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Poet laureate of the deep state
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C A L F A E S T H E T I C S : The Definitive Guide
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- INSERTIONS
- MUSCULARITY
- COLORING AND LEG HAIR
- FASHION
I. INTRODUCTION
The calves are an underrated part of male aesthetics. I am writing this guide in the hopes of remediating that. I hold that the shape, size, contour, and hair of your calves can signal not only your frame and genetic fitness, but also your personality. After 26 years of walking on this planet I have come to this conclusion by noticing how certain calves tend to be associated with certain types of guys, to the extent that calves can determine your social life as much as your face can. It is not reducible cleanly to an issue of having a wide frame or a certain kind of muscularity. In reality, calves are much more complicated than that. A calf that works very well on one guy may not work very well on another. The calves are to the legs as the cheekbones are to the face. The calf must be appealing not only in itself, but it must also harmonize well with the ankles, the feet, the knee, and the thighs. While I believe there is value in considering the calf independently from the other parts of the leg, ultimately it can only be considered in the context of the rest of the leg.
I also believe there is almost nothing you can do to significantly improve calf aesthetics, save some minor gains possible through the gym as well as shaving or trimming your leg hair if it is unappealing. As such, this guide is less about how to improve your calves but how to identify the attributes that make a good calf—more of a field guide than an instruction manual. Furthermore, my primary interest is in not legs that are most sexually appealing to girls. I have arrived at my conclusions by decades of intuition alongside deep mental sublimination of the immortal laws of beauty.
I have organized this guide into five sections. Four of them address individual domains of calf aesthetics in detail: insertions, muscularity, leg hair, and fashion. These are then followed by a final section of case studies in which I show how these domains come together and arrive at a conclusion on what constitutes the best calves. This is also just a field guide to white boy legs.
Say it with me: the calves are the maxilla of the leg.
II. INSERTIONS
The insertion is the cornerstone of the calf. The qualities to look for when studying the insertion are the following:
- Height. A calf insertion can be high set or low set. A high set means the insertion begins closer to the knee. A low set means the insertion begins closer to the center of the leg.
- Length. Calf insertions can be short or long. A short insertion means it has a short vertical length. You can have any type of length. When speaking of calf length we can refer to how far up the leg from the ankle towards the knee the insertion begins and ends. e.g. an insertion that ends just below the halfway point between the knee and the ankle would be, say, 0.45.
- Width. Calf insertions can be narrow or wide. Similarly, some calves may taper outward more dramatically as you move from the vertical extremities of the insertion into the center. As such, we can speak of a insertion width profile to characterize different levels of tapering. Some calves are also wider on the inner side than the outer side or vice versa. Width is the only parameter of the calf you can change dramatically enough through working out to produce a noticeable difference.
For example:
These ones have a middle set, an above average width at the middle of the insertion, but are vertically short, as you can see they taper almost entirely inward by the 40. The insertion is relatively thick towards the top so there is less of a gap between the top of the calf and the knee.
These guys both have very narrow calves that are very high set. You can see the guy on the right has slightly longer calves.
This guy has enormously wide calves that are somewhat middle set and somewhat above average vertical length. There is a dramatic taper outwards, the widest point of the calf is double the width of the ankle and they close in more dramatically as they meet the knee, producing a gap.
In this image:
Guy on the left has middle set, narrow but fairly long calves.
Guy on the middle has slightly lower set, wide, and long calves. NB: These are close to ideal as far as shape goes, although the skintone-body hair synergy leaves us wanting.
Guy on the right has a similar set to the middle guy but they are even wider. Notice, though, how the area of his calves that is wider more dramatically tapers inward, producing a noticeable gap as it moves into the knee.
What would be ideal if we combined the calves of the guy on the middle with the thighs of the guy on the left.
He has middle set insertions, although the inner sides of the calves taper inward towards the ankle too early resulting in an uncannily gracile look in contrast to his otherwise well built lower third.
As a rule, the ideal calf width to ankle width ratio is 1.58. This is the widest point of the calf divided by the narrowest point of the ankle. The ideal thigh to calf ratio is 1.52. This is the widest point of the thighs divided by the widest point of the calves. It then follows that the thigh width to ankle ratio is 0.41. This is the widest point of the thigh divided by the narrowest point of the ankle.
The genial angle refers to the angle you obtain from drawing a line from the widest point of the calves on the inner side, to the narrowest point of the knee. This angle measures how dramatically your leg tapers inward. An elegant angle is around 12 degrees. See below:
An angle too much higher than 12 degrees means the calf is too wide or the knee bone is too narrow. An angle lower than 12 degrees can look barbaric.
III. MUSCULARITY
This section can be short for the simple reason: there is little to gain from increasing the muscularity of the calves. While this applies to bodybuilding altogether to some degree, it is especially true in the calves. Calf exercises do little to obfuscate a badly shaped insertion since the result is typically a tumorous-esque protrusion from the leg. See below:
While it is possible to obtain some vascularity through working out the calves, this is also aesthetically undesirable for a similar reason.
IV. COLORING AND LEG HAIR
An underrated aspect of calf aesthetics is coloring and leg hair. This pertains to the way that the skin color interacts with the leg hair. Within skin color we can speak about different overtones, undertones, and degrees of tanning. Within leg hair we can speak about texture, density, thickness, and color. When these things come together an ideal fashion, the result is nothing short of astonishing. When they come together poorly, it looks, quite frankly: vile. Leg hair can appear, on one end, almost glistening in the sun, and on the other, dirty and in need of shaving or trimming. There are a number of ways to make it work depending on your skin coloring. But to elucidate, I will proceed with some examples in decreasing order of aesthetics:
It is best when the density of the leg hair decreases as you approach the knee, as in the below.
The guy on the right has good density and length, but it would be better if the hair was slightly lighter or the leg skin color was slightly darker. But overall very high quality.
Similar to the above, although this one is slightly too low density, resulting in the leg hair equivalent of a patchy beard.
The below is aesthetically unpleasing because the strands are simultaneously long but not dense, resulting in a stringy appearance. The lack of density also means you can visibly see the hair follicles. It's the leg equivalent of a guy who grows out his hair long despite having diffuse thinning. This is one of the worst leg hair growth patterns and can generally only be remediated with regular nairing.
The below is aesthetically unpleasing because the hairs are clumping together. It makes it look like there is a distinct, visible black layer of "something" blanketing the skin. It is also ideal that the leg hair tapers away somewhat as you move towards the ankle, but the opposite is happening in his case.
Tan skin with medium density light brown hair is the gold standard when it comes to leg hair aesthetics. It almost seems to glimmer in the sunlight. The below represents an ideal essay in this genre:
The below represents probably both an ideal calf shape and leg hair texture:
V. FASHION
There are a few ways of manipulating the perception of your calf shape. Namely, wearing shorts and socks of different lengths, as well as different cuts of pants. The TikTok era has brought to the mainstream baggy workwear fashion that can effectively cover up your calves if they are garbage. If your issue, however, is a calf width to ankle width ratio, wearing long socks is an effective solution to the problem. This is in fact why they have become so popular and worn by guys across the anglosphere and would never wear no-show. They are the best way to fraud a bad calf width to ankle width ratio.
Similarly, the length of shorts can be used to fraud (or show off) a calf width to thigh width ratio. The resurgence of 5" inseam shorts in contemporary fashion is a testament to this. These shorts allow you to better show off such a good ratio. Opting for basketball length shorts (9-11") enables you to cover up the thighs and even knees entirely. This is a good choice if your calf insertion is otherwise fine but it is not in harmony with your thigh.
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