In movies, on billboards, and across social media, the ideal male body is often presented as a sort of marble statue. Massive shoulders, razor-sharp abs, and barely a trace of fat. It’s a look sculpted for the camera and often sustained by punishing workouts and strict diets (and very often nowadays, drugs like anabolic steroids).

But when researchers asked people across three countries to strictly judge male bodies stripped of biasing factors — no faces, no height, no skin tone, no six packs; just body shape — the results revealed a different kind of ideal. Not superhuman, but not average either.

In a new study, participants from China, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom consistently rated men with low-to-moderate body fat — around 13 to 14 percent — as the most attractive. These bodies also had BMIs in the 23 to 27 range, a category spanning what medical guidelines classify as “normal” to “slightly overweight.”

It’s the kind of physique seen not in superheroes, but in fit, metabolically healthy individuals — noticeably lean, though not to the point of extremity in either direction.

The Sweet Spot of Body Fat

The study, led by Fan Xia at the University of Aberdeen, set out to quantify the biological cues that drive perceptions of male attractiveness. Previous research offered scattered results, especially when it came to BMI (body mass index), a measure that treats fat and muscle mass the same way. Xia’s team wanted to disentangle the variables.

To do that, they relied on black-and-white DXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scans of 15 male bodies, ranging from very lean to obese (from 5.9% body fat to 37.2%). These images were printed as grayscale silhouettes with blurred faces and no height cues. They were then rated by 283 participants, both males and females, from three culturally and geographically distinct regions. The participants were not asked about their sexual orientation, in line with previous studies of female attractiveness. The goal: determine what traits people consistently find attractive in male bodies, stripped of distractions.

The strongest signal across all groups was adiposity, or body fat percentage. Participants gravitated toward bodies that were neither too thin nor too heavy. “The results show a clear inverted U-shape,” the authors write, with attractiveness peaking at moderate fat levels. This pattern remained stable across cultures, suggesting a shared human tendency rather than a culture-specific bias.

Fat Versus Muscle

Shoulder-to-waist ratio — the hallmark of a V-shaped torso — also influenced attractiveness, but to a lesser degree. A shoulder-to-waist ratio of 1.57, on average, was deemed most attractive. In Lithuania and China, it ceased to be significant once body fat was factored in. In the UK, it retained some predictive power, though adiposity still explained more of the variation in ratings.

“Observers are more attuned to signs of healthy, moderate fat levels,” the researchers write, than to exaggerated muscular traits.

Evolution’s Invisible Hand?

Why would a body with moderate fat be more appealing than one with chiseled definition, contrary to what social media would like you to believe?

From an evolutionary standpoint, body fat can tell you a lot of things. It reflects energy reserves, immune function, and hormone balance — traits that can influence reproductive fitness and long-term health. “Adiposity influences hormone levels such as testosterone and estrogen,” the authors note, “which affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics.” These are the subtle biological signposts that help people assess a potential partner’s vitality.

In modern industrialized cultures, especially in the West, the ideal male body is often presented as extremely lean and hyper-muscular. But this aesthetic might not align with what humans evolved to find attractive. Extreme leanness can signal malnutrition or hormonal imbalance, while excess fat can point to metabolic dysfunction.

A moderate amount of fat, meanwhile, signals health and endurance, which are qualities with clear evolutionary advantages.

In women, a similar pattern emerges around waist-to-hip ratio, long considered a cue for reproductive health. In men, it seems, adiposity might be playing a comparable role.

However, although a body fat percentage of 14% (the ratio of fat in the body in comparison to overall body weight) is considered “fit” and “healthy” for young men, most males are actually quite off this ideal figure in today’s industrialized society. In the U.S., the overall average body fat percentage is around 40% for women and 28% for men.

According to the American Council on Exercise (ACE), a body fat range of 25% to 31% for women or 18% to 24% for men is typical for the average nonathlete. A body fat below 14% for women or 6% for men may be considered dangerously low and can lead to health risks.

According to the CDC, this is the average estimated body fat percentage among various age groups:

Beyond the Body

It’s important to acknowledge the study’s limitations. Participants rated body shapes in isolation, devoid of context or personality. In real life, attraction is multi-dimensional. It can be shaped by smell, voice, movement, and experience, not just body type. The researchers themselves caution against overgeneralizing from decontextualized images.

Still, their findings provide a valuable counterpoint to media portrayals of ideal male beauty. They suggest that humans are biologically tuned to prefer traits that signal fitness, not necessarily those that dominate fashion spreads or fitness campaigns.

“Females appear sensitive to adiposity in a manner consistent with evolutionary expectations,” the authors conclude. In contrast, they note, “earlier work shows males judge females who are thinner than the evolutionary optimal as more attractive.”

The findings appeared in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.