The Female Gaze

People stating their preferences are often at odds with what they actually prefer, especially when there’s social expectations.<p>If you had a dating profile of both, you could more directly test people’s true preferences. Anecdotally, for every woman who says she prefers a dad bod, there are ten who would swipe right on the muscled gym rat.<p>I’ve also heard anecdotally that for a woman in a relationship, dad bods means there’s less attention from other woman so it reduces competition, whereas for women who aren’t in a relationship they actually prefer a man who is popular with the ladies. Both sexes have differences in preference for when in a relationship vs single.

I thought it was a good read.<p>It&#x27;s refreshing to hear someone acknowledge that there are differences between biologically male and female people. Like the author expresses, this shouldn&#x27;t be controversial, and the assertion is in no way anti-anything. How a person feels about their sexuality is a totally different thing, in a totally different category, from their biological gender. I liken it to arguing that there is no such thing as a person having a natural hair color, because they choose to dye their hair a different color.<p>It was also refreshing to hear the author express that females do indeed possess sexuality, and that human sexuality guides a lot of behaviours, including female behaviours, especially behaviours involving interfacing to the &quot;other&quot; gender.<p>Accepting the physical reality that humans are comprised of two sexual genders (with some small percentage of people having phenotypes that are intermediary between these two), and allowing for people to express their sexuality in whatever way they choose or whatever way feels right for them, are in no way mutually exclusive, or even antagonistic.<p>WRT the before-after photo, again I agree with the author in the sense that it depends on what you&#x27;re looking at. For me, a biological male, while the person&#x27;s body is certainly more muscular and thin in the after photo, I would have to say his face looks more naturally shaped and &quot;attractive&quot; in the before photo. The after photo face looks almost skeletal and stretched compared to the smiling nicely rounded face of the before photo. All of this is, of course, a matter of opinion.<p>Maybe (MAYBE) women are looking more at the cute face, and men are mostly considering which body they&#x27;d prefer to pin to the mat?

&gt;In the first shot, a smiling Murs stands in a relaxed posture, against a gym backdrop. He’s carrying a few extra pounds but looks within normal range, and well-muscled underneath. He seems as though he’s mid-workout; it could have been a candid snap made in passing, between sets. In the second, by contrast, Murs stands in a pair of iddy biddy shorts, under stark lighting in a changing room, weighing scales visible in-shot. The background connotes not action but self-reflexive activities such as dressing, examining one’s reflection, watching one’s weight. Murs faces the camera, tense, flexing his muscles to show off the definition. In relation to the photographer he is not acting; he is appearing.<p>This is what too much analysis class does to a person. These two photographs are the same photograph. Stanly Kubrick did not labor over the composition of these shots for weeks. Some dude was regularly training and over time got a couple progress pics taken.

I think the main reason people choose the image of the man on the left is because the lighting in the picture on the right is worse. It casts sharp shadows which makes his neck and face look weird. I bet if the lighting was more diffuse, like the photo on the left, the results would be different.

I think in the right side photo he looks like he&#x27;s riddled with steroids and has an unsustainable training and eating regimen. I find it weird when a 40+ year old has zero percent body fat and a six pack.<p>Left side he looks natural but still in good shape.

It&#x27;s because the personality attached to the guy on the right is no doubt way more into how he looks, and how impressed he wants people to be by how he looks.<p>It also means that dating him will include leaving chunks of every day for him to workout, and counting macronutrients at every meal.<p>The guy on the right looks like a self-involved boring person to hang out with. Well fit for sure! But what are you going to talk about beyond the benefits of creatine and whether or not you should get protein from whey?

I&#x27;ve been lifting weights for a long time. This means that I, naturally, explored body building (albeit very early into picking up the hobby).<p>One thing I&#x27;ve learned from that experience is that these kinds of progress shots are, mostly, for other men. Interestingly, &quot;mirin&#x27;&quot; is the adjective for this effect.<p>Given this, it makes total sense that men would poll the after photo higher

It&#x27;s still unclear to me whether people (of either gender) are judging the picture and pose, or the body itself, or something else entirely.

I think the Before picture looked better, and I&#x27;m a man.<p>What an utterly silly and pointless article. I wish I could get my five minutes back.

Maybe these aren&#x27;t the &quot;same men&quot;, but it&#x27;s interesting that men see and admit this phenomenon exists in the reverse (Men prefer cuter&#x2F;sportier&#x2F;more natural looking women and that a lot of what women do to look good is meant to appeal to other women) but not the reverse?<p>But even I can sort of look at the two pictures, and my gut reaction is, I&#x27;d like to look like the guy on the right, but I&#x27;d rather be friends with the guy on the left. Maybe it&#x27;s a feeling of safety? Maybe a little pudge is like imagining being curled up on a warm sofa rather than a cot of metal coils? But then maybe, just to sort of give this a little credence. While I&#x27;d like to be friends with the guy on the left. There is a part of me that&#x27;s like. Maybe I&#x27;d ask the guy on the right for advice on my stock portfolio? Tips to get ahead in the workplace? I do value some of those things, but not in my close personal life. I am transactional in the spaces it matters.<p>&quot;It is, after all, a special case of the central liberal delusion that all people are the same&quot;<p>lol this was not going the direction I thought, this person apparently has the completely opposite thesis I do.<p>I&#x27;ll not another weird thing about this &quot;liberal delusion that all people are the same&quot; is that they seem committed to category theory. They&#x27;re very committed to the idea that men and women are not the same, but sort of equally suspicious of the idea that there are strong within group differences. i.e. they want to say something like all women are all the same and all men are all the same and all women are different from all men in some substantial way.

I kept waiting for this piece to get really racist.

&gt; The central structural issue is that by and large, both sexes now unquestioningly accept the flawed premise that men and women are the same. It is, after all, a special case of the central liberal delusion that all people are the same: a dogma so central to the modern world that elaborate systems of law and social dogma exist to encourage compliance.<p>This is interesting coming from someone in the UK (who I&#x27;d expect less to have such an American view of &quot;liberals&quot;).<p>No, the point is that women and men should be <i>treated</i> the same wherever physically possible, to get as close as possible outcomes. Not that men and women are the same, which obviously isn&#x27;t true. Part of it is biology (which can be changed, before any transphobes jump in), part of it is education and expectations.<p>As an example, the average woman is weaker than the average man. That doesn&#x27;t mean that a random non athletic man can win a fight against a female boxer, obviously. But it doesn&#x27;t make women less human or less worthy of whatever or incapable of being firefighters.<p>Pregnancy is also an obvious example - women obviously need more time around birth than their partners do. That doesn&#x27;t mean that only they should do all childcare.<p>Honestly, none of this is rocket brain surgery, I&#x27;m shocked anyone still struggles or manages to misunderstand what feminism (by and large, not fringes) wants, or what &quot;liberals&quot; (I&#x27;m assuming this to mean social progressives) have as a worldview with regards to women and men.

JC, would the article just get to the point?! I&#x27;m a straight guy, but even I can tell mild dadbod with fuller hairline will yield sexier sons than balding try-hard.