what absolute nonsense. I don't find these female superheroes any more attractive than the woman in the comic you linked to finds the muscled men attractive. There's no evidence that any fewer women find the muscled man a sexual fantasy than men find the big bewbed woman.
Think of the men that women tend to lust after on a large scale e.g. celebrities. How many of those men are more muscular than the average male? How many are much more muscular?
Take a look at the all-time top scoring pics on the "ladyboners" subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LadyBoners/top/
Of those men whose body is showing in the picture, how many have muscles significantly more developed than the average male? 75%? 85%?
I'm not particularly "built" myself, but I think it's extremely misguided to suggest women don't, on average, prefer muscular men (all other traits being equal). Obviously you don't have to be muscular to attract women, there are very few desirable qualities which are actually necessary to attract a partner. That doesn't mean it doesn't help, all else equal.
> My anecdotal experience is that the response-curve to muscularity for heterosexual women is non-linear (now there's a sentence I'd only write on HN...), and there's only a correlative effect for normal range BMIs.
No need to rely on your anecdotal experience, there is actual data if you read the linked studies:
> Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.
>but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny guy with disfigured face and pudgy dude with a neck beard?
Yes, I'm sure no woman found Heath Ledger sexy in Dark Knight. Also the Doctor being an imposing, dominating, taking the control type, surely kills any and all appeal he might ever have on women.
Both the Joker and the Doctor are still very masculine, powerful characters no matter how you look at things.
If you use male criteria for judging the attractiveness of a man to a woman, you are using male criteria for judging the attractiveness of a man to a woman. It is also called projection.
Not too long ago on this forum someone mentioned a paper where they showed photographs of the male torso to women. The outcome was that the most muscular was considered most attractive.
media everywhere in the world has thin skinny androgyny artists and big atlethic artists. america has plenty of feminine males. have you seen the beauty industry or social media at all? its all skinny dudes
this isnt about violence. most people are fat and never see any violence. women just prefer big strong alethic men everywhere in world when you look at who is having sex and not just some polls
What these studies show, is that given a set of pictures with faces removed, college age women will point to the pictures of guys who go to the gym when asked to say which one is more attractive to them.
Sure, I can get behind that. As a bisexual male, I also kind of get it. People who are in shape are sexier, duh.
Without even digging into the pitiful sample sizes (n=61, n=131) or the fact that these studies were conducted on an incredibly limited and not at all random subset of the population (college age, at one particular college). The conclusions this article comes to and the ones that you have come to are fundamentally different.
This paper is drawing conclusions about specific, visual sexual attractiveness, fixed for all other concerns - ceterus parabus, if you will. It assumes that all other things are equal.
The conclusions you have so quickly come to, are based on the assertion that all other things are equal. They are not. There is a complex system of other sociological cues and interpersonal relationships that signal whether you do or don't want to be with someone.
Think of all the other things you, as a male, might find sexy about someone. Are they into video games? Do they like the same music as you? Are they successful in business / art / a particular 'scene'? Are they smart? Are they bold? Are they funny?
What you have done, in essence, is to assume that women are simple, and easily understood. I would argue that this is patently ludicrous.
"Researchers at Griffith University in Queensland examined what factors most influenced female attraction to males and found that physical strength reigned supreme.
"After surveying 150 women, they concluded that they could almost predict how attractive a man was based on three things: how physically strong he looks, how tall he is and how lean he is..."
> Being muscular is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for being physically fit.
"Fit" for men is fairly muscular, because moderate amounts of physical effort by a man will result in some muscles. "Fit" for women is not muscular, because women do not put on muscle easily the way that men do.
Fit for men doesn't mean looking like a body builder, but it also doesn't mean having the same muscle mass as a woman of equal height.
> so why should lifting weights be a factor in the attractiveness of men.
Because strength is masculine. The standard for masculine attractiveness is basically unchanged for millenia. Look at ancient Greek statues. The idealized male physique is muscular and lean. This physique indicates health and athletic ability, and therefore good genetics as well as good ability to provide and protect.
> I will grant that some women do want muscular men, but I don't think it's that big a factor for most women.
Women will marry physically unfit men, and ugly men, and also mean men, and men with all kinds of other negative traits. That doesn't mean that these aren't factors in women's choices. It means that 1) you can't generalize from "some women" to "most women" just because it fits with your narrative, and 2) women can look past any factor if other factors outweigh it (men can do the same).
I'm short. I don't pretend that height isn't a factor in attractiveness to women, though. It's a huge factor, despite the fact that some (even many) women marry short men.
To be fair, IIRC the 'hunky guy' that was well-built/muscled was popular with women in the '80s (so far as I know, feel free to correct me). And I do know at least one woman that is into that archetype.
Yes but A) I wanted to be sure we were looking at the same research and B) everything I found looked at bad as this one.
Firstly the relationship between the strength of the men and the women's abilities to determine their strength is weakly correlated (r=0.33).
Secondly, the sample of women here are all around 21 years old and all study at the same university. I don't think we can extrapolate what "most women" find attractive from this.
Thirdly, the women are presented only with photographs of male upper bodies without faces. The study itself mentions that other research suggests many women prefer men with "weaker or more effeminate faces." I think it's also clear that styling, manner, expression, personality etc all play a party in attraction and move of that is accounted for in this study.
I also believe you or the reporter have misinterpreted something here. You said that none of the women preferred stronger men, but the study actually shows a correlation of 0.8. None of the women preferred more weak men more often than strong men but some of them did prefer some weak men over some strong men.
The study also points out that asking a woman how strong a man looked was a better indicator of how strong he was than asking her how attractive he was.
Note also the quality of the questions here. First the woman is asked to rate the strength of the man and then asked to rate his attractiveness. I'm not a psychologist but it feels like the study itself primes the person being tested to consider the correlation ahead of giving their answers, which strikes me as poor research design.
As a man surely you're aware that your tastes differ to other men's tastes. Consider how much the cultural standard for an ideal woman has changed within our lifetimes. A woman praised for being thicc in 2015 would be ridiculed during the years of heroin chic in 2005 and vice versa. It's clear that these things are very much affected by cultural norms, by age, etc. A test which doesn't attempt to account for this can't be used to extrapolate in the way you're doing.
Finally, you made the claim that women prefer a certain type of man because they want to feel protected. You said tonnes of studies supported this but the one you gave me has absolutely nothing in it that makes any reference to this supposition. What am I missing?
My understanding is that a moderate amount of muscle makes both men and women more attractive.
The average person is not terribly attracted to someone who looks like a pro bodybuilder (crazy low body fat) or powerlifter (probably a bit over fat.)
In my adult life, I've been both a beanpole and a fairly muscled dude(495 lbs squat, 275 bench, 600 DL)
I had women attracted to me both times, but the type of woman was very different. I also got groped and felt up far more and other far more overt displays of interest by women when muscled.
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