Body shape

As to how I look, I actually make a point of not caring how I look.  I value performance first and I'm interested to see what body shape emerges from my activity regime and the diet I eat to deliver the best performance, rather than building an activity regime and diet to deliver a body image.  (There were no mirrors in the Pleistocene, so you'd never really know what you looked like.)

The first picture show my paunch when I'm fully relaxed.  Actually, it's more muscle and gut than it is flab, (see the other pictures taken on the same day).   The interesting thing is that it has emerged from motivations quite different from those behind Art deVany's X-look.  The second photo shows me with my belly relaxed to the extent that it usually is when I'm standing normally.

The X-look (see below) is certainly more attractive to contemporary Western ideals (especially those driven by US popular culture and Western fashions) than what you see here.  However, even a century ago, mild obesity was more widely admired (it was said to demonstrate that one had sufficient surplus wealth to over-eat).  Even today, many barristers believe mild obesity gives 'carriage', an advantage in the courtroom.  So, ideals can vary with fashion. Modern obesity is not, however admired.

What's more, I don't find that obesity gives any advantages (though I have deliberately added around 7kg to see me through the 2003 winter in comfort).

Pictures of hunter-gatherers who live in rain forests (African pygmies, Amazonians) show similarly rounded bellies in bodies that are, nevertheless, highly effective in hunting, trekking, load carrying and other activities requiring strength, power and endurance, as well as in attracting and holding mates.

The X-look is posited as the male body shape which was the most effective in attracting females.  That is, like the peacock's tail or the lion's mane, it provided an evolutionary advantage in terms of sexual selection.

I have started at the other end.  I have endeavoured to build a body that could deliver health, strength, power and endurance, a body that could provide food and protection, on the assumption that food, protection and longevity would have a greater survival value (for female mates) and that those females would be more attracted by what it appeared able to deliver than any other criteria.  What you see is the result of my quest for performance, not for appearance.  (Sorry about the stoop - I've always had that; doesn't cause a problem for anyone except my rowing coach.)  There are a few more pictures of me in the gym here.

Pictures above taken in June 2003

There is some research to back up Art's advocacy of the X-look, though indirectly, from the University of Western Australia.  In a 2003 paper, Professor Gillian Rhodes showed that young men with more masculine faces had slightly better health.  In 2004 Renee Firman from the same University's Evolutionary Biology Research Group, found that asymmetrical men had lower quality sperm, lower sperm counts and their sperm were less mobile.  They suggest the mechanism lying behind these observations is that higher levels of testosterone needed to produce masculine characteristics stress the immune system, so the masculine-looking men must be healthier to withstand the assault.

Evfit home      Top      Go to a picture of modern man