Monday, February 6, 2012

The Hitchcock Effect

Flatbellies, heed this.  

Most men are shaped more like a pear than a pencil.  And certainly more like an old milk bottle than an inverted triangle.

Queen Cotton pointed this out to me the first time we met.  I was having a bowl of chili with a Coke and red velvet cake.  I was 25.  She had already seen my future, and it weren't pretty.

She said that Southern boys in particular got doughy and roundish, unlike Northern boys whose shoulders tended to be wider than their waists.

A lot of this is just a matter of physics.  As in, no physical activity and you get round.

And gravity.  That strange phenomenon that makes your muscular chest slide down to your beltline is the same one that makes the hair on top of your head slide into your ears.

Oh trust me.  This will happen to you.  Unless you are one of those Jim Fixx nutjobs that runs all the time until they fall over dead whilst jogging.

Want visual evidence?

Take a look at the PGA Champions Tour players versus the PGA Tour Players.  No white belts and flat front skinny pants on those over 50.

Take a look at an Old-Timer's baseball game.  The pinstripes have become parabolas.

The most common pant size in America is a 36 inch waist by 30 inch inseam.  The second most common is 38 waist by 30  inseam.  And so on.  Short, fat men we are talking about here.  Not many Mario Manningham bodies.

Unfortunately, not only do men grow penguin like, we also don't know how to dress to deal with the issue.

You know what I mean.  Like the nice deacon at church.  His tie starts at his neck, then it swoops down his sunken chest and out towards the horizon in front of him over his paunch.   Kinda like the large hill ski jump at Innsbruck.

Having spent some time in the men's clothing business, dealing with the reality of men's bodies is quite a learning experience.

For instance.  If you are really bored, attend a pant fit session for big and tall men.  Their waist sizes range from 48 inches to, at least, 72 inches.  And when asked, a man will lie about his waist size by at least two inches.  In many cases, four inches.  In lots of cases, 8 inches.  Which means,  men don't wear their pants around their waist.  They wear their pants under their belly.  I still twitch when recalling a group of varying shaped large men lined up in what they swore was their correct pant size.  They looked like someone had squeezed the bottom of a balloon. 

I know some guys who got filthy rich creating what many people thought was a cool brand of fashion.  What they really did was to make it ok for fat guys to wear their shirts not tucked in.  They called it Tommy Bahama.

Men,  in general, don't wear Spanxx.  Or girdles.  Or corsets.  

We wear the ill-fitting things that are not designed for real men.  The originals were modeled on a guy that's built like a Men's Health cover.  Then they size scale the darn thing for the rest of us.

Don't even bother looking for help online.

Here's what those skinny bastards at askmen.com have to offer.

fashion tips for fat men

The best way to look great in the long-term when you’re overweight is to lose excess weight with the help of a proper diet and exercise program.



Well, thanks alot. 


We need to re-think this.  Maybe we shouldn't be asking who wears the pants.  Maybe we should be asking who wears the mumu.