Bulk up, guys, but know when to stop. In fact, for all the talk, working out has probably remained as much as ever a young guy's hobby. Once out of their twenties and cumbered with life's larger responsibilities, most men become indifferent to their body shape. Ectomorphs who bulked up at school or college allow their hard-won muscle to turn to flab. Mesomorphs go pear-shaped.
Endomorphs swell into gross obesity.
This does not, of course, help the public man. It is not so much that we have become a narcissistic people. If we had, gyms would be commoner than gas stations and MacDonalds would be out of business. The cult of exercise, the end of promiscuous smoking and drinking, and also, increasingly, the availability of cosmetic surgery, have given our society a beauty elite of entertainers and personalities more numerous and more flawless than any we have had before. Their omnipresence has changed our psyches, adding anxieties and frustrations, altering our expectations of all public persons.