What Dad Bods Actually Signal To Women

dad bods what have you learned about Dad bods so every once in a while on social media people will post a picture or you know basically one of those body fat comparison pictures that you often see if you follow bodybuilding and all of that where it shows like here's someone with 30% here's someone with 25% here's someone with 20 and so on and it will get down to you know guys who are stage lean who are just jacked and very lean and if you ask women which body do you prefer a lot of women will

say I prefer the dad right which is a guy who maybe is a little bit in shape but not very much and this seems to be something that women pretty consistently say but you know there's a lot of discourse on that like is that true and so I asked women I said why why do you like the dad bod why do you not like these other uh bodies because we also see that these other bodies do emerge in female fantasies for example the coverage of romance novels which you know is kind of the erotic material

consumed by women those are not Dad bods those are usually someone who looks like a fitness model you see you know chip andell's dancers you see for example the calendars with the sexy firemen anytime women uh consume kind of a visual erotic material even if it's very light it tends to be someone who actually is kind of jacked and all that and and the men are described the same way within those novels they don't tend to be described as a dad B they tend to be described as someone who's tall and you know kind of

lean he's got abs and that sort of a thing so I asked women you know why do you like the this Dad bod and and a lot of it was like ah the bodybuilder he comes across is narcissistic he he would make me insecure he might cheat on me so there's kind of a lot going into that that it's like H do women prefer these dad bods perhaps because they signal some kind of comfort they're not as threatening to women and even the idea of a man who's more muscular and larger you know evolutionary women

have a trade-off in their selection of mates a strong man who's tall and physically imposing can protect them but he also represents more of a physical threat to them at the time so you have a lot of different converging things that might make a lot of women say you know I would prefer uh the dad bod someone I'm who makes me feel comfortable in a sense as opposed to like the really jacked fitness model kind of guy what when you're saying that women some say that they prefer the dad bod over the stage lean guy

what about if they're given a much more normal you know 10% 11% body fat guy who has a good amount of muscle mass what what happens to the skew if you get rid of the extremee sort of bodybuilder body do you know well very it's very rare that women if they see the extreme bodybuilder they very rarely seem to say like that's it it tends to be more of of the leaner kind of fitness model but still much more muscular than the average man but still in that case they tend to say you know I

don't want that I want kind of the fluffier guy what sort of body fat do you think they end up settling on can you remember I would think it would be between 20 and 15 wow wow wow all of the GU on a permac cut you don't need to do it anymore just let cheesecake yourself into a new relationship with a hottie yeah I I remember one of my friends who's been through all manner of different Fitness Pursuits and weightlifting he's done powerlifting he's done bodybuilding he did Fitness modeling good-looking kid and his ex-girlfriend who

is no longer with anymore perhaps this is a a contributing reason why uh once said to him as he was was prepping for a show and sort of dialing in his body and getting down to be super lean she said um I've never been happier with you than when you were powerlifting and for anybody that knows what powerlifters look like they're in that sort of 15 to probably maybe even 25% you know as you get up toward the super Heavies they're fluffy they're a fluffy bunch and um yet she said that she'd never been happier

than when that was the body type that he presented with and I I think uh you know a concern about intrasexual competition about mate poaching um that must contribute a good chunk of it you know kind of the it's not quite the same but guys that are concerned about their partner posting bikini photos on the internet you know a dude in a sufficiently well-fitted t-shirt who's walking around a 8% body fat vascular as hell and with a good amount of muscle mass yeah it's not there you can see what's going on here right you can

you can make a lot of inferences about what's what's happening underneath the t-shirt in kind of the same way that a super party hugging dress does for women exactly yeah and something else kind of related to that in the research is individuals who have Partners who are more attractive if they're men or women uh they experience more jealousy so it could be that that you know if someone is more conventionally attractive they're going to be getting more attention perhaps it evokes more jealousy they're going to be afraid like you said of mate poaching they're going

to be afraid okay this person might cheat and there is some actually indication that for men but not for women that men who are a little bit more attractive might commit infidelity a little bit more they're going to have more sexual partners so there can be that perception and it's not maybe perhaps totally inaccurate that okay if you get a guy who's very attractive he's got a great body or something like that uh is he going to stay committed to you is he more likely to cheat and that's kind of something that that women said

you know that he seems like he seems like he could be narcissistic he cares too much about his appearance and you know I would worry about him being unfaithful yeah it's I've always thought about this that somebody that's in good condition physically it says an awful lot about them Beyond simply what it's going to feel like to get them naked in bed you know if if somebody has trained consistently for a decade you know so much about them you know that they're probably not a massive degenerate Drinker because it would be very difficult to stick

to the protocol if you did that that they are reliable that they can deal with discomfort that they are able to overcome hard things that uh they've got like a pain tolerance which kind of sexy right like you know a whole Litany of different things discipline reliability they've probably got a a pretty robust friend group from going to the gym all that sort of stuff and that you just you tell that but it's kind of a little bit like a hidden signal because the only people that really know that are other people that also go

to the gym and it's not the first thing they think the first thing they think is look at the nice shoulders or the good ass or whatever it is that they're looking at but the people that have spent enough time coding what this means and I do think that it probably percolates somewhere in the back of your mind is that's probably quite a reliable person but uh yeah you also end up with a bit of a difficulty on the bodybuilder side I wonder whether this is part of the Allure of CrossFit athletes that because it's

not done specifically for Aesthetics guys are able to get themselves into good condition whilst not seeming like they care overly about that sort of narcissistic side of stuff yeah that could be because there was that perception as well that it's kind of a vein behavior and in that sense almost an unmasculine behavior is what some people said that you know it's like you should not care so much about your appearance as a man basically it's almost a uh but if you're jacked from doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu or chopping wood or doing some other thing your body

has come along as a byproduct of a Pursuit that you actually care about so I remember a while ago and I got a lot of stick for this on the internet I remember reading a study a theory that said one of the reasons why women prefer dadbods is this uh caloric Choice idea so um a man that is really good-looking and and and like lean and in good condition if you give him one calorie there is there are more Avenues open to him outside of his committed relationship and his family to which he could spend

that calorie right so the resources have more different angles for him to go down because there's going to be other mating opportunities so on and so forth whereas the guy that was the soft fluff dad bod would presumably have more doorways of potential infidelity closed to him which actually means that he it was that Dad bods are an indication of better dads was the thought that he's not going to spend his calorie trying to chase after some 21y old because she doesn't care about him so I thought that was uh another interesting kind of second

order effect of the way that women perceive their current mate uh level of um potential strain yeah exactly yeah and and what you said there dad bods are indicative of better dads I think that's very insightful and important because yeah it is kind of a contrast between long-term versus short-term mate selection when people you know women have a strong orientation toward long-term very few women have a strong orientation towards short-term so when you see women Express their preferences they're often talking about in the context of who would I date who would I like to have

a relationship with perhaps not as often as you know who would I like to have a one night stand with and maybe that's why we see see Dad bods selected if you post those pictures they'll say yeah this is kind of what I would like they're thinking about a longterm but then you maybe see the more ripped jacked guy appear as a character in female fantasies where it's more sexually oriented because within the context of a fantasy it's safe but that doesn't mean that that same man would be safe in the context of a real

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