T2
Terminator 2 is one of my favorite movies. When Terminator Genisys (sic) came out in 2015, I knew it would suck, but I watched it for the same reason I watched T2 (that's Trainspotting 2): I was almost certain it would be worse, if not outright stink, but in the off-chance it was going to be good, I didn't wanna miss it. (I believe this is called a Pascal's Wager: story goes, Pascal was a French cinephile who was so anxious he might miss a good movie, he decided to watch all of them, and he ended up missing out on life.)
So where was I? Oh yes. When I watched Terminator Genisys, I couldn't help but notice how certain characters from T1 & T2 (that's Terminator 1 & 2) had evolved. Take a look yourself:
Kyle from 1984
Kyle from 2015
Now I know what you're thinking: 31 years is plenty sufficient time to gain some muscle. (No? That's not what you were thinking? Well most of them I get right.) Thing is, however, the movies happen in the exact same timeline. As in, exact same date! Yeah! I know what you're thinking: what kind of a diet is he on! (no? oh well..)
Now we don't know anything about time travel's effects on the body's lean muscle, but those are some heavy gains. As scientists, we ought to get ourselves some more samples to study. Let's see what kind of an effect time travel had on Sarah Connor.
There she is in 1984
And here she is in ... wait what?
Wait, I've been learning some html lately. Let me see if I can check the source code.
As I suspected. This is what feminism does to bodies.
Let's just move on, we don't wanna piss off anybody.
Let's see what else cinema has to teach us.
The Hitch Tush
I'm a weirdo. How weird you ask? Well, I watched Hitchcock's entire oeuvre, from 1922 when films didn't even have sound, much less color, to 1976. Hitchcock's career spanned the entire evolution of film. By watching his movies, I watched social mores shift, and I watched male and female ideals of beauty evolve. Women more or less stay the same from 1945 onwards. Yeah, I was surprised too! I thought we developed our current tastes in the 70s, maybe 60s at the most. But actually during the 50s they were already set in stone.
Revenge, 1955.
Yeah, I watched all the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes too.
I know, I'm pathetic.
The Bond Bod
I have to issue a heavy NSFW warning about what I'm about to show you. If you are a high-libido individual you might want to find yourself a safe space where you can get off without getting disturbed. Ready? Let's go:
Ooh! Sexy!
I bet Sean Connery's voice is as easy to conjure up in your head as is Morgan Freeman's.
Even I'm getting aroused by this God-bod, and I'm a zero on the Kinsey scale.
I could go through all the JBs (that's JBs, not BJs, you pervert), but I'll save some space: they all look like regular men. Not a single exce...say waat?
I swear (and my then-roommate can confirm this), when I first heard Daniel Craig was going to play James Bond, this is what I said: But James Bond is supposed to be handsome!
Yeah, I know what you're thinking: I'm an asshole (bet I got it right this time didn't I!)
My roommate disagreed. What can I say. Gone are the days when it was something in the man's look or body language that conveyed handsomeness. Now women apparently look from the neck down.
But I know you're getting anxious to move on to the debate-part of this post. I mean, this series is based on an IRL disagreement I had with a friend. He was telling me women prefer muscular bodies. I was telling him "then why do you exist?" That sort of thing. So let's get to it.
Point-Counterpoint
Great Bodies: Up Close and Personal
Women may like looking at muscular bodies. But do they like living with them? Did my friend understand what having a muscular body entailed? Did he understand what supporting such an unnatural physique requires? And did he think women would find it attractive if they knew what went on behind the scenes?
This is an excerpt from Tim Ferriss' (I'm so not adding a third 's' to that, an apostrophe will do, The Associated Press Stylebook has my back) book The 4-Hour Body:
I was on a first date at Samovar Tea House in San Francisco. The incense, subdued global music, and meticulous track lighting made us feel like we were somewhere between a Buddhist-inspired Last Dragon and a Dutch coffee shop. Then, as if on cue, both of us ordered Schizandra berry tea. The description? 2000 years ago Shen Nong first identified this potent elixir as an “adaptogenic tonic” (i.e., it gives you whatever you need: energy, relaxation, beauty, sexual prowess). Things were off to a good start. After some flirting and playful verbal sparring, I made my move. “Don’t let this weird you out.” I took an electronic food scale out of my man-purse, which I use to carry odd items, and began separating all of my food so I could weigh the individual pieces. This was, of course, the beginning of the end.
What? I don't get it. I thought women liked muscular bodies. This merits further investigation! At the very least, the men themselves like having those muscular bodies. Right?
(Spoiler alert: the gorilla in the trailer kicks Tarzan's ass. Shit. I mean, how did we get so weak compared to them? Didn't human women like to have muscular men's babi...oh wait! Yup! They didn't! For some reason they chose brains over brawns. To each his own I guess.)
Now call me old-fashioned, but I believe if a guy only eats broccoli and salmon and does that 6 times a day on regular intervals that never deviate, that's grounds enough to break up with him.
It's not exactly the kind of behavior that exudes confidence either.
Btw, 1% more fat on Tarzan's body, and poof, there's no body. No shred of it remains. Natural bodies, mind you, are made to preserve fat. An ancestor who could preserve any amount of calories on his body more efficiently than another would be preferentially selected for. The amount of body fat you need to look shredded is the amount of body fat you need to die from starvation when food supplies become scarce. Tarzan Lord of the Jungle would not have survived in the Jungle. At least not looking like he does in that movie.
You know how Jesus is painted as a blue-eyed blond-haired white man? Well, Tarzan suffers from the same misportrayal when he's given a shredded body.
Source: Wikipedia Commons
Will the Real Alpha Male Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up
Look at us humans. I mean look at us objectively. We all look like babies. We look like fleeced underage monkeys. We look like someone's prison bitch. We look like we failed to thrive. We look like an abortion. An early one. It takes us a year to learn to walk. It takes us 6 months to be able to sit. Throughout our evolution we become more and more invalid. Why do women have sex with men who produce babies that look like that? Why aren't we born strong and muscular and equipped to handle life all on our own? It's almost - it's almost as if women chose Betas rather than Alpha Males. Or, perhaps...
Truth and Legend
"Women want a real man, who's gonna throw them onto the bed and bear down on them and do the deed to them," my friend is saying. "None of that romantic compassionate bullshit. They want a massive heavy body that they can surrender to."
"Why do you exist?" is my retort.
"Oh don't give me that horseshit!"
"Why didn't your ma and your grandma choose that kind of male you're describing? In other words, why are you describing him instead of embodying him?"
"Show me a woman who wants to have babies from an artsy-fartsy effete intellectual, probably looking like he's 13, probably won't be able to give her babies anyway."
"Done."
John Legend has successfully artificially inseminated Chrissy Teigen, you'll be stoked to know.
"Oh come on that's one in a milli..."
"Justin Bieber. Bon Jovi. Michael Jackson."
"Please, I can't imagine those people having sex."
"If women liked the kind of 'alpha males' you have in mind, they'd all be listening to Metallica and Motorhead. Instead they listen to and fall in love with those 'effetes', because essentially they want to date themselves. This idea that they want a man to 'bear down on them' is our own creation. Just like superhero comics always feature muscular superheroes because they're all drawn by men, marketed to men, bought by men. Women would never draw men like that. This is similar to the kind of bubble women create around themselves with women's magazines."
I think Cable suffers from the same condition as that Belgian Blue.
This Post is Getting Long
You can probably tell the above is a heavily edited version of the actual conversation we had. Let me give you a real snippet, copied and pasted from fb. You'll recognize many of the points in this article.
"Women more or less stay the same from 1945 onwards. It's the reason we still find women like Marilyn Monroe and others attractive. But show a woman today a picture of Shaun Connery when he was playing James Bond, and she'll probably say something like 'I'm not attracted to flabby old men'. It's now part of the actor's job to train intensively and inject himself with substances and live and breathe under his coach's instructions, in order to be able to lead in a movie. What drives all this? It might be men themselves. But the audience is fed with all this shite, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: men think that's what women like, so that's what they try to be, so women end up liking it."
Let me wrap this up with a quiz. Which of the two bodies below do you think women naturally evolved to like, and which one do you think women were brainwashed to like?
Source left: Wikipedia commons. Source right: Steroids.
If you answered the one on the right, you need to reread this post, as well as this post.
Don't get me wrong: women could have chosen the one on the right if they wanted to. After all, gorillas do exist, and they're much more muscular and stronger than that guy. Evolution can make that happen. However, women didn't choose that. They chose the one on the left, a real authentic native youth from the Maori tribe. He is the real Alpha Male - by definition, since women chose him.