SHEDDING THE "DAD BOD"

Every so often a new term or phrase pops up on the internet and it becomes a thing. “Okay boomer.” “Me too.” The name Karen. As is typical with all-things-viral, the original zing of the expression fades and gets warped as more people try to fit it into their own conversations to the point where the meaning is lost, banged up or fused into something utterly different from its original state. That’s what happens when something that deserves fifteen seconds of fame lingers for years.

It’s why I’m pleading for the “dad bod” squad to abandon the term. Move on. Let a man’s natural aging process just be, no comment necessary.

Yes, I’m a man of that certain age and I’m on constant belly watch. I can blame slower metabolism, too much Netflix and both Ben and Jerry. Whatever the contributing causes, my middle section is harder to manage.

This comes as no surprise. I spent decades bracing for it. I feared a future that brought with it the likelihood of an expanding midriff. (Full disclosure: much of this obsessive, unreasonable fear has been fueled by an eating disorder which first started to form when I was ten.) My horrific image of the ominous “beer belly” came from my teen years in Texas as various forty-something men in the neighborhood mowed lawns shirtless in the sweltering heat. I was both aghast and amazed. How could they flaunt a flaw? I told myself I would never “let myself go” like that. How fortuitous that I hated the taste of beer. Surely a wine cooler wouldn’t come with such heavy repercussions.

I’ve known many men who pat their protruding tummies, laugh and acknowledge their “Buddha belly” with an air of resignation...fondness even. When a guy does this, I study his face a few seconds, waiting for it to crack, certain that there’s pain behind this front of self-acceptance. I see nothing. Maybe they never internalized wisecracks about “baby fat” during the tween years. Maybe they didn’t have to stand alone in gay bars, desperate to be noticed by men who couldn’t take their eyes off ab-fab go-go boys, stripped down to neon thongs, dancing without rhythm on podiums. Maybe they just got over it. These men mystify me. They’re as unrelatable as those go-go boys.

I remind myself constantly that a little extra weight around the middle is normal as guys look back over their shoulder at their twenties. For many, a little extra time on the treadmill and waving off that second slice of cherry pie can stave off the weight gain into the thirties, maybe even the early forties. There’s a point though when it’s time to wave the white flag. Alas, for me, it’s still a never surrender mindset.

When I starting seeing and hearing references to the “dad bod,” I was alarmed. It’s a triggering term for me. Please let this pass. Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

I take some solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only one who cringed. In the British GQ article, “We’re calling bullshit on the ‘dad bod,’” they asked, “As your mind palace attempted to come to grips with the words ‘dad’ and ‘bod’ becoming adjacent, did you feel comforted or a creeping dread?”

Apparently, “dad bod” began as a nod to body positivity. It was popularized by a 2015 article called “Why Girls Love the Dad Bod.” written by university student Mackenzie Pearson, a seeming nod to frat boys instead of middle-agers. “The dad bod says, ‘I go to the gym occasionally, but I also drink heavily on the weekends and enjoy eating eight slices of pizza at a time.’ It's not an overweight guy, but it isn't one with washboard abs, either.” Pearson elaborates: “While we all love a sculpted guy, there is just something about the dad bod that makes boys seem more human, natural, and attractive.” She closes with, “[G]irls everywhere are going nuts over this body type on males. We like it. We love it. We want some more of it. So here's to you dad bods, keep it up.”

Okay then. Thank you, Mackenzie. From her perspective, at least, a slight man pouch isn’t a bad thing. Heck, it’s a nice bonus, so to speak. Very glass half full of her.

The problem is that others lifted the term and it spread over the internet, a place where glass half full folks are drowned out by full-on haters. “Dad bod” came to be a “hip” reference for body shaming beach-bound male celebrities with unflattering pics snapped by the paparazzi. There was Leonardo DiCaprio, looking a bit paunch,...dad bod. This summer, when Zac Efron stepped into a hot tub on the premiere of his Netflix series “Down to Earth,” he trended on Twitter. The thirty-three-year-old was beefier and hairier than his High School Musical days. Some people loved it; others mocked it. “Oh, my god! Zac Efron has a dad bod!”

I stared hard at the photo people freeze-framed from the show. Dad bod?! What were people talking about? No six pack, sure, but so what? The guy was fit. Most men would be thrilled to have his body.

The body shaming continued. Some actor named Jason Momoa who had to get a ripped body to play Aquaman supposedly now had a dad bod. (Um, no.)

A week ago, I came across a photo of shirtless CNN anchor Chris Cuomo in my Twitter feed. “Dad bod!” a shamer declared. (Preposterous!) I could practically hear the wicked laughter booming from my phone screen.

The hating and the shaming have a severe trickle-down effect. If these are of mock-worthy dad bods, the rest of us men over thirty (and far beyond) don’t have a prayer.

People delight in knocking celebs down. For ages, fat has been seen as funny. I recall Joan Rivers gaining a (positive) reputation for her cracks about Elizabeth Taylor’s weight. I also remember comedians relying on Marlon Brando and “Fat Elvis” for easy laughs.

To be sure, the gay “community” had a weight problem long before dad bod became a label. Indeed, gays have been label queens. There are still frequent sightings of “No fats, no femmes” in dating profiles. “Daddies” have been both shunned and fetishized. When I was coming out in my twenties, people my age were always pointing out the dads in the bar. They usually wore leather, were remarkably hirsute and liked to bare their bellies (and, sometimes, butt cheeks in a revealing pair of chaps).

Make it all stop.

I’m not alone in this. In a September 2019 GQ article called, “How We Ruined the Dad Bod,” Pearson, that onetime college girl who popularized the term, said, “When you shape it into being something that isn’t normal,” she adds, “people start to view their normal as below average.”

Going back to the British GQ article, it further states:

The dad bod movement was all about attraction – a sop for those of us who 

never matched up to the Greek gods prowling the gym or, even more 

devastatingly, had fallen into the age-old trap of ‘letting ourselves go.’ 

The dad bod was sold as an empowering reassurance that even though we 

couldn’t grift as many Instagram likes as our chiselled bros, we still had 

it – with no confirmation of what “it” actually was. As a body-confidence 

sell, the dad bod was, for me...a failure.

RIP, dad bod. The aging process on a man’s midsection is humbling enough without an icky—and now snarky—term to give it some added definition.