Macho is essentially defined as posturing and acting in ways which disfavour survival but favours sexual reproduction. In other words, self destructive stuff that gets you chicks.

It only works because there’s an obvious signal that cannot be easily faked (“I smoke and I smoke, but my lungs are so big that I can still ***k”) and then an arbitrary bias (aka cool) in the female perception.

It works for peacocks, I guess mating minds suggests that it works a human too (hint: women prefer intelligent men).