It’s never about the pot belly

Man with a potbelly....Telegraph

By Jackson Biko

I was at a house party not too long ago. At some point, someone loudly tinkled the side of a glass to get the attention of the guests. It was time for a toast.

So this lady get’s up to her wobbly feet and drunkely raises a large glass of wine to the ceiling and cries, “This is to hoping that our men will do something about their potbellies!”

All the men (and most of them were big men) roared in laughter and then reached out for sausages from a passing tray: “We shall eat to that,” they said. I don’t suppose they were laughing at the cheekiness of the joke.

The fact that the person throwing that stone didn’t exactly have the body of Toni Braxton was enough testimony that men really don’t mind laughing at themselves.

I wonder how the same scenario would have played out if it was a man who stood up and toasted to women’s spare tyres.

I suspect two things would have happened; all the women would have sucked in their guts, or the party would have ground to a teary and screeching halt because you don’t make wisecracks about a woman’s body and continue to drink with her.

The potbelly has become the new age punching bag. Women cringe and contort their faces when they mention the “pot” as it’s endearingly abbreviated.

“I find it unsightly,” they chorus, or “men just need to do something about that glob, it’s so awful,” or my personal favourite, “I would never date a man with a pot.” But I beg to disagree girls, methinks you very well would – and enjoy it too.

Long ago when the only entertainment on television was either Mambo Leo or Tushauriane, there was never any hullaballoo about potbellies.

Men didn’t get grief about their bellies. They ate without being made to feel guilty.

Our fathers walked around with their big bellies, and our mothers were happy to have a husband with a big stomach as it showed he fed his family well.

It was an almost natural African thing to spot a potbelly. A man had to look like a man, not a garden rake.

Then came the explosion of cable television and someone sat and decided that every guy had to look like some model on a late night show.

What has then happened is that with all this pressure, men have started reading the ingredients on packets, because “fat is bad.”

But the potbelly is every man’s destiny because when a man hits 30, he immediately becomes a candidate because all excess fat ends up in the midsection.

This debate about stomach fat is trivial, isn’t it? It’s fodder for idle chit chat. Surely a man can’t be defined by his belly.

To be honest, the problem is not even the potbelly; it’s the perception of it. Stomach fat doesn’t make a man less manly.

It’s ironical, if you look at a bar scene, the guys with the biggest guts usually have the prettiest women hanging on their love handles.

This largely goes to show that men are not defined by their looks.

The reason women make fun of men’s bellies is because they are envious at how men (straight ones) seem undistracted by their looks.

It boils down to confidence. Whereas women obsess about the fat content on every item of food, men prefer to ignore it.

Give a woman a choice between a man with a big belly but a solid confidence or a man with a washboard belly and the confidence of a mouse and see which she will pick. NO matter what they say, for women, it’s never about the pot belly.

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