Men's Muscles and Sexual Selection

Sexual selection and men’s muscles

The price and privilege of beefcake

WHY are men’s muscles so much bigger than women’s?

Partly, of course, because men do the fighting and hunting. But also, perhaps, because women like men who can do these things well, and are thus attracted to muscular men. Both phenomena--competing with members of the same sex and showing off to members of the opposite--are subject to a form of evolution known as sexual selection. It is sexual selection that created the deer’s antlers and the peacock’s tail, and William Lassek of the University of Pittsburgh and Steven Gaulin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, think it explains men’s muscles as well.