Saturday, May 9, 2015
What the dadbod is really all about
I swore I wouldn't do this, even though I was asked by several people to give my thoughts on it.
But I've broken promises before. And about much more important things, so I think I will be able to live with myself by breaking this one.
Right now, articles about "dad bods" are popping up all over the net. Both showing affinity and disdain for them. Just about all of them depict Leonardo Dicaprio running around on the beach, sporting a pooch belly, some very prepubescent looking boobs, and that awful top-knot/man-bun thing, along with a beard that looks like he stole it off of a drunken hipster.
Apparently, this is what women are claiming they find attractive at the moment. Not all women mind you, because I don't want to use generalizations here. Plenty of women are appalled by it, and think men with dad bods look disgusting.
Most of these women are of course, fit, or train, or care about what their body looks like.
Which of course creates a incredible amount of discord because the first thing that will come out of the mouth of women and men who support dad bods, are.....
"that's because you are shallow."
Indeed. It has to be about being shallow, narcissistic, and self absorbed. If one cares about their health, their appearance, and their body, that is the only logical explanation there could be.
If one is not attracted to the dad bod, these are the reasons why.
I'll get back to that in a bit.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like every few months women, or a woman, starts a fire storm over what women should currently find attractive. A few months ago, it was that whole lumbarsexual thing. Which was nothing more than hipsters dressed up in flannel shirts, carrying axes.
Hipsters carry axes of course, because one never knows when a hipster will find himself inside a shitty pub that catches on fire, and he suddenly needs to become a firefighter. Or when he's having coffee somewhere and suddenly a large tree will need to be cut down. Women will swoon as he swings away like a homeless looking Babe Ruth. By the time the tree hits the ground, there will be more panties dropped than world's largest broom could sweep up.
Before all of that of course, it was the man-bun.
Women have been telling other women what to find attractive as of late, and then other women see this and flock to it. Like some massive sale on cotton panties at Victoria's Secret.
"Special two panties for one."
And then of course there is the "beauty at all sizes" movement, where women tell other men and women if they don't find obese women attractive, that they are shallow, narcissistic, and self absorbed.
I'm not sure why women feel the need to start "trends" based on what they should find attractive. It seems like, based on articles like these that women are in a state of "man ADD". Every few months something new is "hot" and "sexy", then it's something completely different few months later.
You generally don't see men doing this. We figured out what we liked centuries ago for the most part. Again, this is backed by science for the most part (that hip to waist ratio) and men don't really go around on the net telling other men what is NOW hot and attractive. We made a decision long ago and just stuck to it.
So I will give a real life clue in here in regards to what people find attractive.
You cannot help what you find attractive. It's not entirely a matter of "choice". If you don't agree with me, then we can use that argument about gay people. Do they choose to find someone of the same sex attractive, or do they tell you it feels instinctive?
Case closed.
I could end the article there, but I have other points to make so I digress.
Attractiveness, or beauty they say, is in the eye of the beholder. What that means of course is, what I am looking at and feel is attractive, may not be for the person on my left, or the person on my right. Generally I don't find myself in a position where I surrounded by people like that, but you get my point.
To a certain extent, I agree with that. Sometimes you even know when you look at someone, and find them attractive yet know deep down inside of you that most people would not see the beauty or attractiveness of that person. At least, not in the way you do.
On the flip side, it's irrefutable that some beauty transcends these laws and is considered attractive or beautiful regardless of individual taste. Some may argue with this, but I don't care. There is a reason that women get paid millions of dollars for photo shoots and grace the covers of magazines and work for billion dollar companies. If we didn't know what universal beauty looked like, such things would not exist. No billion dollar company is going to promote an ugly chick and try to sell her off as being beautiful.
This is just science. Yes, it's science. It's actually been proven through science that beauty has direct correlation with symmetry. I could research this and provide lots of studies but I just did an article that made me read about 1,223,452 studies and this is largely an opinion piece, so I'm not going to.
That brings us back to what people instinctively find attractive.
When I see a woman I find beautiful, I know it immediately. It's not like looking at a menu when I can't decide what I want to order. It almost always comes back to getting some form of grilled chicken with veggies anyway, but perhaps I like to appear as though I would order something else so I gravel over the selections for a while before eventually making the same order that I usually do.
We know what we find attractive, hot, beautiful, sexy, pretty, etc as soon as we see it. Yes, there are times when we meet someone and think they are just "ok", then as we get to know them we come to find them more attractive through the virtues and attributes they exhibit as a human being, and that is indeed what I would call seeing someone's inner beauty. But this is something that takes a certain amount of time or investment in someone and we don't always get the chance to do that with everyone we cross paths with. So the whole "you should see someone's inner beauty" is really a bunch of horseshit.
Ain't nobody got time to do that with errbody.
Is that unfortunate? Of course. But time is our most precious commodity and unfortunately everyone doesn't get equal shares of it.
So that often leaves us with getting to know, or wanting to get to know the people we instinctively find attractive.
Which brings us back to people being called shallow by being repulsed by the "dad bod".
There's nothing shallow about not finding that attractive. And there's nothing shallow about personal preferences when it comes to what you like, from a sexual standpoint. You like what you like. I like women with round, muscular glutes, great smiles (nice teeth), big lips, and big eyes. After that, from a non physical standpoint I like women that have cultivated enough depth to them that if we got stuck in a traffic jam for a few hours, I'd be perfectly happy. What that means is, we can have conversation that is just as stimulating to me as her physical presence.
Dating on looks alone is a recipe for disaster. Because after the initial attraction wears off, after all of the new relationship energy has subsided, what do you have? There's a good chance that it won't be much. Not enough to sustain something lasting or fulfilling.
Perhaps the shallowness in all of us is when we do that very thing. Ignore the fact that the person we are investing in is severely lacking in so many other areas we know we need fulfillment in, yet continue to date or invest in them because, well....dat ass. In the case of women who find dad bods attractive I guess it'd be...dat gut!
Since we're back to guts, why is it that women are not proclaiming their lust for dad bods?
Is it really personal preference?
I can't say. I absolutely cannot speak for all women, or even a single woman.
Women seem to care less about looks like men on the whole, and often can and do see men with great physiques as being overly self absorbed. I've also been told on many occasions by women, that they would not date a man that gets a lot of attention from other women because they have "been there, and wasn't worth the headache that came with it."
The same goes true for men as well. I've read from two high profiled bodybuilders where both stated they would never ever date bikini or figure competitors because of the same reasons. Self absorbed, narcissistic, think it's all about them, and they did not want the headache that came with it.
I think these things have been said often enough that while it may not be true in every case, where there's smoke there is fire.
What the dad bod is probably really about are a lot of women who don't care about lifting, don't care about their appearance so much that they may actually see a man who looks like that, and sees confidence.
"How the fuck is that, Paul?"
Because through their own experiences, they may have dated men that were jacked and ripped as fuck on many occasions and found that underneath all of that blistering muscle mass, there was actually this very insecure, "small man" residing inside of it.
Is that possible?
I think it is. After all, most of us started lifting weights in order to become something we were not. Because of that very insecurity that reside inside of us that made us desire more muscle and strength. And why? Simple. Respect and acceptance. Which is ultimately what every single one of us truly want from most other people. We want them to accept us, and respect who we are. If that means it starts with something as "shallow" as our physical appearance, then that's where it starts.
It could also be that these women do in fact feel insecure as well. The fact that one of the reasons the article stated that the dad bod was so attractive was because women "want to be the pretty once".
If that's not a cry of blatant insecurity I don't know what is. You're going to find someone else attractive because they are less attractive than you? Please, find a self help book and go to work.
You have issues.
I'm not really worried about women finding the dad bod attractive because these things seem to sort themselves out. Men get all in a huff about women finding the dad bod attractive because they think it means suddenly women will be swarming the beach, ignoring their six pack in favor of the guy holding one. But the fact is, if you care about your physical appearance, more than likely you will be attracted to someone who does as well. And if she's busting out some knee to chest action to get across the beach to jump up and down on ol' dad bod, it's a good chance you weren't going to give her a second look anyway.
In a few months, the dad bod will be the lumbar sexual. And some chick who has had less than two menstrual cycles will be writing some article for elitedaily about something new women should find attractive. The same women that found the dad bod attractive will then run off to find some man based on this new trend.
And if you're dating people or finding people based on what is trending, then that ladies is truly what is shallow. And that's what the dad bod is really all about. Trends. I mean let's face it, the reason they are using Leo as the poster boy for this is because he's surrounded by hot chicks 24/7. But that's because he's Leo. And is a famous actor. And has hundreds of millions of dollars. He could cover himself in rotten bison meat and still pull this off. He's not surrounded by hot women because of his dad bod.
Men who stay in shape and take pride in their appearance; stay the course. All you have to do in order to be considered sexy by these women again is hold out for opening day of Magic Mike 2. Then you'll be back in trending style. And in the meantime, there's going to be plenty of women who still find muscular, in shape dudes attractive.
Peace out.
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Um...where's the shirtless DiCaprio pic...that's what we all really want to see...
ReplyDeleteyeah what dad bod is really about is jilling over Leo letting himself go a bit, but he's still Leo.
DeleteI agree dadbod is just a silly trend that will be forgotten about in 3 months, but what it's really about is women letting themselves go, and encouraging men to do the same. If you look at the HAES movement, it's 99.9% women. They talk about how being fat isn't their fault, and that doesn't mean they're not beautiful. Without going on a rant, I'd be fine with HAES if it were only about combating mistreatment, but in actuality they're trying to redefine society's standards. They want to be beautiful without actually being beautiful.
Look at the Meghan Trainor music video about her future husband. They're all lean, muscular dudes. No HAESer is fapping over male equivalents. But the lean dudes are unattainable for the large women. But dadbods? They're a pretty OK middle ground. If they can get more men to let themselves go a bit, it increases their pool of potential mates.
That's it and that's all.
No amount of shaming, whining or "positive talk about ALL shapes and sizes" will ever change what people find attractive. I find it funny when people (usually fat women) claim that our "idea of beauty" is a western media creation. A simple look at art history, archeology, anthropology or history will prove that what we find attractive hasn't really changed significantly in...ever...even from one culture to another.
ReplyDeletePretty much every other species on this planet has "highly desirable" traits that are sought out when it's mating time, why would humans be any different? *Hint: we aren't. Some people prefer to find excuses for their laziness rather than do something to change it.