Love handles or a six-pack? Why women prefer flab over abs.

Three in four British women would choose a man with love handles over one sporting a six-pack.

That’s 23 million of us who find muscular men a turn off and 96% imagining a date with an abs-obsessed bloke as positively dreary.

These stats are the result of a study commissioned to mark the DVD release of Bad Neighbours (out Sept 8), a film featuring numerous shirtless scenes of actors Seth Rogen (in the flab corner) and Zac Effron (in the abs).

Let’s be clear here: these results don’t mean women won’t be eyeing off Zac’s ‘V’ line: the muscular line running from the hip bone to the groin.

Did they audition chubby men for the highly anticipated film of Fifty Shades of Grey? I don’t think so.

We will ogle, we will fantasise.

But when it comes to real life, we don’t want chiselled

The question is: why on earth not?

Why don’t women want some hot, buff, perfect-bodied man lying beside us?

The sad answer is this: we’re worried we won’t shape up.

Seventy-four percent of women in the survey said they’d feel self-conscious taking their clothes off in front of a perfectly toned man.

A he-man’s discipline highlights our lack of it, making us feel even more acutely self-conscious of our own body flaws than usual.

We feel far more comfortable with flab because it’s less threatening.

Women are already under extreme pressure to look a certain way and be a certain weight.

(Anyone who ever doubted that women are judged by their physical appearance far more than men, need only have witnessed the media coverage of the unveiling of Cameron’s female MP’s: nearly all of it focused on what they wore and what they look like.)

It takes a robust self-esteem and unshakeable body image to stay objective about our weight in a society where the body ideal is so unachievable, even models struggle to maintain it.

Is it any wonder women figure - usually quite rightly - that a man who is less critical of his own appearance and less looks obsessed will be less critical of ours?

Mr Non-Perfect is a relief to any woman who steps on the scales, every day of her life, and finds her mood is affected, every day of her life, by what they say.

Especially when it comes to sex.

I’d love to meet a female whose sex life isn’t affected by a ‘fat day’.

I’ve yet to meet one man who has let feeling fat stop them having sex.

Michael Alvear, the author of ‘Not tonight dear, I feel fat’, says fifty percent of women admit they’ve put off sex - even when they’re in the mood - because they felt too fat.

“Women put conditions on sex because of weight. You won’t do it without cover-up clothing. You only have sex with the lights out. You’ll only do positions that prevent your partner from looking at or touching certain parts of your body,” he says. “Pretty soon your desire for any sex, conditional or not, goes away.”

We don’t just think our partners won’t desire us unless we are thin.

We don’t feel desirable unless we are thin.

There are many (many) things men can learn from women, but this is one area where women can learn from men.

When men look in the mirror, they look at the parts of themselves that they like.

I showed four male friends the publicity stills of the ab-tastic Zac Efron and they all shrugged and said, “He looks good. But he’s paid to look like that. That’s his job.”

They made no comparison to themselves. There was no subconscious sucking in of their beer belly. No wistful glance at their not-so-bulging biceps.

When women look in the mirror, they hone in on the bits they don’t like.

Show us a picture of Cameron Diaz in a bikini and we think ‘Why don’t I look like that? I better not eat anything else for the rest of the day and hit the gym after work’.

It’s a continuing double standard that’s not working for anyone - men or women.

We should all be more Seth-like: learn to love our bellies and accept that wobbly bits are all part of being mere mortals.

For more of Tracey’s thoughts on love and relationships, visit traceycox.com. And while you're here - why not take a look at some of Tracey's products via LoveHoney Australia.