Are we as guys lucky not to be evaluated as stringently based on physical attributes as girls are? Sure, I guess. But the downside is, this can make us complacent about how we look. The best strategy is, even if we’re not being judged as harshly as women, imagine that we are. It’s this complacency that makes some guys think stupid shit like “Well, I am a sensitive writer, so not only do I not need to have a nice body, but I should actually avoid having one, because having one would mean that I am not a sensitive writer anymore.”Read the whole thing. It's good, except the wrong Fiennes is pictured in the model equation. (via)
Look at it this way: when you see a chick who is wearing glasses and a pencil skirt because she is going for a Sexy Librarian thing, do you want her to not have an amazing body just because that is the look she is going for, or do you want her to be going for that look and have an amazing body? Obviously, you want her to also have an amazing body. There is no possible aesthetic for which the equation [given aesthetic] + [amazing body] = [even better] does not hold. So why would girls think of us any differently?
UPDATE: Phoebe's thoughts available here, with a focus on the idea that some men attract women specifically by being "too brilliant to bathe," which is less an aesthetic than a more abstracted mode of self-presentation or -conception---or perhaps an identity for which the idea that "physicality is stupid" is integral, not an auxiliary rationalization for being flabby.
