The part I agree with is that what society tends to find beautiful about the sexes is different. For women, facial features are more important, and the gym does very little to affect that. Women’s busts are also only somewhat affected by the gym. A woman’s figure is, obviously, affected to a larger degree, but if a woman is generally thin, hourglass, or pear-shaped, the gym can give her the best version of that, but it generally can’t be changed from one overall shape to another. And, while society may have some changing trends about various body shapes, as a whole or at a given time, certain shapes are just going to be found more attractive.
For men, many of these things are less important. Obviously men with attractive faces fair better dating, but there’s less focus on that. And while men, like women, have the same issues with various body types in not being able to fundamentally change it, in general, the best version of any of those types is still generally seen as attractive. A lot of women find thin and fit ectomorphs attractive. A lot of women also find bulky, barrel-chested endomorphs manly and attractive. And there’s the classic chiseled mesomorph. These aren’t all necessarily the same women, but it seems that, at least, the distribution is more even than it is for women’s body types. And, of course, regardless of which of these body types a man has, working out will make it look better.
But the part I disagree with is that even though I certainly prefer certain body types for women, I’ll still generally find a woman who works out and is in good shape better looking that one who doesn’t with a more desirable natural shape. And while I have seen women that are just naturally thin without exercise, they only look that good in proper clothing, because the lack of tone is blatant and less attractive without clothing designed to cover it up. Even a woman with a generally beautiful face, nice bust, nice shape… all of that can be improved with exercise.
And for men, plenty of men who aren’t in great shape, but wearing the right clothes can look incredibly sharp. Sure, a man in good shape will still generally look better in a suit than a man in poor shape, but a man can do a lot to conceal physical flaws just by wearing nice, properly fit clothes. And, similarly, I’ve seen men at the gym who are in good shape, but they still have bad skin, unattractive faces, etc. They can work out all they want, and none of that changes. Maybe women care less about that than men do, but it would seem odd to just overlook that while being drawn to his body.
Exactly, this question strikes me as absurd. There are exactly two answers to this question:
(1) “No, I’m not attracted to overly muscular men.”
(2) “There’s no such thing as overly muscular.”
Because really, if you’re attracted to gigantic muscles, then you won’t describe them as “overly” muscular, you’ll describe them as, I don’t know, “sexy” or something.
And for the record, my answer is #2, there’s no such thing as overly muscular. My celebrity crush is Brock Lesnar.
I suppose so. But in my book, this “improvement” isn’t actually needed, because if you have those qualities, the baseline is still pretty damned hot. Maybe you can improve your Ferrari by keeping it polished and hanging some fluffy dice from the mirror. But even if you don’t, you still have a Ferrari. And conversely, if you polish and add fluffy dice to your old Honda Civic, it’s still an old Honda Civic. A lot of women seem to think that the “improvement” bit is super important, when, as far as I can tell, what actually matters is the baseline.
I mean, I don’t mind girls working out, and there are obviously a lot of reasons for doing so beyond trying to look attractive to men. I just don’t particularly care much one way or the other.
(Not a perfect analogy, I know. I suppose I’ll keep working on it. For one thing, a Honda is actually a perfectly nice car. For another, an average woman is probably a lot more like a Ferrari than an average car is.)
Yeah, I agree.
Maybe an average guy who doesn’t work out is more like a bunch of parts sitting in a field than any brand of car at all. If you just leave the parts sitting there, eventually mice will move in and make a mouse village. But you can also build them into a sports car, if you put in the effort.
This is true. My dating life would be simplified immensely if I could go through all of it without ever having to get naked.
My personal suspicion is that women are somewhat less concerned with the minutiae of whether their ideal guy is built like Matt Bomer or like Channing Tatum, but rather with if their guys have a certain masculine quality.
To some degree, this acts AGAINST being too much of a gym rat, as a lot of women see a guy who’s that particular and diligent about his appearance as being kind of effete, and they’d rather have a guy who’ll gleefully eat a dozen wings with a half-pitcher of beer, instead of some fussy prig who eats egg whites and brown rice because he’s worried about his abs.
I’d go and say that women probably prefer guys who are fit because they have hobbies and interests and jobs that make them fit, not guys whose hobby IS fitness.
I disagree with this. My cite is women’s tennis. Any time I go past a TV showing a women’s tennis match, I simply cannot stop checking out the players. It doesn’t matter if it is the powerful Venus sisters, somebody from Eastern Europe or South America, it doesn’t matter. I have yet to find a pro women’s tennis player that I don’t think is totally hot. If you put them under a microscope, I guess you could say that they don’t all have modelesque features. But it doesn’t matter, I check those out, too.
FWIW, my current gf doesn’t much resemble a tennis player. She’s got junk in her trunk, and her legs are a bit thick. She Really likes peanut butter pie. But she runs her own business, she isn’t a tycoon or anything but she is a self-made woman, a real grownup, and her casual speech often sounds to me like some kind of Southern novel (she has a Southern accent), full of insight into the intrigue of the web of her friends’ motives and weaknesses. She owns a lot of guns and tends to vote Republican (because of the business thing, not because she is stupid), but those things apparently don’t matter, either. It isn’t like I don’t think she is hot- I met her at a club, I thought she was the hottest person in town in her heels and the whole get-up. But what became the relationship is all about who she is.
This can be a stereotype. I am basically citing myself- I was into weightlifting from ~13-22 years of age. It was something I did 60-90 minutes at a time, 3-5 times a week. I got some coaching from the track team for a couple years. I did sometimes eat in a purposeful way to maximize proteins and amino acids, but I’d eat anything. Being attractive was not a big part of the motive- I had a violent father and I couldn’t just ask him to cut it out, I felt I had to be prepared to force the issue. But then it just felt good and became a part of my routine. I got bigger and more muscular- I finally stopped out of self-consciousness because I thought I would become a cartoon if I kept going.
It wasn’t the central thing in my life. I won an academic scholarship and pursued a career in the sciences (which got screwed up for a number of reasons). I learned to play the guitar and belonged to and/or led a string of bands. I always had a job. I read a lot, went to a lot of parties. But I suppose there Is another kind of bodybuilder who is overwhelmingly obsessed with the whole thing.
FWIW, I had practically no dates in high school (I wanted to but not really, I frankly wasn’t ready). Through my 20s and 30s I had a long series of girlfriends. In retrospect I wonder how much of it was because of the physicality- I was not succeeding and was also kind of a head case. I didn’t grasp how awkward I was with women until my 30s, so why so much success in dating? I dunno, when I found one girl I could be comfortable with, I’d really get attached.
Anyway: the point. Eventually, after mostly giving up working out, playing in a band for a hobby, plus finally crashing and burning as a scientist and also as a musician, I put on a fair bit of weight. FF to my early 30s, I meet a fun gf, but in short order decide I don’t want to date her, I just want to be friends. We’ve been friends for years and years now, we drink beer, watch football, go camping, that kind of stuff. Great pals to this day. I got interested in running a short while after I met her; in 18 months I lost about 50 lbs, but I wasn’t trying to do that, I just wanted to be in shape and for whatever reasons running made me feel fantastic. Anyway, this ex-gf friend has told me a number of times that she liked by body better when I was muscular and fat, with a giant back and shoulders, compared to after I’d been running and became skinnier. It is just something she happens to be into, her ‘type’, you could say.
Reading this thread again, I realize that I should apologize for my earlier posts, stating that women who aren’t naturally beautiful are SOL even if they work out, and naturally beautiful women are beautiful, exercise or not.
I still stand by that (for the sake of debate, if nothing else), but I did of course manage to come off as a superficial jackass.
What does compensate for a possible shortage of natural physical beauty, is, of course, personality. Like with Cleopatra. Little known fact: The ancient writers specifically state that Cleopatra was not particularly beautiful at first glance. Her status as an irresistible sexpot is credited entirely to her intelligence and her charm. Apparently, it was a joy to hear her speak. And that, my friends, is how you seduce two top Roman statesmen.
And then, a couple of millennia down the line, you’ll be portrayed in the movie of your life by the hottest starlet the producers can find, no matter what the size of your nose actually was.
Worth keeping in mind. Just for the record. (And also partly my own strategy as a man, since I’m not exactly Brad Pitt myself.)