The first time we meet the romantic lead in my second novel, he is described thus (he’s the older brother):

Both boys were built along round, compact lines. Sha was still rather skinny, but Ikash was beginning to fill out with a little muscle, taking on a sleek, powerful shape reminiscent of a dolphin … They had brown skin; sweet, round faces like their mother; and straight black hair, Sha’s floppy, Ikash’s hugging his head like a seal’s pelt.

The Strange Land, chapter 1

Later, we are told that Ikash has “a tendency to appear squat.”

This is a look that might be called not conventionally handsome (i.e., not looking like the prince in Snow White or something). By the end of the book, believe me, Ikash is what Michael Knowles would call “a hulking Adonis.”

I didn’t write this intentionally to boost this particular style of male beauty. That’s just the way it worked out. Coincidentally, around the same time I was writing, Disney’s Maui gave us another spectacular example of this style of male beauty:

Though Maui is even more of a tank than Ikash.