Hey, maybe there’s indeed some evolutionary reason why women love buns and some men like Big Butts…
From: http://www.arthurdevany.com/archives/evolutionary_fitness/index.html#000104#more
Buns
Young women love them in a man. Evolutionary psychology tells us they should. Strong and solid buttocks are a sign of health and power in a male. But, buns seem to be shrinking these days. I am struck by the lack of glutteal musculature in males these days. The pants just hang on a lot of the softball players I see.
A male can’t be powerful unless he has developed buttocks. They are the foundation of mobility for almost all athletic moves and they are the prime movers in any rapid or powerful move. Heavy lifting, sprinting, hitting or throwing all move off the drive from the legs and gluts.
Why are buns shrinking?
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Too much sitting. Sitting cuts off the blood supply to the gluts and they atrophy. They just waste away from a lack of blood flow. Go into a truck stop and you will see men that may have started driving as young, tough truck jockeys whose pants just hang straight down from their belt after 20 years in the cab. Office workers are just as vulnerable.
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Too little full body exercise. Dead lifts, squats, splits, power cleans, and overhead moves engage the gluts. Sitting in a leg extension machine does not. Hack squats on those slanted racks were designed to avoid developing the glutes by body builders seeking a Steve Reeves look.
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Not enough sprinting. Glutes are essential to a powerful and full leg drive. Jogging doesn’t do it. Running at varying speed does to some degree. Long term joggers tend to have a tucked under pelvis, tilted forward from the base, probably to protect their lower back. This reduces engagement of the glutes.
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Too much alcohol. Alcoholics have no glutes. Check it out. They do all of the above: sitting, not exercising, no sprinting. But, they have another problem. They are so malnourished, particularly in protein, that they consume their own muscle mass to maintain their overworked organs. Their organs are busy trying to detoxify their bodies and are overloaded.
One of the strangest sights I have ever seen was inside one of those bars that open at 6:30 in the morning. I was delivering beer kegs in one of my summer jobs and went into one of those bars to make a delivery. At 8:00 in the morning there were drinkers sitting at the bar. What strange creatures they seemed to my inexperienced eyes. They didn’t speak, they croaked from free radical damage of smoke and alcohol to their vocal cords. They had flourid faces (blood vessel damage, again from ROS). They had bloated bellies from protein deprivation and liver damage. And, they had no glutes.
With the stench, dark, smokey air, and bar lighting, I felt like I was in another world populated with strange creatures. I have never forgotten it.
I know two famous economists who drank themselves to death
and a few who tried (high level economics is hard to do and economists are contentious, hard-headed people; economics seminars often are a blood sport). Out of respect, I won’t mention their names.
In their decline, they manifested all the signs of these pitiful and strange people in the 6AM bar. Their flourid faces gave them a look of health, they almost looked tan. Their bellies made them look robust. But, their glutes always gave them away; they were dying alcoholics.
So, women are right. Buns are good. They are a very reliable sign of health and power in a male; good genes and provision to a female in the evolutionary environment where buns would have been a powerful clue.
Over nearly 40 years of university teaching I have been reviewed many times by students. I’ve had good ones and bad ones and always seemed to inspire a love/hate relationship with my students. One of my favorite student reviews came just a couple of years ago. I was walking out of an elevator and a young female student said “Buns” just as the elevator doors closed. Now, that was a good student review.
