“Prawn” could be equally applied to either gender, but “butterface” doesn’t exactly lend itself to the description of "his"s.
I certainly wouldn’t claim to be speaking for my gender here, and while I appreciate a nice body of either gender aesthetically, when it comes to being attractive to me, I’m not getting past the face. The body is of such secondary importance to me (barring extreme fatness or thinness) that being Adonis from the neck down is getting you nowhere if your face is unappealing.
That said, I don’t think I’ve ever even really thought of someone as a butterface. Although I do occasionally find myself thinking “You’d be so much more attractive if you’d just stop talking.”
Male attractiveness, overall, isn’t sited in the body. To way oversimplify evolutionary biology, men are looking for fertile recipients of their sperm, so are attracted to the appearance of youth and fecundity (breasts and hips), whereas women are looking for providers who will contribute after the birth of the young. To boil it down to essentials, men are checking out looks and women are checking out personality.
This leads to two separate but related issues:
Females are not as visually oriented when it comes to sex. Have studies been done about the number of men watching porn regularly vs. number of women, or should we IMHO this?
Knowing that appearance is what they are being judged on, women are overall more concerned with presentation of physical self than men – women wear makeup, women diet and obsess about their bodies, women dress in ways to show off their “assets.” A woman who is less naturally blessed in facial features is more apt to concentrate on what she can work on, her body. Men can get away with “homely” more easily than women can.
Yes, yes, yes, I know that I’m not describing *all * men or *all * women – but the OP is asking about the cultural category of “butterface” – these are reasons why it exists for men (describing women), and not for women (describing men).
A man can wear a t-shirt that’s tight around his upper body with a little looseness around the waist. He might have some musculature, but it’s impossible to tell whether or not you’ll get a six-pack or a little belly when you take the shirt off. Obviously this can’t conceal a pot belly or beer gut, but the definition is impossible to tell. Women’s clothing, especially clothing designed for dancing or clubbing, leaves very little unconcealed. Women would look strange in a shirt that’s a little flowy around the waist. Besides that, women store fat in different places than men (like in hips and such), so it sticks out more in clothing.
I’d agree with you except for one thing – women are also interested in sperm. That is, will he give her genes that will impregnate her with a healthy baby that can grow up to be a tribal leader? Personality goes a long way in conveying that.
Tossing in another disagreement here. I believe that you don’t notice guys’ bodies in the same way you do girls’ because you’re not interested in them sexually.
As for your test, slender and muscular but not huge. Muscular shoulders, but a trim waist and slim hips. A person his size wouldn’t have a neck like his if he didn’t spend quite some time in the gym. It’s harder in your second picture, since he’s wearing a large open jacket – but that’d be true for a woman in a similar outfit.
Not really. Have you never seen a woman in an empire waist top? Cause I have seen and I do see them quite frequently. They’re form-fitting through the bust and then float away from the body as they pass the ribcage.
Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it doesn’t look strange.
Ah hell, what do I know about fashion? Anyway, I still stick by my assertion that because women store fat differently, you’re far less likely to have a woman with a bit of a belly that doesn’t show up anywhere else on their bodies.
Here is intelligence on this front from our own DiosaBellissima, who’s been AWOL from posting a while but offers (via IM) that there are male equivalents to butterfaces, they are “Monets” – good from far away but up close, they’re a mess.
“Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.”
-Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I find very few women unattractive, since everyone falls somewhere in between horse-face and butt-face. And they can’t do much about their faces, anyway; unlike dumpy women who eat as much of anything they want and still think they’re doing some guy a crucified-Jesus favor by being his girlfriend.
But, as the quote above testifies, that’s just human nature (as is my reation to overreaching vanity to ask “in what funhouse mirror do you look and see yourself as hot?”)
I assure you, they can. They just don’t seem to know they are.
I see fat guys. Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re fat. I see them all the time. They’re everywhere.
