Spaghetti arms and sour grapes

Susan Walsh provides what would appear to be a counter-intuitive perspective on the appeal of male muscles:

I think men get muscled for one another, kind of the way women dress up for one another when they go out. Women like a fit body, but I will take a runner over a bodybuilder anyday. And I am grossed out by male pecs that are like boobs – something Jason was talking about recently. Blech!  I may be an extreme case – for example, I think Nathan Harden’s skinny arm on the CD cover is sexy. I think his jutting hipbones would be sexy. But I’ve always liked the hipster look. I’m not alone – my guess is that skinny, brooding types, who are often called “bad boys” even when they are not, as in Nathan’s case – outperform PUA types by a mile.

Solipsism alert! First, straight men most certainly do not get muscled for one another. That is pure female projection. We muscle up because it feels good to be powerful rather than weak, because we tend to seek improvement and get competitive with ourselves whenever we focus on something, and because we observe that women gravitate towards the stronger, more well-developed men.  It feels great when women eye your muscles with interest and grab at your pecs, your biceps and your triceps.

I never cared about being able to bench more than my best friends.  My high-school tennis partner was the state powerlifting champion, I was never, ever, going to be able to compete with him.  But I cared a great deal about being able to bench 135, then 225, then 315.  Now, I have a naturally delicate build, but managed to put on nearly 50 pounds over the years through hitting the weights. So I have a direct basis for comparison and I can say that women, on the average, react much more strongly and much more positively to men with well-developed musculatures. Furthermore, it tends to be the hottest, fittest women who prefer the hardest men. After all, who is going to pound her harder and throw her around the bed more easily, limp-wristed Emo Boy or strong, fit, Ripped Guy.

It's not that I had any problem attracting girls when I was a slender soccer player. I’m a writer, after all, and I could probably brood for England. But then, I never once had pretty strangers in the street look me over and say “yum” either.  That being said, do some guys overdo the weight training?  Yes, absolutely. But there is a huge gap between a scrawny runner and a waddling musclehead who looks like a stuffed sausage in a suit.  Daniel Craig as James Bond on the beach is much more the norm than Arnold as Mr. Universe posing onstage.

I thought Susan's comment about finding skinny arms to be sexy to be particularly interesting, since I have heard other women declare that they find "spaghetti arms" and "sunken chests" on men to be vomit-inducing.  I have also noticed that adult women who prefer hipster men are either still attracted to the same type of juveniles that first attracted them in their early teens or fall in the 5-6 SMV category.

My hypothesis is that the human mind has an unconscious means of limiting its attraction triggers to the members of the opposite sex within an attainable SMV range. It was always astounding to me when a relatively plain woman would confess that she found one of my average male friends to be hot while genuinely exhibiting no interest whatsoever in any of my much better-looking friends. It’s a very healthy and positive spin on the sour grapes fable.

As for PUAs, no.  Hipsters do not outperform them.  If nothing else, logic would suggest that by the time a skinny brooding hipster has emo’d his way into a girl’s boudoir, the PUA will have plowed his way through six or seven women already. After all, it takes a lot more time to strike poses, simper, and wait to be noticed than damn the torpedoes and proceed full speed ahead.

"Kate Beckett" on Castle may have said it best, grammatical infelicities notwithstanding, upon realizing how many moderately attractive women had been seduced by a dead PUA whose death she was investigating.  "I weep for my gender."

Anyhow, if Susan finds skinny arms to be sexy, no doubt she'll be absolutely enraptured by this video from my old Wax Trax! labelmates, particularly by the lead singer, Milan Fras.  JA!  JA!  JA!  JAWOHL!  I don't know about the sexiness, but Milan is at least 1,000x more totally awesome than Nathan Harden.  I doubt Harden has giant pink caribous... by which I actually mean GIANT PINK CARIBOUS.