Paul Ryan shirtless.

The headline "Top Ryan Google searches: 'vice president,' 'shirtless" made me skeptical. What about the other Ryan — the Ryan whose fame as the Ryan of the Moment got overshadowed and whose Ryan-fame was heavily torso-related — Ryan Lochte? But getting to the article, I see they were looking at "Paul Ryan" searches, not mixing up the Ryans.

It's really not that odd that people are searching the internet for Paul Ryan shirtless. For one thing, people are always searching the internet for named individuals naked or in some degree of nakedness. Remember all the fuss about Sarah Palin in a bikini?

But interest in the bare-chested version of Paul Ryan is not merely the usual interest in naked and semi-naked celebrities. From the day he was announced at Romney's VP pick, there have been articles about Paul's fitness routine, how rigorous it is, how wide his shoulders are, and how little body fat he has*:

"Paul Ryan's workout: Is P90X for you?" says CNN.

"I'm kind of a workout guy. I've always been into it. [Former Mich. Rep.] Bart Stupak and I lead [P90X classes] — there's about a dozen of us that do it," Ryan told Politico. "It works because it hits your body in many different ways: pull-ups, sit-ups, lots of cardio, karate, jump training, yoga. It pushes your body...and gets you out of your plateau."

"Paul Ryan’s Extreme Workout Plan" — that's the Daily Beast.

The Wisconsin congressman has been a devotee of the brutal P90X workout for about four years, and frequently leads workouts with other members of Congress. P90X is a 90-day workout plan that involves intensive cardio combined with yoga, karate and other fitness staples for 60 to 90 minutes a day, six days a week. Created in 2005 by Santa Monica, California-based fitness guru Tony Horton and sold as a $140 package of DVDs, the workout bills itself as “extreme home fitness.”...

Horton said that former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner used the P90X plan, and anyone who saw the accidental Twitter pictures that were his political downfall has seen the evidence firsthand. “He’s hardcore,” Horton said.

Hardcore... Anthony Weiner.... With prodding like that — if you weren't interested based on Ryan's own advertisement of his physical fitness — how can you not Google "Paul Ryan shirtless"? We're human beings and the internet is the internet and he kind of asked for it,** didn't he?

"Paul Ryan's 'Insane' Workout Routine" — at Something Awful (with a clever illustration using the familiar torso from the cover of "Atlas Shrugged." (Paul Ryan is said to like Ayn Rand, but I have not explored the extent of the devotion.)

"Not every man is strong, but every man can be strong through hard work," explains Ryan. "So long as government is not allowed to encroach on our Second Amendment liberties, you maintain the right to bare arms, legs and an insanely chiseled torso. Get your pump on and sell as many tickets as you want to the gun show."...

Begin run. Visualize shining city on the hill because it is easily defended from shiftless bloato wrecks, carb-diners, milk chuggers and gay-married pizza princes. Surrounded by the land of unwanted workers and broken pleasure robots, only our guns and our incredible lithe bodies will protect us from corrosive morality.

Humor. Deal with it.
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* Is it healthy to have only 6 to 8% body fat? You doctors out there, what do you say to patients with such low body fat? I've read — in the New York Times — "Too Little Fat Can Be as Bad as Too Much." ("Researchers have found that life with too little fat can be as fraught with medical complications as life with too much fat and, bizarrely, the complications are often exactly the same....") [ADDED: Ryan's father and grandfather died young from heart attacks. If "the complications are often exactly the same," is Ryan's intense pursuit of fitness — perhaps motivated by fear of the same fate — dangerous?]

** Don't use that phrase in reference to a woman!