On Before And After Gym Transformations
To a woman, you are telling her a story that will always elicit the ick.
As with all things on the internet, the latest viral sensation is deeply misunderstood. Many people genuinely think that this is a discussion about male physiques; I can assure you that it is nothing of the sort.
The medium is the message.
— Marshall McLuhan
Before and after gym transformation photo-series are one thing to men and an entirely different thing to women. To men, they are concrete and material data that can be used to compare past with present and assess progress. In three words, it’s all plot. They are just what they appear to be: two photos, one next to the other, that literally plot the progress of your physique-building in a visual way. To a man, there is no overall story being shown.
To women, before and after gym transformations are all narrative minus the plot. To women, these before and afters tell a story that is all but unseen by the men who observe the same sets of photos. There’s a lot that goes into why the storytelling of even the most transcendent of transformations elicits the ick, and I will delve into some of those shortly. First, I must set the stage a bit.
On Cool
First, some middle-school psychology. Ever heard the word cool? Yeah, well, as much as you think you and your buddies care about cool, I can assure you, women care about seeing cool in you much, much more. Cool is what is meant by redpillers when they say stuff like, “don’t be unattractive.” Cool is what chicks actually mean when they refer to big dick energy, aura, etc. And cool is much more about your past, present, and future than it is about a snapshot of your present.
Cool evokes effortlessness, natural instinct, and a sense of, I was always like this. This is at the core of why redpillers’ number one rule is “don’t talk about redpill,” because if you need a book to teach you how to relate to women and make them horny, that’s incredibly corrosive to cool, my friend.
On Physique
A hot physique on a man is more attractive the less he acknowledges it. Elite physique and no shaker bottle on the counter? No discernible diet? No knowledge of Cronometer? That’s extremely attractive. Elite physique and your new girlfriend doesn’t even know what gym you go to, or when you find the time, or if you even go to the gym at all? That’s S-tier.
Contrast this with a guy married for a decade who is finally getting into shape and talks about it every single time he returns from the gym. He begs for acknowledgment from his girl; she catches him looking at himself in the mirror; he might even prompt her for direct compliments. Not very attractive, definitely not cool. Indeed, it’s actively hurting the situation, and no level of physique will make up for it. You are literally wasting your time or making things worse if you are deadlifting and crowing about it to her every night.
A hot physique achieved through overdosing on Huberman Lab, neurotic mindfulness of macros, and foam rolling your traps in front of your girl is extremely unattractive and borders on being downright homosexual. A hot physique, never acknowledged, that exists on its own as if it were won through effortlessness—that’s extremely attractive. That’s a cool dude with a great physique.
Before and After Is Never Cool
Wow, hot body he’s got there in his after photo. I wonder what traumatic knock to his self-esteem caused him to pursue this new physique? How come I cannot see his hot body anymore and am only feeling this deep sense of ew? Maybe ripped physiques are bad? Yeah that’s it.
— Every Woman Ever
The before and after photo-series violates the cool and effortless principle by default.
You are documenting your progress, taking photos of your body, looking to measure the slightest hints of gains. You are showcasing an extreme level of self-consciousness as regards your physique. Not cool.
You are, in some cases, sharing it with others, or at worst, sharing it with the whole world on the internet. You are attention-seeking and looking for validation from outside of yourself. Not cool.
You are implicitly acknowledging that not too long ago, you allowed your body to become an embarrassment to you, enough that you decided to pursue a good physique. You are yelling out, “I wasn’t happy with myself not too long ago.” You are literally highlighting recent self-esteem deficits in yourself. Not cool.
You are making women wonder why you felt the need to pursue a physique. Their minds quickly go to bad breakup, depressive episode, can’t get laid, or some variant of those ideas. Not cool.
Your toothy, prideful smile in your after photo induces nuclear levels of ick; it makes her see you as a child begging mommy for affirmation. Not cool.
In sum, the before and after gym transformation tells a story that is inherently negative in the minds of women. In the before photo, at least you are your natural self, somewhat comfortable, maybe slightly cool, even if it is showcasing a somewhat decrepit dad-bod. It’s who you actually are, and there’s at least something meritorious about that in most cases.
In the after photo, you have a better physique, but, by comparison to your former self, you exude feelings of longing, unfulfilled desires, and you are obviously a striver for higher-end pussy than you’ve ever tasted. Not a great look.
The photos together may as well force her to construct a narrative arc about you that will always be negative: one of a man who had to change, not one of a man who was born to it naturally. This is ick-inducing. Women don’t get wet for how hard you must’ve worked to achieve your physique. They dry up thinking about the fact that you needed to do it at all.
When a 7 sees you out on the street rocking your new physique and a cool effortlessness, she’s gonna be into it. But in the context of the before and after transformation, you’re giving the truth away. She can literally see the giddiness on after-you’s face that says, “Oh boy, I might be able to get 7s instead of 5s and 6s now!” This is deeply unattractive. Very much not cool.
Aesthetics
As with all amateur male photography, you make all the wrong choices: you give no consideration to lighting, the background escapes your notice, your pose is weird, etc. But forgetting that, the choices made in your after photo are especially despicable. As already mentioned, you smile like a child, begging for mommy’s validation. What’s more, you flex like Arnold, something you’re not accustomed to doing—exuding awkwardness. Somewhat terrifyingly, you are all of a sudden in your newly purchased tight underwear, or worse, you’ve tucked your shorts up in one of the strangest decisions imaginable. Again, you have no experience wearing tight undies or tucked-up shorts, so of course you look strange. You usually draw extra attention to all of this by being dressed like a normal person in your before photo.
Worse, in most cases, you are showcasing an average package, not realizing that tight, speedo-like adornment is probably best reserved for those of significant stature.
NOTE: Don’t be self-conscious of your size, its probably fine, but unless you actually hang serious dong, its probably best to stay away from drawing attention to it.
Why Are You Hairless?
Many times, you’ve even shaved your body for some strange reason! Again, this all serves to paint a narrative in her mind. She begins to ask questions like:
Is this guy becoming gay the more weight he puts on the bar?
Has he never been worshipped as a sex object before?
What was his sex life like before? Probably not so good if he felt the need to transform so thoroughly.
Why is he smiling like a little boy who just won a trophy?
What’s with the bizarre obsession with his own quadricep muscles?
The before and after transformation photo-series transforms you, in her mind, into a self-conscious loser who, as a person requiring transformation at all, is unattractive. She isn’t seeing two photos side by side and comparing them like your buddies are; she’s constructing your whole life arc in her mind, and she’s not doing so charitably.
Having Had a Physique
Having a physique isn’t what’s hot to a woman, not primarily at least. Having had a physique for a long time is what makes you hot to a woman, among other things. This is because women know what having had a physique means. It means you’ve fucked and been fucking. She unconsciously paints narratives about how many women you’ve fucked when you present with a good physique. Whereas in a transformation photo-series, she wonders if maybe you weren’t getting any at all and that’s why you felt the need to so thoroughly transform. This isn’t attractive to women. Women like confidence, stability, and been here plenty of times before type vibes.
Your before might even look good by comparison because you at least seem somewhat comfortable and not needy beyond belief. Your after scares them away because you are so clearly new to having a physique. Heck, it even evokes the idea that you probably won’t be able to keep it, that it’s just a temporary glitch, a trick. Women’s worst fear, literally, is being tricked.
So then these women experience all of these emotions after viewing a before and after transformation collage and say things like, “I prefer the before, actually.” Well, yeah, given the choice between dad-bod dude who has a bit of cool to him and shredded striver dude who has deep insecurities and zero cool, women will usually choose the former if they must choose at all in order to be seen and heard from on the timeline. And then men hop into the replies to argue, not understanding that these women are commenting on how these photos make them feel and that the ladies are not talking about the aesthetics of what they see at all.
Old Money Versus New
Women don’t evaluate men on their aesthetic appearance anything like the way we do them. But when it’s old you against new you, the lack of importance they place on aesthetics goes into overdrive. A man’s physique is much more about what it represents.
The coolest thing about being hot is how long you’ve gotten to live like that. When you’ve lived with a hot physique forever, she thinks to herself, “I wonder who got to enjoy that physique in Paris a decade ago? I wonder how beautiful she was? I wonder if she was prettier than me?”
Us men, we see a babe, and we try not to think about what her being a babe might mean with regards to things like her sexual history, if it even occurs to us at all. We focus on the now! We think, “She’s hot, and I want that.” Women do not operate like this at all. They see a narrative story when they observe men. Show a man a before and after transformation series of a woman, and he’ll just evaluate it on the merits, end of story.
In Real Life
When after-photo dude is on the street with his new body and he encounters women who never knew him before he attained it, they can imagine, at least in the beginning before he loses frame, that that’s what the dude was always like. They can get horny at the idea of what life adventures his physique has taken him on. And then they prepare to explode over the thought of the adventures he and his physique might take her on.
As he puts more and more mileage into his physique, he will become less conscious of it and more accustomed to life as a guy with a physique. This will compound the effects of having a physique, and he will slowly transform into a guy who has had a physique all along, helping him to unlock higher and higher quality women. But in the context of the before/after, his new physique does nothing but create ick in the minds of women.
This is because before and after transformations, when viewed by women, always tell a negative story. They tell a story of a man who once was, very recently, not: cool, attractive, jacked, etc. And sometimes, in their confusion over this, they think they prefer the schlub they see in the before photo because… they kinda do, at least in that context.
In the medium of the before and after photo-series, he’s got the physique, but because he’s drawing attention to the contrast, she knows that he doesn’t have what the physique is meant to signal. And what the physique signals is what the woman actually craves; the physique itself is just the extra cherry on top for her.
So basically, what you’re saying is that exercise is to women what hard work is to English aristocrats: “If you had to work to get to your position, you don’t deserve it.” — Some English viscount, somewhere.
I read watch a lot of manosphere content and I've never heard anyone talk about this issue. Very interesting!