ECTOMORPH AESTHETICS
Every straight guy knows how a girl’s femininity can tug on our heart strings. And our lust strings. Sometimes a woman’s shape, personality, face, voice—it all just adds up to make her absolutely irresistible. (Here‘s an article on the most attractive female body.) Women feel the same way about us men … just based on a whole different set of traits.
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For better or worse, the impression we give off can have a huge impact on our life. Even if we train and eat well for our health and performance, we also want to attract great women, and ultimately spending the rest of our lives with the one we want is a pretty damn big deal. And of course, even once we have her that doesn’t mean we should stop striving to be the man of her dreams.
It’s not just about women either—getting the respect of other men is important to us too, both in our personal and work life. Aesthetics, muscle, health and masculinity are all so closely related that how we train and eat can roll over into every area of our life. It makes sense for us to care.
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If anything, as men sometimes we tend to think attractiveness matters less than it actually does. A new study just published at the University of Notre Dame found that the whole successful but unattractive guy marrying a beautiful woman stereotype is pretty much just a myth. It turns out that attractiveness attracts attractiveness, just like success attracts success. This is good news for sexism, bad news for thinking you can get away with being a schlub. (study)
The tricky part is that some of the traits we portray are obvious … but some we’d never even think to think of. Moreover, sometimes it’s those elusive traits that make or break us.
I should also point out that caring about building a manly physique isn’t just a skinny-boy thing. In a study done on college football players—guys who are madly in love with their sport and whose careers depend on how well they perform—they found that while most of them listed power and performance as their reasons behind wanting muscular bodies … they also admitted to caring a whole hell of a lot about their physical appearance and sex appeal. (study)
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Aesthetics isn’t something we can avoid, and everyone is influenced by it. To a certain extent we’re all unique snowflakes, sure, but when it comes to aesthetics, well … we aren’t. Personal preference has its place, but a lot of it, in fact almost all of it, is basic human nature with some social conditioning sprinkled on top. Love it or hate it, it happens. It’s instinctive, uncontrollable and often subconscious. We’re built to automatically respect men who display certain traits, and in a similar but different way some of our male traits can create gut-level attraction in women.
Think about the effect that a curvy female hourglass physique has on you. Combine the right bone structure with fat in the right places and muscle in the right places and bam—you get that instinctive response that turns your head and knocks the wind right out of you. I often find myself tempted to click on ridiculous ads featuring photoshopped girls for that very reason.
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As men, sometimes the character we portray is obvious. I have one uncle who’s 6’2 and maybe 250 pounds. That man loves his football and loves to eat. He’s been lifting heavy things and eating big his entire life, resulting in around 100 of those pounds being in his shoulders. He doesn’t look like a bodybuilder, he looks like a bear. He has to get all of his clothing not just tailored but completely custom made to accommodate his cartooned musculature. Combine that with his deep booming voice and the overall effect is pretty wild—when he speaks the room falls silent, when he walks down the sidewalk guys give him a wide berth, and when he asks you for something you hurriedly splurt out a yes, often before he finishes his sentence.
It isn’t all show either, and I’ve seen him lift a man off his feet who was (very) disrespectful to my female cousin. When my uncle put him back down the man hit the ground running. Seconds later we heard tires skidding as he sped off. Understandably—if a bear set me back down I’d seriously consider the same exit strategy.
Having a guy like that on your side immediately makes you feel safe. If something goes wrong you just figure things will be okay. He’s a smart and well-read guy, too, and his voice, physique and confidence all make for a hell of a lot of charisma when he speaks.
Do you know what words a stranger would use to describe you when you walk by?
As men we tune into certain things about other men, immediately sizing them up and forming an opinion … yet we’re often totally unaware of how we’re portraying ourselves to other men, let alone women. There are traits we don’t even know exist that can have a powerful drug-like effect on women. Some strong athletic masculine men convey them naturally, but I’ve always found that it pays to consciously know how we can improve, even if just to encourage ourselves to be the most that we can be. That’s how us ectomorphs become strong athletic masculine men, after all.
Besides, aesthetics aren’t just skin deep. The benefits go all the way down to our bones*, improving our health, strength, intelligence, performance and mood. Good looks signal higher degrees of those traits after all, which is why they look “good” to begin with.
*Not a figure of speech—heavy strength training actually increases bone density, as does solid nutrition.
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