12 ms·

Marriage Markets (and Muscularity)

97 points by jger15 5y ago

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
Most of the studies seem to "muscularity correlates to likelihood to lie about how many sexual partners had in past year".
mattjaynes 5y ago
Scientific squabbles aside, "getting jacked" is one of the most important things a man can do to increase his attractiveness to females. But if you decide to go down that path, don't make it unnecessarily difficult. Your number 1 priority should be sustainability. This is the mistake I see my friends make over and over. They will start highly motivated, do too much, then quit after a month or two. My top sustainability rule is "I must feel better after my workout than before my workout." This ensures I don't kill my motivation for the future days. You want to create an upward spiral of small successes. Also, you don't need to join a gym or other special program. While they can be helpful in some circumstances, they can also create a lot of friction in your life. You want the bar to be as low as possible for working out. I started with resistance bands at home and found that amazingly sustainable. While others were struggling to get dressed and travel to the gym, I was happily lifting heavy bands 5 minutes after getting out of bed, then continuing with my day in under 30 minutes. Start with first principles: 1) push/pull movements with sufficient resistance, and 2) eat sufficient protein, but don't eat excessive calories, and 3) get sufficient sleep (bad sleep will make progress nearly impossible) [bonus: walking is the best 'cardio' to use when trying to gain muscle] If you want to dive deeper into the science of optimizing your gains, I'd recommend Dr Mike Israetel, who has the least fluff and most scientific (and entertaining) content I've found: https://www.youtube.com/c/RenaissancePeriodization/playlists https://www.youtube.com/c/RenaissancePeriodization/playlists I started lifting about 6 years ago after being newly single, and my own anecdata was that as I lost fat and put on significant muscle, the dating experience changed dramatically for me. Dating just seemed 5X to 10X easier. Not to mention the many other obvious life improvements that come with being fit (confidence, health, energy, performance, etc). I've seen many friends in the last few years start and fail, but by keeping the friction low and the process enjoyable, I've made it a habit that I've kept unbroken the last 6 years. Focus on keeping the bar low and the enjoyment high - there are no bonus points for suffering.
- bradlys 5y ago
  What makes the lifting enjoyable for folks? I personally find commuting to the gym, lifting for an hour or two, and heading home to be kinda draining. I feel “better” after doing it but mainly only because I felt like I was making progress and there was less guilt for doing something. The actual time in the gym sucks and just feels like a hamster in a wheel. I’ve never found a way to not make it this way. After all - I’m at the gym, solo grinding for XP, and surrounded by guys with 8-packs who are 5 years ahead of me. Even if I get to where they are, no guarantee that it’ll have been “worth it”. Being in the gym literally feels like I’m in the tv show “severance”. (Admittedly I haven’t seen the show - I just know the premise) It’s completely lost time and at no point enjoyable. It’s what I imagine people with two hour commutes feel like but now add in physical pain and discomfort.
lr4444lr 5y ago
Muscularity is the strongest predictor of mating success for men. More than money or its earning power? I'm skeptical.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  San Fran millionaire coder bro versus Bronx construction bro.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sdze 5y ago
    I can only imagine the Construction worker knows how to use his body well. At the end of the day we are all animals.
  - forgetfulness 5y ago
    The West Coast has a glut of coder bros. In NYC men with a college education are the buyer's market. I remember a very strange reading from a "geek girl" years ago, where she went on and on about deriding the men who were, by all measures, her own peers, and she went on and on about how now that she's realized her own worth she's pulling jacked scientist-adventurers and such and the other guys were losers all along. I remembered this after thinking about how my lowly bachelor's degree and a pretty face have earned me a warmer reception by the Academic community outside the campus than inside where I'm currently living (despite being at the moment a terrible catch). It clicked. I wouldn't, however, write a spiel trash talking women with the same level of education and a similar physique to mine just because I can, say, bat above my own league right now.
- vincebowdren 5y ago
  The studies weren't asking about marriage success, but about mating success. Female preferences can be pretty different between those two.
  - tharne 5y ago
cdot2 5y ago
Is it possible that it's the other way around? That confidence or something else leads to both masters degrees, muscles, and other success instead of masters degrees and muscles leading to other success?
- DaveExeter 5y ago
  A masters degree might be associated with more $$. I think women have an instinctive attraction to muscles, just as men have an instinctive attraction to larger busts and hips.
- VLM 5y ago
  > or something The somethings you're looking for are huge levels of self discipline and low time preference. You can glance at a guy and tell he has that if he has muscles; you can't glance at a guy and tell if he has a masters or phd. But since self discipline and low time preference BOTH can lead to muscular and academic success, as a generic search criteria just look for the muscles. Over decades in the gym I've noticed almost all the big guys are autodidacts, much like sysadmins / programmers / hackers. This includes all the positive, and negative, stereotypes of autodidacts.
- zauguin 5y ago
  Based on my experience there does not seem to be a strong (positive) correlation between masters degrees and muscles. Might depend on the Master of course.
- bradlys 5y ago
  I really doubt it. I’ve seen all kinds of men get jacked. Those with good self-discipline and those without. Also - people read into things too much. Why can’t people just be superficial? Why do we have to think there’s some really really deep reason for why we find someone physically attractive? People aren’t as complicated all the time.
sdze 5y ago
I can also imagine that muscularity leads to increased testosterone and therefore to more pleasing smell.
karpierz 5y ago
I hate this kind of research. Scrape some data, observe some correlations, and then imprint your view of the world onto it to draw some ad-hoc conclusions. For example: > In this study, researchers asked two different groups of women to look at photos of different men and rate how strong the men looked. Results showed that the rated strength of a male body accounts for 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness (this is a massive effect size). Except that if you read the paper, you find: 1. "Furthermore, for two of the three regressions, the attractiveness measure became a negative predictor once strength ratings were controlled for. In other words, there appear to be cues in the male body that accurately indicate strength (and are detected as such by raters), but nonetheless are neutral or negatively valued when assessing attractiveness." 2. You know what else is correlated with strength? Mental health, income, social status, etc. You know what the study doesn't at all control for? 3. It turns out if you only give people a photo and have them judge attractiveness, they'll only look at the physique of the person. This doesn't mean it's how people view attractiveness in real-world situations where you have all sorts of other data.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  > In other words, there appear to be cues in the male body that accurately indicate strength (and are detected as such by raters), but nonetheless are neutral or negatively valued when assessing attractiveness. hahaha yes I was wondering about that. Gym-based fitness and lifting specifically seem pretty trendy right now and a lot of the younger men I know lift and are very visibly fit. But anecdotally pretty much all of the strongest men I've known had guts to match their arms and if you saw them out of weight training context you'd probably say they looked more schlubby than than chiseled.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    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.)
    - 5y ago
erfgh 5y ago
He seems to be equating "mating success" with "high number of sexual partners". I don't think this is reasonable.
- User23 5y ago
  Evolutionarily speaking number of offspring would indeed be a better metric, but with pervasive contraception there’s not much signal there.
- tharne 5y ago
  > He seems to be equating "mating success" with "high number of sexual partners". I don't think this is reasonable. It's not a perfect equivalence, but it's more than reasonable, c'mon man.
agomez314 5y ago
If you're a beginner and want to start lifting weights I highly recommend the 5x5 workout. After progression becomes more difficult and takes longer to increase weight, switch to the Texas Method. 5x5: https://stronglifts.com/5x5/ https://stronglifts.com/5x5/ Texas Method: https://startingstrength.com/article/the_texas_method https://startingstrength.com/article/the_texas_method
- sdze 5y ago
  I think you could also just lose body fat (through dieting and moving around) and appear "muscular". No need to workout so hard.
  - bb123 5y ago
    Not if you're like me who's hovering at the low end of normal BMI anyway. Gaining weight isn't easy for everyone.
  - rajangdavis 5y ago
    You can also lose more fat by increasing the size of your muscles which can be achieved through lifting. https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202100242R https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.2021002...
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    Posture is positively affected by lifting too. You need to do something to balance muscular development through your body, it doesn't need to be lifting.
  - muldvarp 5y ago
    If you don't do physical exercise losing body fat will mostly make you look skinny, not muscular.
    - sdze 5y ago
      you won't loose your disgusting gunt otherwise. It's a fact. I see a lot of "work out" men that are unbelievable obese. Something 75 years ago would be circus material. They might have strength, but optically it is just not esthetically. Goal: hypocaloric life.
master_crab 5y ago
Romantic relationships =/= marriage. They are related, but it is not a perfect equivalent.
- bradlys 5y ago
  It’s a good start though. If you’re willing to sleep with them then you’re more likely to marry them compared to you’re not willing to sleep with them crowd. If you’re not physically attracted to a person - there’s a near zero chance you will sleep or marry them. So, it naturally follows that being more physically attractive is good for your chances.
bannedbybros 5y ago
redleggedfrog 5y ago
Makes sense to me. We're just a bunch of monkeys shaped by evolution. Women would choose men that made for stronger and probably better surviving offspring. And the man can act as protector - if they don't turn dangerous.
romanhn 5y ago
The article talks about "mating success", which I'm not really sure correlates with marriage necessarily. Calling Tinder a marriage market is quite a stretch as well. Summary seems to be "physical attractiveness leads to more sex", which I imagine surprises absolutely no one.
- kiba 5y ago
  We probably have more success in finding partners in the friendships we cultivated.
- jhallenworld 5y ago
  I think this is right- I know men who have no trouble picking up women (they are "jacked"), but can't keep them due to other personality issues (they are too controlling).
- gunshai 5y ago
  I'd assume there is a loose correlation changing in age. My assumption is having a long term partner with out having sexual intimacy is fairly uncommon, understanding sexual compatability for people looking for a long term partner is a probably high on the criteria to sort by. IE hard to understand compatibility with out the deed. That said I agree the perception is that Tinder isn't socially known as the place to find a long term partner. Call me old fashioned, but the ability to approach people in the real world about your interests in a socially acceptable manner may have less potential surface area but is probably a higher success rate for longer term relationships.
  - visarga 5y ago
    > IE hard to understand compatibility with out the deed. Also hard to judge how you'd be in a relation with someone beforehand, even if you already know that person well.
throwaway2474 5y ago
So here’s a conundrum. The longevity literature consistently reports that caloric restriction and in particular minimising protein intake, including eg the BCAAs found in protein powders, leads to a longer lifespan. Other things like mTOR that are associated with muscle growth also lead to shorter lifespan. Basically it seems like you have a choice - live a long life, or get muscular.
- sdze 5y ago
  longevity science is still voodoo science.
- michaelrpeskin 5y ago
  There are two subtleties about this that often are not talked about. 1) The caloric restriction -> longevity research shows that it's generally true, but it much more pronounced in small creatures that spend a significant amount of "lifetime energy expenditure" during reproduction (like mice). So while caloric restriction makes a mouse live 30% longer (making up numbers here), the same proportion of caloric restriction may give <1% extra life in a human. 2) There often a quantity vs quality of life trade off too. Let's say reducing mTOR and BCAA takes a few years off of your life but you have much more muscle and with that great posture and movement that doesn't break down your body and you feel great (and if we believe the linked article more sex too). Is that a trade off you're willing to take? Same argument can be made with HRT for older men (I'm nearing that age). It seems that lots of the scary news related to HRT and anabolics in general is more about looking at the negative effects without accounting for the quality of life improvements that come from just being stronger.
- simiones 5y ago
  Well, there are more factors to consider on the long life vs good life idea.
- adrian_b 5y ago
  There is no doubt that excessive protein intake is bad. However, when attempting to reduce your protein intake, great care is required to not reduce it too much, like for everything else that is bad in excess, but which is still necessary for life. A too low daily protein intake leads to various problems, e.g. a too low albumin level in the blood, which are guaranteed to reduce your lifespan.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
VLM 5y ago
"getting jacked" correlates with about a hundred other positive behaviors, leading to obvious confusion about which is the magic sauce that actually causes female attraction. The article incorrectly assumes its mere bulk mass, but fat dudes do not attract women, so ... Higher protein/lower carb diet of lifters naturally leads to lower body fat, face and neck look better, which also correlates with reproductive success. As if I needed yet another reason not to start smoking, I don't want to pass out coughing at the gym so I don't smoke, with a side effect of my teeth are therefore not yellow. Non-yellow teeth also correlate with reproductive success. Even stuff like I don't binge drink or use drugs and get reasonable good sleep therefore my eyes are rarely bloodshot in the morning, again, eyes that don't look like a gore pic correlate with reproductive success. A lower carb diet plus some sweating in the sauna eliminates all skin problems for me, and again lack of zits correlates well with reproductive success. A final interesting correlation is there's an absolute fixation by non-lifters on "beating people up" whereas in reality I've lived in a concealed carry state for decades so people are much more civil and polite to each other and I'm not in a demographic or social class where beatings are part of life. I would instead propose it seems rather obvious that a guy who takes excellent care of himself will take excellent care of his partner and children, which seems to market pretty well to women, every woman wants to see her kids grow up healthy strong and attractive, so a guy that "cheats" his natural genetics by putting in a couple hours in the gym every week is going to massively attract women. That said, the specific cause doesn't really matter, if you generally join the overall "lifter lifestyle", it will work out well. Eat better, exercise, treat your body well, and that will attract people.
- User23 5y ago
  > Higher protein/lower carb diet of lifters naturally leads to lower body fat, face and neck look better, which also correlates with reproductive success. As an aside, the US infantry soldiers’ rations included about 22 ounces of beef per day during WW1. The eat ten pounds of bread and almost no red meat per day food pyramid is so awful I wonder if it’s malicious.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    22oz of beef per day seems crazy high for peacetime cattle ranch owners, let alone deployed infantry. (I’d love it, but that’s 5.5 quarter pounders per day, which seems really high for wartime rations. If the US pulled that off, that had to be a massive [relative] advantage in troop energy and morale.)
spamizbad 5y ago
It's extremely funny to me that someone did a research to determine whether athleticism or education makes you more sexually desirable. Not dissing the effort: Always good to hav e our priors confirmed by science!
jdrc 5y ago
I wonder if > overall number of sexual partners is important for today's younger generations. It doesnt appear that they studiet it
upupandup 5y ago
it's always interesting to me the discrepancies in beauty standards and attractiveness in different cultures for both genders. Obviously this polling is done from a Americana/Europa point of view but outside it, there's less emphasis on macho maleness, which seems to be what muscularity is alluding to, in fact it hurts you. Women are diverse and so are there preferences but its probably harder to see it in macho, male driven image in the American continent. It appears that especially in the American/European continent, muscularity, the ability to exert physical violence, justified or not, is what is preferred, which tells you a bit about those societies, violence and fear appears to be a component of their culture, especially true in Americas compared to Western Europe for instance. However, it's obvious that the new generation has a very different standards for male beauty. The popularity of BTS is a good example. It just shows you how much of an impact media has. Japanese women for the most part prefer the thin skinny androgyny according to polls, in fact androgyny in males is highly preferred over the macho masculinity or less threatening looking males, which says a bit about those societies which are far far safer and non-violent compared to North America. At the same time there is casual physical contact that is generally accepted but you don't walk in the streets at night in large cities and fear for your life.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  If beauty standards differ somewhat from culture to culture, doesn't that break the "we're just evolved animals" evo-psych idea that physical strength is the most important thing?
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    Most "evolutionary psychology" that you find online is broscience if not worse.
    - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
      Absolutely, I'm just instilling some doubt in readers. :)
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
mmcgaha 5y ago
Of course more women are attracted to smart successful men and of course they are attracted to physically attractive men but it is a bit easier to see your muscles than your master's degree when you are walk in a room. First impressions are important.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  > it is a bit easier to see your muscles than your master's degree when you are walk in a room. This would make for an interesting experiment. I bet you can deduce a person's education level accurately by appearance, unless the person makes a deliberate attempt to hide it, but even then, things like good dental hygiene are a give away. People largely try to fit in with their peer group, and people are pretty good at identifying groups. I think this is especially true with age.
  - brabarossa 5y ago
    Strangers Rank Their Intelligence | IQ vs First Impressions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM
sdze 5y ago
But once you are married, the muscles are gone. So it was not that important after all?
LeanderK 5y ago
Just some observations but I have seen this multiple times in my group of friends. They were good looking but on the skinny side, single, did not really work out and a bit frustrated on the dating market. Most of my friends seriously work out so I think there's a bit of an incentive in my group of friends to try going to the gym and work out (I think this is important, a few years ago I didn't really know anyone working out and it didn't really cross my mind to do it). They took it seriously, after half a year really made progress and either are no longer single or have more dates than they used to. I never really worked out but due to my friends I also started to take my body more seriously. Progress is not that hard, it just takes patience. It's also really increased my quality of life, it's a good way to release stress and a good balance to sitting in front of the computer. Also it's great to just stay in shape, you can do physically demanding things just for fun. In the past I wanted to not be superficial because I thought it was stupid to care too much about looks but working out is really more than gaining more muscles, you really take care of yourself and your body.
- afr0ck 5y ago
  The main incentive for me to work out was getting my body into a better shape to improve my confidence and enlarge my dating pool. However, after I experienced the plethora of its other benefits, I can safely say it's no more about the former goal, but more for the other benefits that come with it such as stress release, more happiness, more energy, drive and focus, much much better sleep, more libido, etc.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    More libido without any of the social benefits would be a huge downside IMO. All I want when I’m single is to be chemically castrated.
    - CapricornNoble 5y ago
      I can relate to this: there's been numerous times where I've resisted keeping a regular exercise regimen because it sends my libido through the roof and I didn't want to deal with the headache of going out/socializing to restock my harem.
sabujp 5y ago
i bought this pull up bar from https://www.walmart.com/ip/Prosourcefit-Multi-Grip-Chin-Up-Pull-Up-Bar-Heavy-Duty-Doorway-Trainer/49967480?athbdg=L1100 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Prosourcefit-Multi-Grip-Chin-Up-P... a month or two ago. Best purchase ever!!! At the beginning I couldn't do any pull-ups except for a few on the grip perpendicular to your body. Since I have lots of WFH time I just randomly kept (trying) doing pull ups while I would walk by where I had it setup on a door, e.g. waiting for tea water to boil or something else in the kitchen/microwave or when randomly pacing about thinking about some code/algo/code review. Now I can easily do 5-10 pull ups using any of the grips and am also getting my kids into it, my older son esp. has difficulty going across monkey bars on the playground so this has helped him. I also recommend putting some additional foam under the padding that comes with the bar that sits/pushes against the front of the door frame, esp. if your door moulding has decorative grooves as these can cut into that padding. In any case, I'm happily married with kids and have never used dating apps, but if you believe in this research and want to increase your hand grip, improve your posture, and improve your overall upper body/core strength this is a dirt cheap way to do it that also requires low activation energy (e.g. no going to the gym).
belval 5y ago
> Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners. This confirms that rock climbing leads to a better life. /s
- mattmar96 5y ago
  Ha had the same thought
anonimusss 5y ago
My life really changed when I started working out regularly about a year ago. Especially on the women side. I honestly think it has more to do with my changed posture and more energy than actual the muscles but it is impossible to dissect. All i can say. Hit the gym. Don't worry about what anyone would think (nobody cares this isn't highschool). And try to push yourself every week a bit further. Good luck!:)
- Zababa 5y ago
  > All i can say. Hit the gym. Don't worry about what anyone would think (nobody cares this isn't highschool). Half of the benefit I get from going to the gym is getting used to being around strangers. I used to have lockdown-induced social anxiety, and going to the gym fixed that. Realising that not everyone is out to get you, that most people are just nice people doing their thing and ready to help if you need helps a lot.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    This is me too. My social skills atrophied so much during lock down that going to gyms became as much of a mental workout as a physical one.
photochemsyn 5y ago
All the studies this article references fall into the social science replicability problem zone. Such studies shouldn't be viewed as reliable, and in this case, are merely being used to give a very thin patina of 'scientificity' to the author's opinion.
deleted 5y ago
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yaseer 5y ago
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. I've been thin, athletic and quite muscular (BMI > 30, 12% bodyfat from powerlifting), and muscular physiques with BMI > 30 are considered less attractive than athletic physiques (Defined as BMI 20-25, 10-15% bodyfat). Also, deviating away from heteronormative perspectives, I would speculate that the response curve for homosexual men may be linear for higher ranges. i.e. Gay men like significant muscle, but straight women prefer athletic builds, on average. A cursory glance at some adult sites for these markets might support this admittedly anecdotal assertion.
- muldvarp 5y ago
  > 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.
  - yaseer 5y ago
    That's interesting, you're right, the article does report a linear-only relationship! They may not have sampled muscular BMIs much above 30 though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745404/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745404/ Gym sample: > n = 61, mean BMI: 24.0, s.d.: 2.75 ~5% would be above 2 s.d => 3 people with BMI above 29.5 My 'theory' would be for muscular builds with BMIs above 30, the linear relationship breaks down for heterosexual women. You might need a larger sample to test that, perhaps with a bodybuilding sample rather than college students.
thesaintlives 5y ago
Many women who like sex seem to like guys who are jacked. If you have brains and a personality to match you can do very well if you also like sex and women. I think one year I must have slept with maybe more than 150 women. Honestly I lost count. It was probably much more...
pfisherman 5y ago
That is a pretty sweeping conclusion to draw from women watching some videos. In my experience personality (i.e. game), money, and height have at least as big and effect. And you can be lacking on any of these dimensions - personality is the least forgiving - and still do very well. Moreover I think the relationship with attractiveness is nonlinear in that certain combinations of these traits are greater than the sum of their parts.
treebot 5y ago
I mean this is just evolutionary biology. If you're a defenseless woman in the African Savanna, do you go for the skinny, short man who's nice, or the tall, muscular man who will protect you and your children? Hard to rewire millions of years of conditioning.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  However, this isn't completely true, given the diversity we find in men and women both; if being jacked was the only factor, then everyone would be jacked and society would be aimed at it. Instead, we find a balance. As I've heard it explained, and to oversimplify, jacked men get laid, but "softer" men get married and live happily ever after. The number of jacked men who sleep around seems to significantly drop after age 30 as well (I have no concrete numbers to prove this btw).
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Quite the opposite! Humans traded away a lot of strength for other things like precision of movements, cognitive abilities, decreased energy usage and the a huge endurance at walking. If we evolved to be gorillas we would be gorillas. Instead we are much weaker, but very social animals with peak cognitive abilities.
thesaintlives 5y ago
Totally true. Women who like sex seem to like guys who are jacked. If you have a nice personality to match and brains you are golden. One year I think I slept with over 150 women. I honestly lost count. We all had fun and the gym ain't bad either..
- vDG0Vfnj 5y ago
  Honest question. I have made some changes lately and get the feeling that I probably could have multiple casual partners. I would like to see what it's like, but always abandon the effort due to concern for potential partners' feelings. Even if there's no explicit commitment beforehand, there could be unstated hopes for escalation to a monogamous relationship, or even just mismatched expectations about sleeping together on a regular basis or PDA's. I have heard womens' accounts of sleeping with "highly connected nodes" like you, and their tone is generally casual to the point of being almost dismissive, as if they could clearly see in advance that there would be no escalation. However, the one time in my life when I did have a one-night stand, even though we had an explicit conversation about expectations beforehand, my partner harbored hopes for an escalation and the whole thing ended in a really devastating way. Do you do anything intentional to prevent hurt feelings, eg have a frank conversation or look for or send certain emotional signals? I probably am "on the spectrum," so more pedantry than normal would be helpful.
  - CapricornNoble 5y ago
    >>> I would like to see what it's like, but always abandon the effort due to concern for potential partners' feelings. Not OP, but as someone who has maintained harems....you sound too empathetic to manage it without heartache. It's helpful if you are comfortable gaslighting them, honestly. If a side-chick is heartbroken because things didn't turn into a "serious relationship" that's HER fault for failing to do her due diligence in assessing you as a mate. That's HER fault for constructing a fairy-tale future in her head. Delivering non-committal answers to questions without turning them off can be a difficult-to-learn skill, but eventually you'll get it. Or better yet, don't answer questions at all, once you recognize which questions might disrupt the holding pattern you're keeping them in. Amanda: "Let's hang out on Tuesday." Chad: "I'm not available Tuesday." (don't say "...because I'm fucking Becky Tuesday.") Amanda: "Why aren't you available?" Chad: ".....let's get sushi Wednesday, at that place you mentioned." If Amanda is smart, she'll probably deduce that you are seeing other women. If she sticks around, good. If not, her character wasn't suited for the role she's required to play in your life. Nothing of value is lost. If she sticks around but is NOT smart enough to realize she's not The Only One....well, then she's stupid. Life is hard when you're stupid. Let her down gently when the time comes, but don't feel bad about it.
blankface 5y ago
tl;dr have sex
motohagiography 5y ago
"Stated vs. revealed preferences," is the area the describes most of this. I didn't realize the preference for muscularity was not a common assumption, but then again I also remember being a guy in my 20s and even 30s and behaving as though being fit wasn't important and indexed on status signals instead. I accumulated a lot of status symbols but once you have them, it becomes hard to appreciate someone who is impressed by them, which becomes less plumage and more some kind of a psychotic trap, where I've seen some (young'ish) guys essentially act like, "You really like me? Hah! You fool! This is just plumage! You can't like me for who I really am, because I am unlikable - you idiot." As people, we are made in a truly infinite variety of insane, and being fit isn't a cure for these issues, but not getting fit because you think external status symbols (money, education, career, attention, taste) are attractive can be a bitter road. If you wanted to go from zero to changing your life significantly in 6 months without a lot of thinking about it, a 5x5 workout using an app, an intermittent fasting diet, and a 1hr walk in a park on off days - in just water weight and newb gains alone will give you a new perspective. The best workout is the one you do. Your excuses are your story. Challenge them or they'll become the best you ever do.
obarthelemy 5y ago
It's actually funny: the only info given to the women/men were pics. What else are you going to evaluate on with pics ? Wit ? Smell ? Kindness ? When based only on pics, physique is the most important characteristic. Film at 11.
blindmute 5y ago
A tremendous amount of coping going on in here from presumably frail men. Somehow I doubt the same overwhelming skepticism would be observed about a trait they related more to than muscularity.

97 points by jger15 5y ago

Most of the studies seem to "muscularity correlates to likelihood to lie about how many sexual partners had in past year".

mattjaynes 5y ago

Scientific squabbles aside, "getting jacked" is one of the most important things a man can do to increase his attractiveness to females. But if you decide to go down that path, don't make it unnecessarily difficult. Your number 1 priority should be sustainability. This is the mistake I see my friends make over and over. They will start highly motivated, do too much, then quit after a month or two. My top sustainability rule is "I must feel better after my workout than before my workout." This ensures I don't kill my motivation for the future days. You want to create an upward spiral of small successes. Also, you don't need to join a gym or other special program. While they can be helpful in some circumstances, they can also create a lot of friction in your life. You want the bar to be as low as possible for working out. I started with resistance bands at home and found that amazingly sustainable. While others were struggling to get dressed and travel to the gym, I was happily lifting heavy bands 5 minutes after getting out of bed, then continuing with my day in under 30 minutes. Start with first principles: 1) push/pull movements with sufficient resistance, and 2) eat sufficient protein, but don't eat excessive calories, and 3) get sufficient sleep (bad sleep will make progress nearly impossible) [bonus: walking is the best 'cardio' to use when trying to gain muscle] If you want to dive deeper into the science of optimizing your gains, I'd recommend Dr Mike Israetel, who has the least fluff and most scientific (and entertaining) content I've found: https://www.youtube.com/c/RenaissancePeriodization/playlists https://www.youtube.com/c/RenaissancePeriodization/playlists I started lifting about 6 years ago after being newly single, and my own anecdata was that as I lost fat and put on significant muscle, the dating experience changed dramatically for me. Dating just seemed 5X to 10X easier. Not to mention the many other obvious life improvements that come with being fit (confidence, health, energy, performance, etc). I've seen many friends in the last few years start and fail, but by keeping the friction low and the process enjoyable, I've made it a habit that I've kept unbroken the last 6 years. Focus on keeping the bar low and the enjoyment high - there are no bonus points for suffering.

bradlys 5y ago
What makes the lifting enjoyable for folks? I personally find commuting to the gym, lifting for an hour or two, and heading home to be kinda draining. I feel “better” after doing it but mainly only because I felt like I was making progress and there was less guilt for doing something. The actual time in the gym sucks and just feels like a hamster in a wheel. I’ve never found a way to not make it this way. After all - I’m at the gym, solo grinding for XP, and surrounded by guys with 8-packs who are 5 years ahead of me. Even if I get to where they are, no guarantee that it’ll have been “worth it”. Being in the gym literally feels like I’m in the tv show “severance”. (Admittedly I haven’t seen the show - I just know the premise) It’s completely lost time and at no point enjoyable. It’s what I imagine people with two hour commutes feel like but now add in physical pain and discomfort.

lr4444lr 5y ago

Muscularity is the strongest predictor of mating success for men. More than money or its earning power? I'm skeptical.

mensetmanusman 5y ago
San Fran millionaire coder bro versus Bronx construction bro.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sdze 5y ago
  I can only imagine the Construction worker knows how to use his body well. At the end of the day we are all animals.
- forgetfulness 5y ago
  The West Coast has a glut of coder bros. In NYC men with a college education are the buyer's market. I remember a very strange reading from a "geek girl" years ago, where she went on and on about deriding the men who were, by all measures, her own peers, and she went on and on about how now that she's realized her own worth she's pulling jacked scientist-adventurers and such and the other guys were losers all along. I remembered this after thinking about how my lowly bachelor's degree and a pretty face have earned me a warmer reception by the Academic community outside the campus than inside where I'm currently living (despite being at the moment a terrible catch). It clicked. I wouldn't, however, write a spiel trash talking women with the same level of education and a similar physique to mine just because I can, say, bat above my own league right now.
vincebowdren 5y ago
The studies weren't asking about marriage success, but about mating success. Female preferences can be pretty different between those two.
- tharne 5y ago

cdot2 5y ago

Is it possible that it's the other way around? That confidence or something else leads to both masters degrees, muscles, and other success instead of masters degrees and muscles leading to other success?

DaveExeter 5y ago
A masters degree might be associated with more $$. I think women have an instinctive attraction to muscles, just as men have an instinctive attraction to larger busts and hips.
VLM 5y ago
> or something The somethings you're looking for are huge levels of self discipline and low time preference. You can glance at a guy and tell he has that if he has muscles; you can't glance at a guy and tell if he has a masters or phd. But since self discipline and low time preference BOTH can lead to muscular and academic success, as a generic search criteria just look for the muscles. Over decades in the gym I've noticed almost all the big guys are autodidacts, much like sysadmins / programmers / hackers. This includes all the positive, and negative, stereotypes of autodidacts.
zauguin 5y ago
Based on my experience there does not seem to be a strong (positive) correlation between masters degrees and muscles. Might depend on the Master of course.
bradlys 5y ago
I really doubt it. I’ve seen all kinds of men get jacked. Those with good self-discipline and those without. Also - people read into things too much. Why can’t people just be superficial? Why do we have to think there’s some really really deep reason for why we find someone physically attractive? People aren’t as complicated all the time.

sdze 5y ago

I can also imagine that muscularity leads to increased testosterone and therefore to more pleasing smell.

karpierz 5y ago

I hate this kind of research. Scrape some data, observe some correlations, and then imprint your view of the world onto it to draw some ad-hoc conclusions. For example: > In this study, researchers asked two different groups of women to look at photos of different men and rate how strong the men looked. Results showed that the rated strength of a male body accounts for 70 percent of the variance in attractiveness (this is a massive effect size). Except that if you read the paper, you find: 1. "Furthermore, for two of the three regressions, the attractiveness measure became a negative predictor once strength ratings were controlled for. In other words, there appear to be cues in the male body that accurately indicate strength (and are detected as such by raters), but nonetheless are neutral or negatively valued when assessing attractiveness." 2. You know what else is correlated with strength? Mental health, income, social status, etc. You know what the study doesn't at all control for? 3. It turns out if you only give people a photo and have them judge attractiveness, they'll only look at the physique of the person. This doesn't mean it's how people view attractiveness in real-world situations where you have all sorts of other data.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
> In other words, there appear to be cues in the male body that accurately indicate strength (and are detected as such by raters), but nonetheless are neutral or negatively valued when assessing attractiveness. hahaha yes I was wondering about that. Gym-based fitness and lifting specifically seem pretty trendy right now and a lot of the younger men I know lift and are very visibly fit. But anecdotally pretty much all of the strongest men I've known had guts to match their arms and if you saw them out of weight training context you'd probably say they looked more schlubby than than chiseled.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  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.)
  - 5y ago

erfgh 5y ago

He seems to be equating "mating success" with "high number of sexual partners". I don't think this is reasonable.

User23 5y ago
Evolutionarily speaking number of offspring would indeed be a better metric, but with pervasive contraception there’s not much signal there.
tharne 5y ago
> He seems to be equating "mating success" with "high number of sexual partners". I don't think this is reasonable. It's not a perfect equivalence, but it's more than reasonable, c'mon man.

agomez314 5y ago

If you're a beginner and want to start lifting weights I highly recommend the 5x5 workout. After progression becomes more difficult and takes longer to increase weight, switch to the Texas Method. 5x5: https://stronglifts.com/5x5/ https://stronglifts.com/5x5/ Texas Method: https://startingstrength.com/article/the_texas_method https://startingstrength.com/article/the_texas_method

sdze 5y ago
I think you could also just lose body fat (through dieting and moving around) and appear "muscular". No need to workout so hard.
- bb123 5y ago
  Not if you're like me who's hovering at the low end of normal BMI anyway. Gaining weight isn't easy for everyone.
- rajangdavis 5y ago
  You can also lose more fat by increasing the size of your muscles which can be achieved through lifting. https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202100242R https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.2021002...
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  Posture is positively affected by lifting too. You need to do something to balance muscular development through your body, it doesn't need to be lifting.
- muldvarp 5y ago
  If you don't do physical exercise losing body fat will mostly make you look skinny, not muscular.
  - sdze 5y ago
    you won't loose your disgusting gunt otherwise. It's a fact. I see a lot of "work out" men that are unbelievable obese. Something 75 years ago would be circus material. They might have strength, but optically it is just not esthetically. Goal: hypocaloric life.

master_crab 5y ago

Romantic relationships =/= marriage. They are related, but it is not a perfect equivalent.

bradlys 5y ago
It’s a good start though. If you’re willing to sleep with them then you’re more likely to marry them compared to you’re not willing to sleep with them crowd. If you’re not physically attracted to a person - there’s a near zero chance you will sleep or marry them. So, it naturally follows that being more physically attractive is good for your chances.

bannedbybros 5y ago

redleggedfrog 5y ago

Makes sense to me. We're just a bunch of monkeys shaped by evolution. Women would choose men that made for stronger and probably better surviving offspring. And the man can act as protector - if they don't turn dangerous.

romanhn 5y ago

The article talks about "mating success", which I'm not really sure correlates with marriage necessarily. Calling Tinder a marriage market is quite a stretch as well. Summary seems to be "physical attractiveness leads to more sex", which I imagine surprises absolutely no one.

kiba 5y ago
We probably have more success in finding partners in the friendships we cultivated.
jhallenworld 5y ago
I think this is right- I know men who have no trouble picking up women (they are "jacked"), but can't keep them due to other personality issues (they are too controlling).
gunshai 5y ago
I'd assume there is a loose correlation changing in age. My assumption is having a long term partner with out having sexual intimacy is fairly uncommon, understanding sexual compatability for people looking for a long term partner is a probably high on the criteria to sort by. IE hard to understand compatibility with out the deed. That said I agree the perception is that Tinder isn't socially known as the place to find a long term partner. Call me old fashioned, but the ability to approach people in the real world about your interests in a socially acceptable manner may have less potential surface area but is probably a higher success rate for longer term relationships.
- visarga 5y ago
  > IE hard to understand compatibility with out the deed. Also hard to judge how you'd be in a relation with someone beforehand, even if you already know that person well.

throwaway2474 5y ago

So here’s a conundrum. The longevity literature consistently reports that caloric restriction and in particular minimising protein intake, including eg the BCAAs found in protein powders, leads to a longer lifespan. Other things like mTOR that are associated with muscle growth also lead to shorter lifespan. Basically it seems like you have a choice - live a long life, or get muscular.

sdze 5y ago
longevity science is still voodoo science.
michaelrpeskin 5y ago
There are two subtleties about this that often are not talked about. 1) The caloric restriction -> longevity research shows that it's generally true, but it much more pronounced in small creatures that spend a significant amount of "lifetime energy expenditure" during reproduction (like mice). So while caloric restriction makes a mouse live 30% longer (making up numbers here), the same proportion of caloric restriction may give <1% extra life in a human. 2) There often a quantity vs quality of life trade off too. Let's say reducing mTOR and BCAA takes a few years off of your life but you have much more muscle and with that great posture and movement that doesn't break down your body and you feel great (and if we believe the linked article more sex too). Is that a trade off you're willing to take? Same argument can be made with HRT for older men (I'm nearing that age). It seems that lots of the scary news related to HRT and anabolics in general is more about looking at the negative effects without accounting for the quality of life improvements that come from just being stronger.
simiones 5y ago
Well, there are more factors to consider on the long life vs good life idea.
adrian_b 5y ago
There is no doubt that excessive protein intake is bad. However, when attempting to reduce your protein intake, great care is required to not reduce it too much, like for everything else that is bad in excess, but which is still necessary for life. A too low daily protein intake leads to various problems, e.g. a too low albumin level in the blood, which are guaranteed to reduce your lifespan.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

VLM 5y ago

"getting jacked" correlates with about a hundred other positive behaviors, leading to obvious confusion about which is the magic sauce that actually causes female attraction. The article incorrectly assumes its mere bulk mass, but fat dudes do not attract women, so ... Higher protein/lower carb diet of lifters naturally leads to lower body fat, face and neck look better, which also correlates with reproductive success. As if I needed yet another reason not to start smoking, I don't want to pass out coughing at the gym so I don't smoke, with a side effect of my teeth are therefore not yellow. Non-yellow teeth also correlate with reproductive success. Even stuff like I don't binge drink or use drugs and get reasonable good sleep therefore my eyes are rarely bloodshot in the morning, again, eyes that don't look like a gore pic correlate with reproductive success. A lower carb diet plus some sweating in the sauna eliminates all skin problems for me, and again lack of zits correlates well with reproductive success. A final interesting correlation is there's an absolute fixation by non-lifters on "beating people up" whereas in reality I've lived in a concealed carry state for decades so people are much more civil and polite to each other and I'm not in a demographic or social class where beatings are part of life. I would instead propose it seems rather obvious that a guy who takes excellent care of himself will take excellent care of his partner and children, which seems to market pretty well to women, every woman wants to see her kids grow up healthy strong and attractive, so a guy that "cheats" his natural genetics by putting in a couple hours in the gym every week is going to massively attract women. That said, the specific cause doesn't really matter, if you generally join the overall "lifter lifestyle", it will work out well. Eat better, exercise, treat your body well, and that will attract people.

User23 5y ago
> Higher protein/lower carb diet of lifters naturally leads to lower body fat, face and neck look better, which also correlates with reproductive success. As an aside, the US infantry soldiers’ rations included about 22 ounces of beef per day during WW1. The eat ten pounds of bread and almost no red meat per day food pyramid is so awful I wonder if it’s malicious.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  22oz of beef per day seems crazy high for peacetime cattle ranch owners, let alone deployed infantry. (I’d love it, but that’s 5.5 quarter pounders per day, which seems really high for wartime rations. If the US pulled that off, that had to be a massive [relative] advantage in troop energy and morale.)

spamizbad 5y ago

It's extremely funny to me that someone did a research to determine whether athleticism or education makes you more sexually desirable. Not dissing the effort: Always good to hav e our priors confirmed by science!

jdrc 5y ago

I wonder if > overall number of sexual partners is important for today's younger generations. It doesnt appear that they studiet it

upupandup 5y ago

it's always interesting to me the discrepancies in beauty standards and attractiveness in different cultures for both genders. Obviously this polling is done from a Americana/Europa point of view but outside it, there's less emphasis on macho maleness, which seems to be what muscularity is alluding to, in fact it hurts you. Women are diverse and so are there preferences but its probably harder to see it in macho, male driven image in the American continent. It appears that especially in the American/European continent, muscularity, the ability to exert physical violence, justified or not, is what is preferred, which tells you a bit about those societies, violence and fear appears to be a component of their culture, especially true in Americas compared to Western Europe for instance. However, it's obvious that the new generation has a very different standards for male beauty. The popularity of BTS is a good example. It just shows you how much of an impact media has. Japanese women for the most part prefer the thin skinny androgyny according to polls, in fact androgyny in males is highly preferred over the macho masculinity or less threatening looking males, which says a bit about those societies which are far far safer and non-violent compared to North America. At the same time there is casual physical contact that is generally accepted but you don't walk in the streets at night in large cities and fear for your life.

mattgreenrocks 5y ago
If beauty standards differ somewhat from culture to culture, doesn't that break the "we're just evolved animals" evo-psych idea that physical strength is the most important thing?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Most "evolutionary psychology" that you find online is broscience if not worse.
  - mattgreenrocks 5y ago
    Absolutely, I'm just instilling some doubt in readers. :)
- at_a_remove 5y ago

mmcgaha 5y ago

Of course more women are attracted to smart successful men and of course they are attracted to physically attractive men but it is a bit easier to see your muscles than your master's degree when you are walk in a room. First impressions are important.

mywittyname 5y ago
> it is a bit easier to see your muscles than your master's degree when you are walk in a room. This would make for an interesting experiment. I bet you can deduce a person's education level accurately by appearance, unless the person makes a deliberate attempt to hide it, but even then, things like good dental hygiene are a give away. People largely try to fit in with their peer group, and people are pretty good at identifying groups. I think this is especially true with age.
- brabarossa 5y ago
  Strangers Rank Their Intelligence | IQ vs First Impressions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM

sdze 5y ago

But once you are married, the muscles are gone. So it was not that important after all?

LeanderK 5y ago

Just some observations but I have seen this multiple times in my group of friends. They were good looking but on the skinny side, single, did not really work out and a bit frustrated on the dating market. Most of my friends seriously work out so I think there's a bit of an incentive in my group of friends to try going to the gym and work out (I think this is important, a few years ago I didn't really know anyone working out and it didn't really cross my mind to do it). They took it seriously, after half a year really made progress and either are no longer single or have more dates than they used to. I never really worked out but due to my friends I also started to take my body more seriously. Progress is not that hard, it just takes patience. It's also really increased my quality of life, it's a good way to release stress and a good balance to sitting in front of the computer. Also it's great to just stay in shape, you can do physically demanding things just for fun. In the past I wanted to not be superficial because I thought it was stupid to care too much about looks but working out is really more than gaining more muscles, you really take care of yourself and your body.

afr0ck 5y ago
The main incentive for me to work out was getting my body into a better shape to improve my confidence and enlarge my dating pool. However, after I experienced the plethora of its other benefits, I can safely say it's no more about the former goal, but more for the other benefits that come with it such as stress release, more happiness, more energy, drive and focus, much much better sleep, more libido, etc.
- bradlys 5y ago
  More libido without any of the social benefits would be a huge downside IMO. All I want when I’m single is to be chemically castrated.
  - CapricornNoble 5y ago
    I can relate to this: there's been numerous times where I've resisted keeping a regular exercise regimen because it sends my libido through the roof and I didn't want to deal with the headache of going out/socializing to restock my harem.

sabujp 5y ago

i bought this pull up bar from https://www.walmart.com/ip/Prosourcefit-Multi-Grip-Chin-Up-Pull-Up-Bar-Heavy-Duty-Doorway-Trainer/49967480?athbdg=L1100 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Prosourcefit-Multi-Grip-Chin-Up-P... a month or two ago. Best purchase ever!!! At the beginning I couldn't do any pull-ups except for a few on the grip perpendicular to your body. Since I have lots of WFH time I just randomly kept (trying) doing pull ups while I would walk by where I had it setup on a door, e.g. waiting for tea water to boil or something else in the kitchen/microwave or when randomly pacing about thinking about some code/algo/code review. Now I can easily do 5-10 pull ups using any of the grips and am also getting my kids into it, my older son esp. has difficulty going across monkey bars on the playground so this has helped him. I also recommend putting some additional foam under the padding that comes with the bar that sits/pushes against the front of the door frame, esp. if your door moulding has decorative grooves as these can cut into that padding. In any case, I'm happily married with kids and have never used dating apps, but if you believe in this research and want to increase your hand grip, improve your posture, and improve your overall upper body/core strength this is a dirt cheap way to do it that also requires low activation energy (e.g. no going to the gym).

belval 5y ago

> Handgrip strength is correlated with self-assessed happiness, health, social confidence, overall physical attractiveness, and overall number of sexual partners. This confirms that rock climbing leads to a better life. /s

mattmar96 5y ago
Ha had the same thought

anonimusss 5y ago

My life really changed when I started working out regularly about a year ago. Especially on the women side. I honestly think it has more to do with my changed posture and more energy than actual the muscles but it is impossible to dissect. All i can say. Hit the gym. Don't worry about what anyone would think (nobody cares this isn't highschool). And try to push yourself every week a bit further. Good luck!:)

Zababa 5y ago
> All i can say. Hit the gym. Don't worry about what anyone would think (nobody cares this isn't highschool). Half of the benefit I get from going to the gym is getting used to being around strangers. I used to have lockdown-induced social anxiety, and going to the gym fixed that. Realising that not everyone is out to get you, that most people are just nice people doing their thing and ready to help if you need helps a lot.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  This is me too. My social skills atrophied so much during lock down that going to gyms became as much of a mental workout as a physical one.

photochemsyn 5y ago

All the studies this article references fall into the social science replicability problem zone. Such studies shouldn't be viewed as reliable, and in this case, are merely being used to give a very thin patina of 'scientificity' to the author's opinion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yaseer 5y ago

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. I've been thin, athletic and quite muscular (BMI > 30, 12% bodyfat from powerlifting), and muscular physiques with BMI > 30 are considered less attractive than athletic physiques (Defined as BMI 20-25, 10-15% bodyfat). Also, deviating away from heteronormative perspectives, I would speculate that the response curve for homosexual men may be linear for higher ranges. i.e. Gay men like significant muscle, but straight women prefer athletic builds, on average. A cursory glance at some adult sites for these markets might support this admittedly anecdotal assertion.

muldvarp 5y ago
> 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.
- yaseer 5y ago
  That's interesting, you're right, the article does report a linear-only relationship! They may not have sampled muscular BMIs much above 30 though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745404/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5745404/ Gym sample: > n = 61, mean BMI: 24.0, s.d.: 2.75 ~5% would be above 2 s.d => 3 people with BMI above 29.5 My 'theory' would be for muscular builds with BMIs above 30, the linear relationship breaks down for heterosexual women. You might need a larger sample to test that, perhaps with a bodybuilding sample rather than college students.

thesaintlives 5y ago

Many women who like sex seem to like guys who are jacked. If you have brains and a personality to match you can do very well if you also like sex and women. I think one year I must have slept with maybe more than 150 women. Honestly I lost count. It was probably much more...

pfisherman 5y ago

That is a pretty sweeping conclusion to draw from women watching some videos. In my experience personality (i.e. game), money, and height have at least as big and effect. And you can be lacking on any of these dimensions - personality is the least forgiving - and still do very well. Moreover I think the relationship with attractiveness is nonlinear in that certain combinations of these traits are greater than the sum of their parts.

treebot 5y ago

I mean this is just evolutionary biology. If you're a defenseless woman in the African Savanna, do you go for the skinny, short man who's nice, or the tall, muscular man who will protect you and your children? Hard to rewire millions of years of conditioning.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
However, this isn't completely true, given the diversity we find in men and women both; if being jacked was the only factor, then everyone would be jacked and society would be aimed at it. Instead, we find a balance. As I've heard it explained, and to oversimplify, jacked men get laid, but "softer" men get married and live happily ever after. The number of jacked men who sleep around seems to significantly drop after age 30 as well (I have no concrete numbers to prove this btw).
goodpoint 5y ago
Quite the opposite! Humans traded away a lot of strength for other things like precision of movements, cognitive abilities, decreased energy usage and the a huge endurance at walking. If we evolved to be gorillas we would be gorillas. Instead we are much weaker, but very social animals with peak cognitive abilities.

thesaintlives 5y ago

Totally true. Women who like sex seem to like guys who are jacked. If you have a nice personality to match and brains you are golden. One year I think I slept with over 150 women. I honestly lost count. We all had fun and the gym ain't bad either..

vDG0Vfnj 5y ago
Honest question. I have made some changes lately and get the feeling that I probably could have multiple casual partners. I would like to see what it's like, but always abandon the effort due to concern for potential partners' feelings. Even if there's no explicit commitment beforehand, there could be unstated hopes for escalation to a monogamous relationship, or even just mismatched expectations about sleeping together on a regular basis or PDA's. I have heard womens' accounts of sleeping with "highly connected nodes" like you, and their tone is generally casual to the point of being almost dismissive, as if they could clearly see in advance that there would be no escalation. However, the one time in my life when I did have a one-night stand, even though we had an explicit conversation about expectations beforehand, my partner harbored hopes for an escalation and the whole thing ended in a really devastating way. Do you do anything intentional to prevent hurt feelings, eg have a frank conversation or look for or send certain emotional signals? I probably am "on the spectrum," so more pedantry than normal would be helpful.
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  >>> I would like to see what it's like, but always abandon the effort due to concern for potential partners' feelings. Not OP, but as someone who has maintained harems....you sound too empathetic to manage it without heartache. It's helpful if you are comfortable gaslighting them, honestly. If a side-chick is heartbroken because things didn't turn into a "serious relationship" that's HER fault for failing to do her due diligence in assessing you as a mate. That's HER fault for constructing a fairy-tale future in her head. Delivering non-committal answers to questions without turning them off can be a difficult-to-learn skill, but eventually you'll get it. Or better yet, don't answer questions at all, once you recognize which questions might disrupt the holding pattern you're keeping them in. Amanda: "Let's hang out on Tuesday." Chad: "I'm not available Tuesday." (don't say "...because I'm fucking Becky Tuesday.") Amanda: "Why aren't you available?" Chad: ".....let's get sushi Wednesday, at that place you mentioned." If Amanda is smart, she'll probably deduce that you are seeing other women. If she sticks around, good. If not, her character wasn't suited for the role she's required to play in your life. Nothing of value is lost. If she sticks around but is NOT smart enough to realize she's not The Only One....well, then she's stupid. Life is hard when you're stupid. Let her down gently when the time comes, but don't feel bad about it.

blankface 5y ago

tl;dr have sex

motohagiography 5y ago

"Stated vs. revealed preferences," is the area the describes most of this. I didn't realize the preference for muscularity was not a common assumption, but then again I also remember being a guy in my 20s and even 30s and behaving as though being fit wasn't important and indexed on status signals instead. I accumulated a lot of status symbols but once you have them, it becomes hard to appreciate someone who is impressed by them, which becomes less plumage and more some kind of a psychotic trap, where I've seen some (young'ish) guys essentially act like, "You really like me? Hah! You fool! This is just plumage! You can't like me for who I really am, because I am unlikable - you idiot." As people, we are made in a truly infinite variety of insane, and being fit isn't a cure for these issues, but not getting fit because you think external status symbols (money, education, career, attention, taste) are attractive can be a bitter road. If you wanted to go from zero to changing your life significantly in 6 months without a lot of thinking about it, a 5x5 workout using an app, an intermittent fasting diet, and a 1hr walk in a park on off days - in just water weight and newb gains alone will give you a new perspective. The best workout is the one you do. Your excuses are your story. Challenge them or they'll become the best you ever do.

obarthelemy 5y ago

It's actually funny: the only info given to the women/men were pics. What else are you going to evaluate on with pics ? Wit ? Smell ? Kindness ? When based only on pics, physique is the most important characteristic. Film at 11.

blindmute 5y ago

A tremendous amount of coping going on in here from presumably frail men. Somehow I doubt the same overwhelming skepticism would be observed about a trait they related more to than muscularity.