In America, male body shapes will wax and wane – over a period of half a decade, they might go from the "jock" to something skinny and then creep back to the current vogue, the "swimmer's" body – that is, not such a meathead that you could beat anybody up, but not so lanky that you look pubescent.
People who only know Carlyle as the dope-smoking TV rebel cop Hamish Macbeth, or Trainspotting's meathead Begbie, might be a little surprised at these grand comparisons, but they are well-deserved.
It might be that, finally, our tastes have caught up with the world as we experience it – it is no longer hugely useful to partner with a meathead.
In the 1970s he was Meathead, Archie Bunker's son-in-law in the sitcom "All in the Family"; later, he was the director of "When Harry Met Sally" and "This is Spinal Tap".
"After this experience I am ready to cross myself in a church and to light a menorah in a synagogue," said Mr Eliacik, who is being sued by Mr Erdogan for calling him "a meathead" and "a dictator" in tweets.The protests have mostly died down.
He was too much of a meathead for Texas, and narrowly lost his election to the Democrat, Ann Richards, who was later unseated by George W. Bush.
(They divorced in 1979.) Reiner caught his big break when he was cast as Michael ("Meathead") Stivic in the sitcom All in the Family (1971 79).
Typical meathead, you might think, and it would have been some consolation to me to be able to think the same.
Whereas Ben Affleck (another actor who has managed to claw his way back from years stuck in the ether), as the other older hanger-on in the film, the raging meathead O'Bannion, channelled violence and vitriol into his lost youth, McConaughey exuded a calm acceptance of his slow pace and of the sense that everything was and would always be all right.
It's impossible to discuss TV, even today, without stumbling upon the medium's most famous libel, its own version of "meathead".
If you're a meathead muscle jock, you're a rider.
