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Fat can be a masculine issue as well

Philip Hensher
Thursday 13 August 1998 23:02 BST
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NOW THIS, I thought, reading the papers the other day, is the sort of scientific research I can see the point of. A doctor called, appropriately enough, Lean, has been carrying out various interviews with a broad range of men, and has come to a really interesting conclusion; men consistently lie about, or at least underestimate, the size of their waist to an alarming degree. On average, men think that their waists are two-and-a-half inches smaller than they really are.

I suppose what this means is what I had always gathered from observation, which is that no man within a decade of sexual desirability will admit to having a waist in excess of 34 inches, or at the absolute limit 36 inches, in circumference. Men who have not seen their feet in five years will blushingly say "On a bad day, 36".

The possessors of guts half the size of Wales will lie not only to their friends and partners, but also to shop assistants, and quite unembarrassedly ask for size 34 trousers in Top Man. The unappealing results, fastened, faute de mieux, over the groin, may be seen on every high street in the land, frightening the horses.

Men are becoming wonderfully paranoid about their appearance, and beginning to develop a sense that they cannot just heave a magnificent embonpoint into the nearest Pitcher and Piano and wait for the talent to melt into their podgy arms. Constantly barraged by images of hard stomachs, firm pecs and taut thighs on the covers of magazines, in advertisements for anything from cologne to ice-cream, the boys are seriously worried, and, if they cannot keep up, they are going to lie about it.

This is often presented as a deeply frightening development, an analogy to the steady drip of feminine images which has indirectly driven so many women into bulimia and anorexia. But I do not know that, in small doses, applied to men, it is such a bad thing. For a start, they do not, in general, take to recreational regurgitation; they join a gym and watch not only their appearance but their health improve. And that is no bad thing, whether it comes from high-mindedness or from the weediest paranoia.

Whatever the cause, a substantial injection of nervousness into men's relationships with potential sexual partners has been no very bad thing. I get the impression that 20 or so years ago, the fear that your partner might at some point choose to dump you for someone fitter, healthier, and altogether more physically appealing was very much a one-way street; it simply did not enter into the heads of most men. Since then, a steady stream of tabloid stories about "toy boys" and the discovery by the mass media of images of sexually attractive men have changed all that, and men are running scared.

If you want to see the result of all of this, look at the average gay man. Gay men have a forceful influence on their appearance; every morning they look in the mirror, and say to themselves: "Would I go to bed with that?" And the result is that the average gay man is more likely to belong to a gym, to do some exercise, to be healthier and quite probably be more physically appealing than a heterosexual man of the same age. It can be taken to extremes, and there is a fair amount of steroid abuse and a level of eating disorders which have been observed among gay men in search of a body they can call their own. But among the mass of Soho boys, a modicum of paranoia has been beneficial.

No doubt, in time, the same will happen to heterosexual men; a casual, hurtful insult, and then a few days of black worry, a mauvais quart d'heure before the mirror, and then down the gym. I cannot see any of this as very serious or worrying, and anyone who has spent much time in Latin countries will concede that Englishmen are rather unusual in what has, until now, been an unshakable conviction in their own irresistibility. I remember once, in Brazil, standing in a pharmacy and watching a steady stream of men coming in to weigh themselves, and thinking that, well, yes, this is why Brazil is full of beautiful people; every one is slightly concerned about his appearance, every single one of them is going to go on working on being nice to be with.

Men ought to care about how physically attractive they are, just as much as they ought to care about their conversation, and considerably more than they care, on the whole, about where their career is going. Lying about your waistline is a small step, but undoubtedly a step in the right direction. And if you ask me what I know about it, I will say, like every other man, that it does not concern me; because my waist measures no more than 34 inches, on a bad day, and I have never given it the slightest thought.

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