Why Is This Important?
Because that’s one more reason to commit to a solid gym routine, friends.

Long Story Short
Australian research indicates that women are, by and large, more sexually attracted to “the strongest-looking” men.

Long Story
In every gym, there’s always a comical array of gym-going caricatures to be found. One not so comical and frequently unmentioned is that of the Very Strong But Lean Guy. You know him. Usually a little taller than your average, he’s not packing much outward muscle. He’s not skinny, mind you, but trim enough that when he deadlifts the equivalent of a Winnebago, you’re kinda like What and how the fuck?

So what is meant by ‘strong’, really? What is the strength, for instance, that 150 women claimed to find so attractive in men when surveyed by researchers at Queensland’s University of Queensland?

“Evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring,” noted the research team. “One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's fighting ability or resource-holding power and potential.”

And so off they went, operating on the scientific yet strangely reductive basis that “Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight is his upper body strength.”

If true, Connor McGregor is not just lord of the MMA ring. Octagon. Whatever it’s a sex joke enjoy it, bitch. True enough, though, after two experiments where all the ladies were shown full-length photos of vastly different dudes, the overwhelming consensus was the strongest-looking men were favoured by 70% of respondents. Height and leanness also factored in, with 80% mentioning those qualities in their Aw yeah would bang assessments. Couple this with the University of Pennsylvania’s recent revelations that Bald Is Better and it’s a good time to be Jason Statham.

“Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect,” the research team concluded. “The strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.”