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Dad bod, you had a fine run. But you were going up against reinforced behaviors and survival skills dating back hundreds of thousands of years. So it should shock no one that women are attracted to strong, muscular men. An Australian study found that women are more sexually attracted to the strongest-looking men. RIP the dad bod.
Researchers at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia examined what features caused women to be attracted to men and it was physical strength. The study, which was published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, surveyed 160 women and conducted two separate experiments. Photos of men were shown to the female participants and they rated their attractiveness as well as the men’s physical strength. The men in the photos were given a strength test. Nearly all of the women preferred the guys who were ripped as opposed to physically weak.
The researchers used the data collected and found that women were most concerned with three factors: how muscular he is, his height, and how lean he is. These three physical attributes were at the top of the list as far as attraction. Sorry to say this, but no matter how deadly you are at PUBG women don’t care. Pics of the strongest men in the image samples were deemed the most sexually attractive. Overall, a guy’s physical appearance accounted for 80% of women’s attractiveness to the men in the study. How extremely shallow of women.
“We weren’t surprised that women found physically strong men attractive… what did surprise us was just how powerful the effect was,” research lead Aaron Sell of Griffith University in Australia told The Guardian. “Our data couldn’t find even a single woman that preferred weaker or feminine male bodies.” Men are not pieces of meat ladies, we have a brain too.
Being overweight caused men to lose points in the survey, but if you look strong you have a chance. “Our results suggest that even if you’re a bit overweight, looking strong can buffer that,” Aaron Lukaszewski, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University, said. “Basically, being a strong, fat guy is OK, which I think would bring comfort to many.”
The study’s authors concluded that women were preprogrammed to like buff guys because of “ancestral cues of a man’s fighting ability” from caveman days. Dating back to ancient times, the stronger man usually meant he could protect his partner and family as well as provide for them. So appearing strong, virile, and in good health was definitely a turn-on for women. Better start hitting the gym instead of working on your pun-laden Tinder pickup line.
[Maxim]