When a 19-year-old college student declared that girls are crazy about the "dad bod," it ignited an Internet fury, pitting fat against fit.

In Mackenzie Pearson's viral post about why the "balance between beer gut and working out" is more desirable, she writes, "We know what we are getting into when he's got the same exact body type at the age of 22 that he's going to have at 45."

Oh, dear.

Pearson hasn't learned about metabolism yet. Or about what the aging process does to a 22-year-old's ability to indulge in $4 pitchers and binge on pizza. Hint: It doesn't work the same at 45.

Yet, finally, the Midwest is ahead on a body trend. The land of beer and brats embraced the soft-around-the-center "dad bod" long before the rest of America discovered it.

Forensic psychiatrist Omar Quadri of St. Louis, 51, worked hard to achieve his dad bod. He lost about 35 pounds over two years.

"It seemed initially counterintuitive that someone would be attracted to a plumper male form, but the psychological underpinnings make sense to me," he said. The body type signals a stable provider, he said. "Most women can provide for themselves, but they don't want to be supporting a loser, either."

He said women are more likely to value kindness and financial stability than ripped abs in a long-term relationship.

Of course, you never know what's underneath the packaging.

Jeremy Nulik, 36, is a father of two children, has a self-declared dad bod and runs ultramarathons.

"I think I've had a dad bod since I was 13," he said. "I'm a running dork who likes to eat nachos."

From outward appearances, Nulik, who wears a size large T-shirt, looks like an average American male. He said the dad bod is probably more approachable for some women.

"But is it more desirable? I don't know. Probably not."

It may signal to women that a guy has pursuits other than spending all day in a gym, he said. Really, though, he could care less about how his physique measures up when he's able to run 70 miles in a week.

This healthy male body image likely comes from much more relaxed societal expectations for male appearances versus female. When was the last time someone extolled the virtues of a squishy mom bod?

"This is why this 'dad bod' is laughable to me," Nulik said. "(Men) didn't need to be let off the hook. Was there ever a hook for us?"

Mike Little, trainer and owner of Dynamic Personal Fitness in suburban St. Louis, says there's more to staying in shape than looking good in jeans and a T-shirt, and that abdominal fat is particularly unhealthy. It's about being healthy and active and how you feel about yourself, he said.

Plus, he's heard his wife remark that Chris Hemsworth looks pretty hot. He's never heard her comment on Ray Romano's body.

His wife, Heather, said she finds an athletic body more desirable (as you'd expect from someone married to a trainer). And points out that there is a lot more pressure on moms to look cute than dads.

"Out-of-shape women are not described as sexy," she said. And men aren't the ones who get pregnant and give birth; they skip the physical transformation parenthood instantly confers upon women.

Aesthetic preferences are idiosyncratic and complicated. One 20-year-old told me she would rather be with a slightly out-of-shape larger guy than a skinny one. Another said going for dad bods is about settling for someone less likely to cheat on you. Several of the points the college blogger made in support of the dad bod reinforced young women's own sense of self: They want to be the pretty ones in the couple, and a less-fit man is less intimidating.

These preferences may also change with time, as emerging self-confidence matures into adulthood.

Christy Senay, a 25-year-old personal trainer in St. Louis, says she has dated both a dad bod-type and a bodybuilder. She says neither is exactly her type.

"But if I had to pick, I'd choose the bodybuilder," she said.

Caption for ptb150615.jpg: Professional portraits of newborns, like this one by Stephanie Cotta, are increasingly popular -- and can be costly.

Add another item to the pregnancy checklist: Book the glamour shots for your newborn.

It only makes sense for a generation used to displaying their curated and polished life milestones.

You've seen this pictorial story on Facebook: First comes the newly engaged couple sitting in a tree. Then comes the art-directed wedding. Then comes the baby posed in a baby sling.

There may also be professional pregnancy photos and a gender reveal along the way. But the Anne Geddes poster-worthy baby -- that's the money shot.

St. Louis-based newborn photographer Stephanie Cotta says she was one of the first to bring the idea of "newborn art" to the city back in 2010, soon after the birth of her first child. She has perfected a series of 17 poses she only uses on babies between four and 14 days old.

"I've worked it down to a science," Cotta said. The photo may involve a bucket, a blanket or beanbag, but it's the wrinkly days-old baby who makes the shot.

Three-month-olds are too late.

"When they are that old, they're not as sleepy and not as curly," she said.

Too bad, so sad, punkin.

Moms-to-be start contacting Cotta in their second trimester, because she books six to eight months out. Even if it's too late to get into her schedule, new moms and other aspiring photographers can take her "Newborn Mentoring Workshop," in which she shares the art of newborn posing. The goal is to "capture exactly how little they are in the first few weeks." About 40 percent of the clients taking her workshops are new moms with new cameras.

The camera is the new mirror. But unlike a reflection intended for personal use, this mirror is reflected to the world. It says something semipermanent about you, and a baby has become an extension of that personal brand.

Her clients typically spend between $800 and $2,500 for newborn photos.

Cotta wants to create a piece of work that will evoke, decades later, the same emotions as when the baby was born. Now, there may be a tiny bit of whitewashing required. Cotta says she edits and Photoshops all the images, and in some cases, that may involve smoothing baby skin or "addressing color issues." Sometimes newborns get little scratches or baby acne on their faces, but that's easily erased, too.

"Everything else, I leave it as they are," Cotta said.

Not everyone opts for such a stylized representation of those earliest days.

Beth Kerley, mom to a 13-month-old daughter, booked her newborn shoot near the end of her second trimester. But she didn't want the typical baby-in-a-basket shots. She hired a documentary-style baby photographer, who followed them around their house for a few hours, documenting the new parents taking care of their 3-week-old baby.

She caught images of Kerley's husband making a bottle in the kitchen and holding the baby while watching a hockey game on TV.

"We wanted something that captured how we were feeling and what we were doing at that point of our lives," Kerley said. She had no desire to sit in a studio under lights three weeks after a C-section.

While she opted for a more affordable session ($450), she understands the impulse to overspend.

"Anything associated with babies and weddings, there's a higher price tag because it's a very emotional moment. You're willing to pay more," Kerley said.

She also chose a more low-key, natural look for baby's first professional shoot, but she doesn't judge those who choose a more cultivated option.

She waited until her baby was three weeks old -- pushing the edge of that newborn photo shoot window -- because she wanted to wait until the umbilical cord stump had fallen out.

Their newborn's bellybutton looked picture-perfect.

But Kerley wouldn't be surprised if the photographer touched it up a bit.

I heard a dire prediction of what will become of today's children, the most photographed generation in history.

It didn't have to do with the potential psychological impact of being hyper-documented, although those are legitimate worries.

"The irony is that kids will end up with little visual documentation of their childhood because it will be lost to the cyber world. The 1s and 0s will just go away," said David Carson, one of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Pulitzer-prize-winning photography staff. He's also the father of a much-photographed 9-year-old daughter.

"They are going to lose all this history," he said. Technology changes so quickly, it renders older formats obsolete. Quantity overtakes quality. Performance -- mugging and posing for the camera -- replaces capturing candid moments. And losing it all doesn't require a house fire or natural disaster: All it takes is a technological glitch, a lost phone not backed up, a corrupted hard drive.

It's the paradox of the times we live in: Our children grow up with hundreds of thousands of photographs of their childhoods, yet so few they will hold or carry with them.

We rely on our visual documentation as our memory fades. But the physical experience of revisiting memories has changed. The boxes of photographs stashed in the closet or envelopes shoved in drawers are replaced by albums on social media or camera rolls on our phones. Scrolling through pictures on a screen is viscerally different than thumbing through them in an album or box. At some point, your eyes glaze over digital pixels.

Part of the problem is sheer volume. In the olden days of film (when I was growing up), taking a photo had to be more deliberate and conscious rather than reflexive. The camera came out on birthdays, holidays and vacations. When digital cameras eliminated the cost of film, the floodgates opened. Smartphones provided yet another leap forward. Consumers are expected to take 1 trillion photos this year, according to InfoTrends' 2014 Worldwide Image Capture Forecast. More than 740 billion of those images will be taken using smartphones.

It's not unusual for parents to have thousands of digital images of their children from a single year.

And photo purging is hard.

"You don't get rid of bad pictures," Carson said. "People rarely value a picture enough to print it out."

But as much as we like to believe in the promise of forever in the cloud, veteran photographers are skeptical. Carson doubts if he can still open pictures he took on a digital camera 15 years ago because the technology has changed so much.

One photo editor said he has CDs from the late '90s that won't open anymore. New systems aren't equipped to read old formats.

Of course, hard copy photographs are susceptible to fires and floods, but so are hard drives. And, as recent hacking scandals brought to light, there are privacy concerns in the ether.

So what should you do?

Create an electronic archive and backup, but also take advantage of print deals. Carson suggests periodically picking a few dozen photos that you respond to emotionally and printing those out. Throw them in a shoebox under the bed, or put them in an archival-quality album.

Before ordering a ready-made photo book, check the archival quality to see if books ordered online will hold up decades down the line. Keep in mind that even CDs and DVDs go bad over time.

Give hard drives as gifts. Back up your own drive, and keep it in a different place. I store the negatives of my wedding photos in our bank safety deposit box.

And consider how much documentation of your own childhood you actually revisit.

Perhaps it is time to rethink the photographic legacy we want our children to inherit. I've decided to create four books or albums in a set for each of my children: one for babyhood, another for the elementary school years, then middle school and high school.

This sort of collection seems so much more manageable than a hundred thousand digital images in a virtual gallery. But I imagine we will store (and back up) all the excess images, as well -- just in case we want to meander through a virtual attic one day.

Parents are documenting this generation with gusto; it's just as vital to protect those memories.

After all, preserving the story of someone's life is about more than clicking, sharing and gathering likes.

It's a priceless gift.