Man boobs, or Moobs are the bane of every aging Romance hero’s life. I mean it’s not easy being a romantic hero at the best of times, all that stress and effort, all those mis-understandings, mis-interpretations and mis-demeanours. Then after all that angst, you realise you’ve found the one, settled down, had a couple of kids, eaten a lot of pasta, life goes on. Exercise slips a bit, well who has time, with multi-million dollar companies to run, a relationship to maintain, kids to run around after. It swiftly becomes a downward spiral, and before you know it this…
has become this…
Of course, being a Romance hero you barely notice, you’ve always had a hot bod, why wouldn’t it remain hot. Then, one day as you are teetering on the edge of your pool a sneaky paparazzi with a long range zoom bursts out of the bushes. Before you know it you’re plastered all over the magazines, Moobs! shouts the captions. To be honest you think you look okay, but wonder vaguely where all that hair came from. Anyway, the photo’s been digitally enhanced, everyone knows what those tabloid journalists will do.
Denial, that tool used so effectively at the beginning of your relationship with your one true love (OTL) clicks smoothly into place. But not for long, you have children now.
“What’s on your chest Daddy?” asks Miss Five peering up interestedly when you make your way from pool to shower, towel wrapped firmly around the middle which was once a six-pack that made women swoon. Tightening your chest muscles you ignore the sad sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, but in the glare of the bathroom lights the truth can no longer be denied. Flipsy and flop stare mournfully back at you, and no amount of tensing and posing will make them go away.
Following a flurry of activity, dieting, gym memberships, jogging regimes you try in vain to make the Moobs vanish. But they’re persistent little suckers. Once you’d wander about naked except for shorts, a bronzed god, but now you slink around in a voluminous t-shirt, the sun is hot so you wear a hat, skin cancer is a risk so you cover your face in sunscreen, and worried about treading on a rouge bee you start to wear sandals. The sandals rub and in a moment of insanity you consider putting on socks. Socks and sandals. Oh the horror.
Still, you’re an Alpha male, and deep inside you’re convinced that you are in the right and somehow everyone else is in the wrong. Of course you still have your OTL, she always loved you for who you were, and not what you looked like – just like you have for her. No doubt the house keeper left that leaflet on breast reductions in your dressing room, and she only brought up the subject of a man-bra because it was so funny. Didn’t she?
Two years ago I was not a happy girl. Five days a week I was a stay-at-home mum, dealing with my very cranky toddler, pregnant and suffering through what turned out to be nineteen weeks of morning-(
