Do women like muscular forearms?
We conducted two experiments to find out if women like forearms
Author: Chris Blonk
Do women like muscular forearms on men? We conducted two science experiments to answer this question. The inspiration for this research mainly comes from Reddit, where women often have mentioned their love of muscular forearms. In a popular post titled “Women of Reddit, what body part on a man are you most physically attracted?” the most upvoted comments were as follows:
Strong jawline (880 upvotes)
Arms and hands, muscular and slightly veiny (714 upvotes)
Bum (488 upvotes)
Shoulders/collar bones/napes of necks (457 upvotes)
Another commenter stated “Face and forearms. I like a good view while being choked 😳”. This comment had 588 upvotes at the time of writing.
Clearly, women say they like forearms. So, does this mean men should train their forearms to appear more attractive to women? We conducted two experiments to see if men should train their forearms to look more muscular if they want to appeal to women.
Subjects and environment
Approximately 400 women on Photofeeler.com
Test stimulus
We edited two images of men with bare forearms in their photos. In the following image, the man originally had muscular forearms, so we edited a version of the image to make it look like he had weak forearms. You can see the muscular forearm condition on the left (original) and the smaller forearm condition on the right (manipulated)
In the second image, the man originally had smaller forearms (left image), so we manipulated the image to make it seem like he had more muscular forearms (right image)
Method
We posted all images on Photofeeler.com at different times to hopefully reduce the chance that the same people voted on the same images. Each version of each image was posted about 12 hours apart. 100 voters were selected for each image, resulting in a combined 400 votes.
Results
Small forearm condition, subject A:
Muscular forearm condition, subject A:
Small forearm condition, subject B:
Muscular forearm condition, subject B:
Results
Subject A:
The 95% confidence interval for attractiveness was between 8.1 and 9.0 for the weak forearms condition, and between 7.8 and 8.8 for the strong forearms condition. With the weak forearms condition scoring an 8.6 and the strong forearms condition scoring an 8.3, both scores are within the confidence intervals of each other.
There was no significant difference in perceived attractiveness whether forearms were strong or weak.
Subject B:
The 95% confidence interval for attractiveness was between 7.9 and 8.9 for the weak forearms condition, and between 8.0 and 9.0 for the strong forearms condition. With the weak forearms condition scoring an 8.4 and the strong forearms condition scoring an 8.6, both scores are within the confidence intervals of each other.
There was no significant difference in perceived attractiveness whether forearms were strong or weak.
Summary & thoughts
So are forearms attractive? Do women like forearms? We found no statistical difference in attractiveness for a man with thick and muscular forearms compared to normal forearms. There may be a difference in attractiveness, but given our 100 votes on each image, these are not enough votes to see that difference. Strong forearms don’t seem to matter very much to women in our study. It may be seen as a nice bonus, rather than what ultimately contributes to her overall impression of a man’s attractiveness. If you want to become more attractive to women, don’t spend a lot of effort on working out your forearms. Instead, focus on some of these other factors that science has found to make a difference.
