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It’s not a dadbod – it’s an act of rock’n’roll dietary rebellion
Pete Cashmore
I weighed myself this morning, and I am 110kg (17st 4lb). As a 192cm (6ft
3in) tall man aged 41, this gives me a BMI of 29.4, which means I am considered
to be on the very tipping point where “overweight” bellyflops into “obese”. If
there’s any muscle in there, then it’s not so much relaxed as fast asleep. My
stomach looks like a blancmange dunked in hair, with perky, budding moobs. I am
not in good shape.
Except, apparently, I am. What I have, it has become apparent over the past
couple of weeks, is a dadbod, which means I now count among my brethren the
likes of Kanye West, Leonardo DiCaprio and Seth Rogan, something I never
imagined. A dadbod is basically a “normal” male torso gone to seed, the shapely
bulk of a man who once went to the gym, then realised that pizza and beer were
much more sensible and let it all go. Not corpulent, but definitely not what the
good people of Protein World would consider anywhere near “beach-ready”. People
have even taken to saying that a dadbod is a hot bod. And to these people I say:
I don’t want your approval.
Seriously, stop fetishising and commodifying my ghastly body. I worked long and
hard to get this far out of shape and I don’t need you telling me that’s fine
and that I’m actually the new big thing (literally) in male body types. My body
can’t be contained or held back – just ask the waistband of my jeans – and I
reject this new acceptance of it.
As an officially very-nearly-obese man, I am edgy and antisocial. I am attacked
and pilloried at every turn, either because of the hypothetical strain I place
on the NHS when my heart eventually explodes, or because of my evident distance
from the aforementioned beach-readiness. It’s absolutely fine to mock, censure
and body-shame me (ha, just you try) without fear of reprisal. It’s fine to go
ham on my fat (mmm, ham…). I can reasonably assume that Katie Hopkins finds me
contemptible, and I can think of no more ringing endorsement than that.
“Dadbod”. It’s a horrible little dismissal, suggesting cosy respectability and
the inevitable slide into middle age. Me, I’ve always thought of my rejection of
physical fitness as rather rock’n’roll, an almost political act of dietary
rebellion. There’s tremendous pressure from all sides to be “healthy”, for
reasons both aesthetic and medical, so to relentlessly stick two fingers up at
those who apply that pressure takes character. It takes guts to have this gut.
My midriff sends out a clear, gently wobbling signal to the world that says I
favour the sensual over the ascetic, indulgence over deprivation, the joy of
tucking in rather than the sanctimony of pushing the plate away. How could
anyone fail to find such a thing attractive? A six-pack, meanwhile, says: look
at all this WORK I’ve done! Look at all this DENIAL! Come hither and caress the
jutting angles of my miserable attritional life! LICK MY GYM MEMBERSHIP!
In his 1996 “postmodern diet book” Eat Fat, the author Richard Klein proposed
the inevitable “comeback” of fat. If this is to be the start of my return into
the body mainstream, so be it. But not with a nice and cuddly dadbod. Take my
body and rebrand it, but not like this. Let’s just call me fat and hot – “fot”.
Put that on a T-shirt. Size XXL.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/14/dadbod-rock-n-roll-dietary-rebellion