HealthyGamerGG - Why Women Prefer Betas

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

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Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Ocinoja, but you can call me Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you.

So let's dive right in. It turns out that women don't actually like ripped dudes, and I'm going to explain to you why. My name is Dr. Kay, and I'm a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. So I stumbled into this Twitter thread, which shows a before and after picture of someone who went through a 12-week fitness transformation. And what's more interesting than that is there's a guy named William Costello who posted this poll. And he basically asks people, do you think he looks better before or after?

And are you male or female? And this is what's really fascinating is if you look at the way that the poll is broken down, basically men think that this guy looks better than this guy, but women actually prefer this dude to this dude. This discrepancy between men and women's appearances is interesting enough, but I thought what was really fascinating is the male response to the poll. So why are women lying about this? Like what's the actual cause? So as we saw men respond to this poll, right, with disbelief, like, oh my God, the women must be lying. Like, all the dudes think that the ripped guy is more attractive, but the women actually prefer the less ripped guy. This must be a lie. And then

we start to get armchair psychology as well. Oh, the irony and the psychologist. Women will choose the in-shaped guy all day every day. They likely won't even notice the dad bod. The psychological aspect is initial judgment versus emotional judgment. So this person sort of starts to say like, okay, like women are incorrect. Like this wouldn't actually happen. Women aren't choosing the ripped guy. And then this is where like someone else says, really, the guy on the left looks feminine.

Carrying extra fat to that extent is a feminine characteristic. Guess I'm going to stay ugly. Okay? So I'm assuming that this is another ripped dude. So this is like really common. I see this on the internet a lot where like men believe that women are attracted to something and women are when asked, when polled, they will say, okay, we're actually attracted to something else. So let's try to understand from a psychological perspective why this is.

Why is it that male perception of male attractiveness appears to be so different from female perception of male attractiveness? So let's start with some basic evolution. evolutionary biology, okay? So we're going to take a look at how mate selection actually happens in different species. And this is where the concept of the alpha male comes from. So if we look at like lions, for example, what happens is males will compete with each other. They will develop an internal hierarchy within men. There's no female selection involved here.

Two or three male lions will fight it out. and based on intra-male competition, one male will rise to the top. Once one male rises to the top, basically the males have decided amongst themselves who gets to mate with the female lions, and then the female lions will sort of accede to that basically internal male competition. So this is a situation where, like, if these two dudes fought it out and this guy won, maybe he is now the alpha male has access to the pride of lionesses and therefore he gets to mate. Now, this is really common in many species and many mammalian species, things like that.

But the important thing to understand here is that this is intramail competition. Basically, the dudes fight it out. One male rises to the top. And then the women will select basically what the males have already selected. And I think this is oftentimes the way that men see things, right? So we view things is intramail competition. If I like a girl, I have to beat another guy in order to get the girl to like me. That's the way that we think.

Unfortunately, human beings, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, human beings are a little bit different. So human beings tend to be a lot more complex. So what we sort of know about human mating is that we're not simple lions and lionesses, right? We tend to be, generally speaking, the best data supports serial monogamous where human beings, if you look at the history of humanity, most human beings will sort of date or forenors. relationships with one person at a time, a significant amount of a time with one person, sometimes we'll get divorced, sometimes we'll move on. But we sort of don't fall into this intramale

competition. And to put this kind of bluntly, like if I go to school and I pick fights with a lot of other dudes and beat them all up, it's not like women are flocking to me and everyone wants to date me, right? I would actually be perceived as like someone who's a little bit unstable, a little bit violent. And that's kind of what we see from women, right? So let's take a look at the female perspective. No, he does look better in the before. Women are correct on this one, I fear. Guys obsess over these supremely tight-toned muscles and they shouldn't. So this tweet is also kind of leaning into this concept of like there is intra-male competition, which is a little bit separate from what women prefer. I wouldn't trust a guy who cares that much about their body. We're not lying.

He's more appealing to the women in the left-hand photo. He's giving off, I could be your loving, protective boyfriend you snuggle and have fun with, vibes on the left side. he's giving off, I'm self-absorbed and possibly gay vibes on the right. Sorry, our brains work differently than men's, and we value different things than you do. The guy on the left could survive a famine, an infection, or a long hunting trip, or war raid without food. The cut guy on the right is very vulnerable to resource shortages. Women evolved to understand which male body type survives better. Y'all may be wondering which of these, like, perspectives is true, right?

So is this, are women so tuned into, like, resource shortages and fat stores and things like, that we'll actually get into it. Right? So here's another case of, okay, hear me out. I'm a female, and he definitely looks better on the pick before. The pick before exudes warmth, protection, and emotional openness. The pick after gives coldness, selfishness, and emotional unavailability. You are in massive denial if you think women are lying here. So this is the situation. We have a post that very clearly shows a poll that men believe that the more ripped dude is attractive, and women actually say, no, the less ripped dude is attractive. So let's understand understand a little bit about the female perspective.

If you all want to dive deep into the most important topics for our community, check out HG memberships. So the first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk. This is a Vassana too. Your mind is Vasanas all the way down. So the key thing about detachment is not that you don't have wants, it is that your wants do not control you. Membership grants you access to monthly streams,

as well as a back catalog of a year's worth of content, in addition to quests and so much more. If you're interested, you can sign up for $10 a month at HealthyGamer.G slash memberships or click the link in the description below. Hope to see you there. So if we look at all of the evidence on female mating, right, which I haven't looked at all of this, but if we look at things like mate selection, there are a couple of strong meta-analyses and things like that.

It basically show that women are looking for three things in a man. The first thing that they're looking for is safety. The second thing that they're looking for is kindness. And the third thing that they're looking for is some amount of financial stability. or financial security. So I'm going to ask you all a question. Which of these two dudes do you think you're more safe with, right? Which one do you think just by an image? And this is one of the problems on Twitter, which is like all we're posting is an image, right? So we don't know a lot of complex things about these person's histories or how they interact, whether they're kind or not.

We're basically judging a book by its cover. All we have is an image. So which one of these two dudes do you think is more likely to be critical of your food choices? Which one of these two dudes do you think is more likely to be judgmental about you. Which one of these two dudes do you think is more likely to be physically abusive? Right. So I know that you can sort of, people who are listening to this are going to respond very differently to what I just said. And that's okay, but I just kind of want to point out that when women are looking at this, which one do you think actually implies more safety? Which one do you think implies more kindness? Do you expect this person to be more kind? Or do you expect this person to be more kind? You know, is this person a little bit more?

hardcore? Is this person a little bit less hardcore? Is this person maybe a little bit more forgiving, a little bit more chill, a little bit more accepting of your beliefs? Which one of these two people do you think is more rigid? And then the last thing, this is my favorite, financial security or some amount of material security. So which one of these two body types do you think is more likely to be a CEO? Which one is more likely to be an investment banker? Which one is more likely to be a doctor? Whereas which one of these two body types do you think is more likely to be a personal trainer, is more likely to be a coach at a gym, or a coach for your kids' softball team or basketball team or something like that. Which of these two do you think has a higher income, right? And this dude isn't out of shape, right?

He's not some like grotesquely obese, like out of shape dude. It's this, this speaks to me of someone who maybe is like a working professional, goes to the gym for maybe five hours a week, six hours a week. but then spends the majority of their time, maybe focused on their career, is maybe financially more successful. And I don't know if there's actually data about this. I looked and couldn't find anything very clear. But I want you all to think about, you know, the top CEOs. When I say the word CEO, what kind of body image do you envision? The next time you go to your doctor's office, take a look at how in shape they are.

Do they look more like this or do they look more like this? So as we start to see, you know, if we sort of lean into the data, what we discover is that women are picking particular things, right? They're trying to select for kindness. They're trying to select for safety. They're trying to select for some amount of financial security. And meanwhile, men seem to be hyper-obsessed with intramale competition. So a lot of y'all may say, but, oh, Dr. Kay, you're just like kind of making this stuff up

or like, you're making these vague generalizations and this isn't really fair. but it turns out that there's actually hard science that examines this. So we're going to take a look at this paper called the Association of Relationship Status and Sex Life Satisfaction with Body Disatisfaction and Drive for Muscularity in Male Weight Lifters. This is basically a paper that's looking at the drive for muscularity or DFM, right? So how manly, how cut does a dude want to be? And the more cut that a dude wants to be, does that impact their relationship status and sex life satisfaction? So this study investigated the relationship, the relation of relationship status, relationship duration, and satisfaction with sex life in weightlifting men via online survey, i.e., this is a study that's looking at ripped dudes on Twitter.

We found that single weightlifting men and those dissatisfied with their sex life were more dissatisfied with their sex life were more dissatisfied. with their muscularity and showed a stronger drive for muscularity than those in a relationship and satisfied men. Longer relationship duration was associated with less dissatisfaction with muscularity and less DFM. So what does this mean? Okay. So this is a cross-sectional study, but basically found that the higher the drive for

muscularity is, the lower the relationship duration is. It's wild, but it turns out, and these women. who had these knee-jerk reactions of preferring the before-pick versus the after-pick are actually in line with research on drive for muscularity and long-term relationship satisfaction. Turns out that the more cut you are, the less satisfied you are with your relationship, and the shorter duration your relationships are. So that's just one cross-sectional study. So let's take a look at something else.

In fitness and health, a prospective study of changes in marital status in fitness, in men, and women. So this is a study that's looking at like changes in fitness and marital status. So let's see what they find. So compared with corresponding control groups, transitioning from being single to married was associated with a reduction in fitness in women. Kind of makes sense, right? After you get married, you kind of let yourself go a little bit. Divorce was associated with an increase in fitness in men. And remarriage was associated with a reduction in fitness in men. The authors conclude that the transitions to being married from single to married or divorce to remarried are associated with a modest reduction while divorce is associated with a modest increase in fitness levels in men.

Okay. So this is another study that doesn't suggest. So we have to be careful about what this study shows and doesn't show. But once again, what we tend to see is if you look at people who are happily married, they are more likely to be less fit. And then if you look at people who get divorced, they are more likely to increase their fitness. Now, this doesn't, I want you all to understand this very clearly.

This is not like a smoking gun worth of evidence. I think this relationship satisfaction study is a lot more important because like this talks specifically about drive for muscularity and the effective drive for muscularity on your relationships. Now, here's the funnest paper of them all. So if we're sort of like thinking about this, right, so there's some evidence, kind of whatever, right? These are cross-sectional studies, whatever, that suggests that drive for muscularity or being

super in shape may be negatively associated with relationships. Now, here's the study that I think is really fascinating, okay? So this study is absolutely wild. The influence of body composition effects on male facial masculinity and attractiveness. So this study is really precise. So here's what they did. They took a group of real faces and they showed them to women with a lower amount of fat, a regular amount of fat, or a higher amount of.

fat. And then what they did is take the same faces, lower the amount of muscle, kept a regular amount of muscle, or increased the amount of muscle. So this study is very different from the other two, because this study is the most experimental, where they literally show women a person's face, and then they lower the fat or increase the fat, or they lower the muscularity and they increase the muscularity. So this is the study that the most precisely tests if you're a man and you become more muscular, how will it change a woman's perception of your attractiveness? If you're a man and you become more fat, how will it change a woman's perception of your attractiveness, right? So if we go back to some of these Twitter threads about women will choose an in-shaped guy all day, every day,

now we have some really interesting, a really interesting experiment. Now we have an experiment that shows, if I literally take the same dude, same physical face, right? So equally attractive. There's no influence about how much money they make or how kind they are. And I literally adjust the level of muscularity. What difference does that make for women? So this study is really important because when we make statements like this, women will choose the in-shaped guy all day every day. This study is the most precise measure of that, right?

So if I literally take this person and I make him more muscular or less muscular, how will women respond? And this is where things get crazy. Women have been found to prefer more masculine-looking men when considering short-term relationships compared with long-term relationships. There's prior studies that show that, okay? So that's the first thing. We digitally transform face shape simulating the effects of raised and lowered levels of body fat or muscle, controlling for each other, and then age or height, right? So they basically transform the faces.

We already talked about that. The face-shaped correlates of muscle mass profoundly enhanced perceived masculinity. Okay. So this is important. So as you become more muscular, there is a perception that you become more masculine. Makes sense, right? One dude is more manly. The ripped dude is more manly than the unripped dude.

But masculinity does not necessarily correlate with mate selection. Here's the big discrepancy between men and women. In study two, we asked two groups of women to optimize male face images. So they asked the women to resemble someone they would prefer, either for a short-term sexual relationship, or long-term relationship. So what they basically did is, they asked women, you can adjust the face however you want. Make the face more suited for what you prefer

in a short-term relationship, and then make the face into what you prefer for a long-term relationship. And what we discover is that women prefer the appearance of male faces associated with a higher muscle mass for short-term compared with long-term relationships. So when you ask a woman, change the face to whatever you prefer

for a short-term relationship, they make it more muscular. And whenever, when we ask about long-term relationships, they don't make that change. So that may sound kind of confusing. But now women are basically getting to pick, right? What is the level of muscularity that they prefer? So we found that women preferred faces associated with a higher muscle mass for short-term

relationships rather than long-term relationships. Now, the question is why? Previous studies have revealed that men with high testosterone levels and more fat-free mass, i.e., greater muscle mass, report having a. a larger number of sex partners, indicating that these men might devote more effort into mating relative to parenting, i.e. studies suggest that dudes who are super cut and have higher levels of testosterone are more likely to want to mate as opposed to parent. Further, other studies show that men with high testosterone levels are less likely to get married and more likely to get divorced.

So as testosterone increases, the likelihood of marriage goes down and the likelihood of divorce goes up. Hence, male faces that reflect high levels of androgen-mediated traits may be less preferred by women in a long-term relationship because of the associated behavioral traits that are inconsistent with paternal investment. So now we have it, boys and girls, so this may seem really confusing. If you are a man or a woman on the internet and you are trying to understand why? all of this content out there about alphas being so alpha and women love alphas and like all the dudes out there are like women will choose the in-shape guy all day every day this is how it is hey why are you all lying about this what's the actual cause why is it that men believe that the ripped dude is more

attractive than the unripped dude and women believe that the less ripped dude is more attractive than the more ripped dude right there is a fundamental disconnect and then if we look at the woman's perspective, we see that actually their knee-jerk reaction is pretty aligned with the evidence that we just looked at. If we go back to the female perspectives, like their gut reactions to these pictures, we see that the pick before exudes warmth, protection, and emotional openness. These are indicators of long-term relationship quality, right? This is not about short-term sexual stuff around health or immunity or like, like, you know, which dude is more manly. This is which dude is going to serve as a better long-term provider.

And what we see on Twitter, it's really fascinating. If we break it down based on psychiatry, based on science, based on psychology, we see that there's a fundamental mismatch and that women actually prefer men who are better geared towards long-term relationships. And the most confusing thing for men is that the more manly you get, right, there's kind of like this bell curve where if you get on the extreme end of physical fitness, that implies a high degree of testosterone, it implies a high degree of judgment, it implies a high degree of rigidity, and women won't actually prefer that. The last question that I've got for y'all

is just a gut check, which is which one of these two dudes do you think is more likely to make a poll, and when the results of the poll aren't aligned with their perception of reality, is more likely to accuse you or a woman of lying, right? This is what we see on Twitter. So if y'all enjoyed this sort of quick psychological research-based jaunt into wars on Twitter, if y'all like breakdowns like this and there's something else you want me to take a look at, just post it in the comments. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life.

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