Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
The six-pack is of course the bane of all ‘normal’ men. Especially at dances and in lounge bars, where they are forced to walk around holding their tummies in and, as a consequence, their bums out.
And it is an entirely false invention, much favoured by those desk-jockeys who spend much of their overly free time strutting and posing in the latest health club to be fashionable.
But real men, the lifters and strainers and carriers of our world do not sport six-packs and scorn so to do.
Bring on the belly
Theirs is the world of the belly – a band of hard rubbery muscle developed as a natural consequence of hard work.
There is no denying of course that this manly belly is often overlaid, sometimes quite massively, by a layer of beer and bacon butties. Yet remove the blubber and you will still not reveal a six-pack. You will reveal instead a remaining bulge that is firm and elastic. A bulge to bear with pride.
Proper graft doesn’t result in a six-pack
If you are unconvinced, consider the physique of the rugby forward, the American defence line-man, the building site pusher of wheelbarrow, heaver of cement sack, sawyer of timber.
You won’t find a six-pack among the lot of them. Or if you do, it is because the poseur concerned spends as little time as possible actually doing useful work and instead preserves his energy for his visits to the gym.
For that is where you will find the six-pack. In any one of those currently fashionable health establishments, where it is the result of intense concentration on one single aspect of human activity, plus an unnatural, and unsustainable, Spartan diet.
Ploughed field to floppy fat?
And where it is doomed to a very short life. For as soon as the ‘athlete’ decides to retire to a less strenuous lifestyle that impressive ploughed-field effect will disappear rapidly behind an ever-swelling mound of floppy fat.
So don’t be deceived ladies. Don’t doom yourselves to a life with a floppy fatty. Select instead a real man, a proper man, a hairy man. With a proper belly.
And keep that chip pan hot.
