For the ancient Greeks, it was the shapely buttocks of the famous statue of Aphrodite kallipygos – literally “Aphrodite of the beautiful arse.” The female ideal also included small, pert breasts, pale skin indicative of leisure indoors, away from the sun, and fair reddish or blonde hair.

The male ideal, by contrast, was that of the athlete, the body shaped by training in the gymnasium and the wrestling school (palaestra) for competition and, ultimately, war. Defined but not excessive musculature; broad shoulders and narrow waist; tanned skin glistening with olive oil and exfoliated by the scraping of a bronze strigil. And we know the Greeks preferred dainty genitals too – at least in art – as a sign of masculine continence and self-control.

In our own time, one of the more enduring and coveted signs of health and beauty has been “six-pack abs” – visible, taut musculature of the core – and bulging biceps. But of course fashions change, and now we’re on our own callipygian bent – and it’s not just the women with their endless “booty workouts” and BBLs stuffed into tight Lululemon yoga pants like obscene Christmas hams.

Eating living foods is something the average person simply doesn’t do much of, if at all, today

Eating living foods is something the average person simply doesn’t do much of, if at all, today

Just the other week I opened the lifestyle section of a newspaper magazine and was told powerful glutes are now the “must-have” physical status symbol for men, too.

We seem to be going much further than the ancient Greeks and their love of the perfectly rounded posterior. If the latest news from the White House is anything to go by, we’re actually regressing to a much deeper, more primitive state, something like Freud’s anal stage writ large, when the child is fascinated and thrilled by what comes out of its body in solid form. According to the New York Times, some of the most powerful men in the world now want, more than anything else, a bottom that doesn’t need to be wiped.

Apologies if you’re reading this over breakfast, lunch, dinner. You........

© The Spectator