Tools of Attraction

The following is excerpted from a commentary in DNA magazine by Andrew Creagh.

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When our sisters in the heterosexual female community put together a list of sexy guys they often call it a “bachelor” list or a “who’s hot” list, taking the emphasis off the sexiness. They say they like a man in a pair of favourite jeans and a not-too-tight T-shirt. They love men who are compassionate (and that usually means killing the spider in the bathtub, not volunteering for aid work in Ethiopia), and they hate men wearing speedos!

Men who find other men sexy are, I think, a lot more straightforward. Just look at DNA’s daily blog to see whose pics get the most hits. They’re guys whose masculinity is up-front – hairy chests and bulging swimwear; men who confidently project their sexuality, whatever that may be.

. . . While we’re attracted to a variety of heights, shapes, skin colours and olfactory and auditory stimuli, scientists have been able to determine that all other characteristics aside, the classic V-shaped male torso with broad shoulders and slim hips is the dominant factor. They’ve even been able to put some technical specs to it: “Consistently, men with a waist-to-shoulder ratio of 0.75 or lower are viewed as considerably more attractive than men with more even waists and shoulders,” reckon researchers at the Cambridge University Zoology Department.

The same researchers also concluded that women are more attracted to men with chest hair than without, so while Vogue readers might like looking at tall, skinny, hairless androgynous boys, they don’t really want to mate with them. Science also tells us that symmetrical facial features are apparently more attractive to us because they signify healthy genes with which to breed.



Ideals of physical attraction do change. Looking at photography from 100 years ago, when muscle men were commonly used as models, we can assume that the ideal was all about muscle definition in the arms. The Adonis of that age cared little for the washboard abs or fleshy pecs that we adore today.

In the couture-conscious decades of the 1940s and ’50s, the naked male body was rarely seen at all. Measures of attractiveness were almost entirely gauged in the face: the strength of the jaw line, the straightness of the nose, the sharpness of the part in his hair and the crease in his hat. The sexual revolution in the ’60s and the era of disco in the ’70s saw men taking off their shirts in public. Thin was in – for the moment. The following decades put masculine ideals on billboards and in advertising campaigns and bigger became better.

If there’s a defining trend by today’s standards it’s hard to identify. Contemporary ideas of masculinity, maleness and attractiveness are a jumble of shaved legs, steroid abuse, Photoshop disasters and misguided art direction!

. . . If you ask me, the sexiest man alive is one whose eyes light up when I walk in the room, who can make me laugh, and who doesn’t care how stupid I look when I dance.

- Andrew Creagh