For much of the last two decades, an increasingly extreme hyper-muscularity has been the dominant beauty standard for men. If an actor wanted to land a role in a blockbuster franchise (or even just play a Chicago-based chef), they had to be willing to undergo a gruelling training schedule or, according to very believable rumours, reach for the steroids. The most successful male fitness influencers were – and still are – bodybuilding beefcakes like Simeon Panda and Chris Bumstead. Maybe more women were attracted to slender types like Timothee Chalamet, but far more men wanted to look like Henry Cavill, Dwayne Johnson or Chris Pratt.

But recently, these standards have started to shift. Bulging biceps and huge pectorals are yet to go out of fashion, and many emerging sex symbols, like Jeremy Allen White, Conner Storrie and Damson Idris, are still pretty jacked. But on social media, there is a growing shift in emphasis towards angular jawlines, visible cheekbones and “snatched waists” (a term which, incredibly, many straight men are now using in earnest).

“What’s considered attractive or desirable is a pendulum, so it swings from one extreme to the other,” says Sam Herling, a content creator and fitness coach, who offers his clients the ‘Fight Club physique’. “A lot of influencers look [hyper-muscular], whether through taking steroids or whatever, and I think people are just getting a bit fatigued with it.” This fatigue is rooted in a few different things. There has been a growing awareness about the potential harms of steroid use, which include erectile dysfunction and heart problems, and a growing resentment towards fitness influencers promoting body standards which are impossible to maintain without them, often while insisting they are “natty” (natural). 

Sam’s approach also caters to the fact that lots of men are sick of being stuck in an endless cycle of bulking and cutting, a process which can be physically unpleasant and leave you feeling perpetually unsatisfied with the way you look. Instead, he promotes a more moderate approach to gaining muscle, based on small calorie deficits and surpluses. “I’d rather just take it slower, do it a bit more naturally, and then just feel good with how I look all the time,” he says, rather than suffering to reach a goal which always feels one step out of reach.

There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about aspiring to a more slender build; in fact, the approach can be more balanced and much less extreme than the model promoted by many fitness influencers. But the rejection of hyper-muscularity often goes hand-in-hand with a fear of any fat gain whatsoever. While the men preaching the lean gospel are muscular by any reasonable standard, for many of them, there’s a difference in aspiration – the goal is not to get as big and strong as possible, but to have as little body fat as possible. This might run counter to the physique inflation of the last 20 years, but it’s not exactly a form of progress – it’s really just two difficult-to-attain body types battling for supremacy.

Many of the creators making this content are actively contemptuous of larger, more muscular men, disparaging bigger men as schlubby and bloated (the other day I saw the term ‘ogre-maxxing’). Although this carries in both directions – bodybuilders often disdain those with a more slender build as weak and feminine, soy-boys, betas and cucks, etc. – the new obsession with leanness also comes at a time when size zero culture and weight loss medications like Ozempic are putting extreme body image pressures on women. This isn’t a coincidence. Underlying them both is a strong current of fatphobia.

Much of the leanness content I see on Instagram contains some jab at fat people (an overweight colleague who has the audacity to offer dietary advice is one recurring antagonist, for example) or an almost Biblical equation with eating sugar and moral laxity. To be lean isn’t just physically attractive, this idea implies, but virtuous. It signifies discipline. “I think fatness is seen as antithetical to hard work, and that is really at the core of what's going on in our body culture right now,” says Ben, a charity worker and amateur bodybuilder. This attitude has perhaps been exacerbated by the rise of Ozempic, which is viewed by many in the fitness space as a form of cheating.

This moralising and discipline around eating from fitness bros is at times strikingly similar to what you might find on a “pro-ana” board – sometimes even using rhetoric pulled directly from it. I often see people saying “nothing tastes as good as lean feels”, for example, seemingly with no awareness that the precursor to this phrase – popularised by models in 00s – became widely known as a mantra for disordered eating. Attitudes like this often come alongside extreme calorific restriction and body fat levels which are objectively unhealthy, or even dangerous, to sustain for long periods. “I think [the standard] has moved from ‘you shouldn’t be overweight’ to ‘you shouldn't have any fat at all’, which is stupid,” says Sam. “There’s a community of young people – teens, really – who are driving these unrealistic body image expectations. It’s rampant on TikTok.”

Similar to other forms of disordered eating, as Ben sees it, the desire for leanness is partly an attempt to exert control in a world in which stability feels increasingly out of reach. “It’s not possible to save for a house. Social mobility has been crushed. What we are seeing in response is the proliferation of other forms of self-investment,” they say. In other words, you might not be able to earn as much money as your father or grandfather, but you can work harder at the gym and achieve a ‘better’ body. “I think that’s why we’re seeing an enormous proliferation of body fascism at every level, for every gender, for every person.”

In these precarious times, there’s nothing wrong with having a hobby that anchors you with a sense of purpose, or with setting goals and doing your best to achieve them. But being consistently lean is difficult, in my experience, without becoming at best joyless and at worst neurotic or even disordered about food. Pursued over long periods of time, restrictive eating is an easy path to madness, or just a banal kind of misery: diligently weighing out every bowl of cereal, logging every slice of Ryvita on a calorie-tracking app, feeling a sense of dread about meals out or family occasions where you can’t control exactly what you’re consuming. Having a six-pack isn’t really worth it if the trade-off is alternating between guilt and hunger, often for months at a time, and the sense that you never have full permission to enjoy your life.