But Wait! There's Less!

Straight Guy,

Face it, we're all at least a little insecure about our bodies. We're mere mortals, not underwear models. No one in the contact list in my cell is sporting single-digit body fat. (The summer intern in our office . . . okay, so that's less than 10 percent, but he's 22.)

Gay Guy has some mid-zone to lose. The scale readings and the lone pair of trousers that still fit comfortably have been bothering me for a while and so, at least in theory, I've been trying to watch what I eat to drop the poundage that wrestles and wriggles over my belt like a koi in a fish pond.

(My goal would be more efficiently accomplished if I vowed to act with resolve before I ate that stack of Pepperidge Farm cookies, not after.)

But, we accept, we deny, we delude, we figure out how to live with ourselves and just keep going, right? Do we need to spank ourselves? Or do I mean Spanx ourselves?

I love today's Washington Post article about "men's shapewear," the delicate-as-fine-china term coined by the men's delusion. . . err . . . fashion industry. Basically, were talking about girdles for men that pack and smush excess flesh, transforming chunk to hunk in seconds. They are "compression shirts" that squeeze the rolling hills and valleys of a beer belly and moobs into a Mojave Desert of flatness.

This has been coming on for a while. I'd noticed tight, gym-like T-shirts started popping up in public at least five years ago. Form-fitting shirts in which the spandex/natural fibers battle left cotton eating dust. I don't know that those T-shirts were officially in the "compression" zone, but word is they helped cover "problem areas." If those shirts were supposed to be hiding problem areas, I'd ask for my money back. Unless you have a hot bod, they only broadcast problem areas. (Only looking directly at an eclipse is more painful than looking at a too-tight shirt on a too-loose man.)

They can't be comfortable. I've never had anything like it on my body, not even bike shorts, so I don't know. Maybe you get used to it. I love how the Post referred to Spanx as "undershirts that fit and feel like a wet suit." And this description of trying on a compression shirt: "We discovered it's not a T-shirt and it will snap back like a rubber band if you stretch it. We banged our nose trying to pull it over our head."

Besides the look and feel problem, here are Gay Guy's nagging questions:
1.) Isn't this in the same bucket as stuffing a socking down your underwear to impersonate a better bulge? The stuff has to come off and the truth has to come out sooner or later, right?
2.) Where does the flab go under pressure? Up into the neck? Down into the toes? It's like my question, "Where do the valet parking attendants put your car if the reason you are using valet parking is that there is nowhere to park?"

Until I get good answers, I'll keep banging away at the treadmill and hope to break up with Pepperidge Farm Gingerbread Men. Or, like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll just eat like a bird until I can corset myself into a 17-inch-waist dress.

Compression shirts, fiddle-dee-dee.

--Gay Guy