6 pack abs.
Meh.
I prefer a guy with a keg for abs.
Since that would describe me, I’m glad my partner has the same taste as you.
In real life, I like big guys, with or without hair (I would never ask a dude to shave) who are at least as tall as me and have a job.
I could never ever ever date a ripped guy or a skinny guy or a guy that looks like Brad Pitt. I would feel so extra ugly next to them that I’d never want to take off my clothes or go out in public.
That being said, I do get drooly over Brad Pitt, and Tyson Beckford and Mark Wahlberg of the Marky Mark days.
One of the sexiest things I’ve ever done was go to a gay bar with some [male] gay friends. It was the kind of bar where extremely hot young men walk around in their speedos and let you paw them if you want. Being that I only date fat dudes, it was the only time in my life that I got to really get up close and personal with a six pack. It felt lovely - but I’d never get naked next to that 
I miss having gay friends (these guys moved out of town). None of my straight friends would ever go to gay bars with me…so now the hot abs are just a wistful memory.
I like bulky guys, with broad shoulders and big arms and some fat. No skinny for me. I love to cook and eat and drink, and if you’re on a diet because you need to maintain your six-pack, I have no use for you. And you should be bigger than me, and able to pick me up. (I’m not that big, so this shouldn’t be that hard.)
But strength is good. I just needs to be that practical, farm-boy strength you get from moving around large objects and doing construction work. Hairy or not is irrelevant, as long as you don’t shave your chest. Chest stubble is gross. My husband is a stocky, hairy guy, and I love it.
Middle-aged female here.
I prefer the defined but slender look, like Brad Pitt, also (although Pitt himself does nothing for me). I’ve always preferred that look. All the men in my life have been slender-to-skinny but all were defined.
I’ve always thought a super ripped man was just as unnatural, grotesque, and ugly as an obese man.
I agree with this, and add Mike Rowe for further evidence of guys that make me turn my head. Then again, I’m also attracted to skinny, lanky guys and the occasional guy with a little more meat on his frame. I am not, however, sexually attracted to the body builder physique-- after a certain point, it just looks gross to me. I do, however, appreciate greatly a nice set of thighs on a man and miss the days of short shorts.
My SO’s physique reflects my interests, as he has a “workman’s build” from physical labor rather than time at the gym.
When you said ‘with the cane and is singing’, I kind of expected something a little more Fred Astaire. Imagine my surprise! 
Sing it, sistah!
I don’t particularly like ripped guys. I prefer men who are thin but muscular, with nice legs and butt. I find runners tend to have the kind of body I like on a man. It’s no coincidence my ex was a cross-country runner in high school and college. He was also extremely hairy, which I normally don’t like, but I got used to it.
(btw, nashiitashii, I loved the picture of the first guy on your post - not Beckham, but he was nice too)
Agree that high-mass/ low-fat, veiny guys don’t look attractive- even without the knowledge of what it takes to get there. I was a perfectly happy (body image-wise) young man until for some reason I started to hear accusations of being way too thin. Women would watch me eat and proclaim: “You gotta have a worm in your gut to eat like that and be so thin!”, or suggest: “Tox, you go squeeze yourself into the backseat, being so tiny”. The last drop probably was when I was visiting a new friend’s place for the first time, we got some home-brewn beer and sat down at his kitchen table. The first thing my new friend uttered (more like gasped): “How can you be so thin, man?”.
It really drove home the idea that I must be grotesquely, eye-achingly thin for it to be about the first thing people comment on - and unlike being fat, which even the inbred rednecks now realize is rude to point at - someone being thin is apparently a good public target, and the personal fault of the recipient. Hence, I started to work out. There really are few things to grind a man down more than to question his physique, his manliness, his strength, in situations where it is least expected.
I submit that a very large portion of obsessive trainers / sixpack donners have something similar in their backgrounds. It ain’t simple vanity.
I like the one on the cover to look at, not particularly to, uhm, do other stuff with. My nose seems to be mostly interested in burly dudes (God I shall miss Scotland!). Give me a tree-thrower or stone-lifter over a runner or gym-brat any day of the week, says I 
I do not particularly like the ones inside, “we took these guys to learn to box and look how ripped they now are.” Part of it is the coffin poses, but some of them look better to me in the “before” than “after” pics.
I like short guys. Most of the guys I’ve dated (and the guy I married) were about 5’7" or shorter. I don’t know why this is, I think I just like being able to look a guy in the eye when we’re standing, and I don’t wear tall heels often.
As far as physique goes, I like guys who work out and have some muscles, but not the very low body fat totally ripped type. Cuddly is good, significantly out of shape is not.
For me, having a good body is damn near a requirement for a boyfriend. I take good care of myself and want the person I am with to do so as well.
I do not like the huge bodybuilder types. In fact, it squicks me out a bit. As far as famous examples of what I like think Jonathan Rhys Meyers or David Beckham. Those are ideals and I certainly don’t hold men to that, but in a perfect world that would be faboo.
Oh wait, ideal? Alex Rodriguez. Shaddup haters, this pic was taken recently and after the roids.
Actually, if I remember right that wasn’t the OP, it was me. And I didn’t say it was unfair, I said that it represented a double standard where it’s okay for women to lust after a body type that only young guys have, while denigrating men for doing the same thing. If you’re going to drool over a teen who only looks that way because he is that young, be honest about it at least.
Obviously, build varies according to what you do. If you’re only concerned with raw strength, you’ll look like a power lifter or one of the guys in a strongman competition; huge but not cut, very likely with padding or even a gut since any kind of endurance activity is secondary. If you’re into long-distance running or similar sport that emphasizes time or distance over strength, you’ll look like a piece of beef jerky. Okay, so I exaggerate a bit I don’t like the kind of body that comes with endurance sports, or the lack of strength and power that comes with that adaptation. Guys with active jobs adapt to the requirements of the work, which is usually a mix of strength and endurance, and is probably why that “workman’s build” mentioned earlier is relatively attractive to most people, because it’s not an extreme adaptation in any direction.
Some of you probably over-estimate how much time working out a guy needs to be fit. If you do it intelligently, you can put in surprisingly little time for good results. I work out about 3–4 hours a week. Some sessions are under 30 minutes, including warmup. I don’t look like this guy — who does the same kind of workouts, but does them consistently about 6 days a week and has a pretty strict diet — but I’m most definitely in better shape than about 80% or more of the people around me. Judging from the level of female attention I currently get, far more women prefer my body shape now than they did when I was 20–30 pounds heavier and didn’t exercise.
I actually started that thread: Ladies: Which male physique would you prefer? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board and I agree with you. I don’t want to derail this thread, but I, too, found it odd that the women preferred the 13 year old physique over the more adult ones. I will be preparing a part 2 to that thread this weekend with a better range of physiques.
But I think what we have said here in this thread is that we want a manly body, not just one that is ripped. Sleel’s link is the one we don’t find attractive. See links to Brad Pitt, David Beckham, Ty, etc. They look young, but they don’t look ripped (and many of them are in their 30s).
Although, frankly, given the choice between a very muscular body and a leaner one, give me the leaner one (even if it is younger). I don’t want very noticeable muscles, I don’t like that look. YMMV.
Huh. If we’re just talking about someone to drool over, then give me Tyson Beckford or Vin Diesel or Daniel Craig, even. I like broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and actual muscle. Yum.
Now if we’re talking about someone to actually talk to, then whatever. I’m pretty sure the hubby’s never seen the inside of a gym.
Probably a good idea. You may have shot yourself in the foot a bit with your choice of photos there; you have a couple of fairly fat guys, a lot of very muscular guys, and one thin, not-so-muscular guy. Looking over the responses, I think the general tone is not so much “we like teenagers” but “we don’t like ‘fairly fat’ or ‘very muscular’”, and #11 is the only other choice.
(Oops, just got to the part where someone explains that 1-8 are the same guy. He shoulda stopped around 4-and-a-half, if you ask me. #7 and 8 are frankly disturbing.)
Personally, #11 is the best of a bad lot (no-one else ranks over “meh”). Ideally, I’d go for someone a touch softer or skinnier or both (but not more muscular) and considerably less young.
And regarding Sleel’s comment in the other thread:
Lusting after people who have won the genetic lottery is pretty much the name of the game, isn’t it? After all, that’s what the genetic lottery is for. 
That wasn’t really the point of my link though. I’m not going to argue about attractions since those are personal, idiosyncratic, and not entirely reasonable. I mean, I find the look of goth chicks to be very hot, but the personality types drawn to that subculture aren’t compatible with mine. Kind of pointless for me to be attracted to them, I know that, and yet I still find pierced, tattooed women with freaky hair and attitudes to be a turn-on. Temporarily anyway, until we start to argue about stuff.
My point was refute the idea that it takes hours and hours in the gym to look that ripped. He and I pull our workouts from the same source. Some workouts are time-based — doing a set amount of work as fast as you can with a particular weight — and on those days he probably takes about 1/3 the time it takes me to finish. That means his warmup is probably longer than the workout. I doubt he dedicates more than 8 hours a week to working out.
If someone watched TV, or read for an hour to an hour-and-a-half a day, it would be unremarkable. But if you spend an hour working out five or six days a week, suddenly that time becomes an exceptional amount to spend on an activity. Odd, that.
JR Brown, another quote from me in the same post, regarding Brad Pitt: “I’m pretty sure that now that he’s older he’s got to work at it more, and he can’t stay slim just by being active. And he obviously did win the genetic lottery.” As I pointed out, in Troy he was 40, and by the expressed preferences so far he’d be too muscular. Going by what he said, his workouts were primarily training for the fight sequences, so that’s the kind of body a guy with great genetics in his prime gets from “being active.” Granted, fighting with weapons in armor is a little bit more strenuous than your average active lifestyle, but it’s also not popping steroids and pumping iron.
I’ve also caught an undertone of “guys who exercise aren’t especially bright” in most threads like this. That’s especially untrue. There have been studies like this one that show that exercise helps combat age-related declines, and kids who are physically fit have also been found to do better in school.
Like I said, I’m not going to argue about attraction — you like what you like — but I don’t think I’m out of line to refute stereotypes, misperceptions, and myths.