Bodybuilders twisting out your image of what a boyfriend should look like?

Yeah I have a big attraction to muscles, and that seems pretty ubiquitous in the gay community.

I do find more regular guys attractive though, at least as I've gotten older

 

Like, I don't think being attracted to very fit people is necessarily indicative to porn usage, although it may amplify it.

Honestly, I have way better and more fun sex with more regular guys.

 

I'm a heterosexual man and i understand what you mean but i think the issues surrounding body image are not explicitly linked to porn, the mainstream media and even childrens toys have a part to play in shaping peoples expectations and percieved societal norms and aspirations. We have super hero movies where all the men are built like tanks and romantic films and action movies where the guy is a very typical 'perfect image' and the same goes for women too, when they are girls growing up they play with dolls who have impossibly thin waistlines and see airbrushed super models on the covers of the magazines they read and believe that these are what they should aspire to be like. With males there is a sense of 'i have to be the macho man and show no emotion, else i'll be percieved as weak' the reality is that humans come in all shapes and sizes and all have redeeming features about them, super heroes aren't just people that can fly or shoot lasers out of their eyes but can be the every day people who look out for each other and do good things for others.

 

YOU are one of those superheroes you mention in your last sentence, man! Thank you so much for this; you are so very right.

 

Does media and marketing determine how we view and desire a certain body image, or is how we view and value a certain body image determine media and marketing? What you described is an endogeneity problem and which way the causal arrows point is ambiguous.

I can only speak for my own experience that I will always be attracted to muscles and really big guys. But what nonfap and the reboot process has allowed me is seeing far more complexity and dimensionality in other people. Before they were just meat bags, but now I vaue many many more things. While I'm still attracted to really big guys, it now takes far more to pique my interest than just being huge; Character, empathy and intelligence are also critical too.