IT would seem the classic 'paunch' of the middle-aged man is no longer immune to scrutiny.
I remark on this as I note my parent paper, the NZ Herald, doing a story on a weight-loss regime with four male journalists who work for the paper, all of whom, it would seem, could stand to lose a few kilograms. Their story will be charted between now and Christmas.
This comes just as the Fairfax papers publish a story of a male airline passenger so obese the female passenger next to him had to stand for most of the flight to Australia.
It's already well-known that men can be somewhat indifferent to weight gain. I'm sure they aren't thrilled about it, as we'd all like to look like Daniel Craig, but generally it takes parts of our body falling off before we see a doctor. While women would probably rather top themselves than go up a dress size, men will shrug their shoulders and upsize their jeans with their waist size prominently displayed on the outside label for all to see.
I thoroughly approve of greater awareness around New Zealand's obesity epidemic, but I note it provokes some interesting conflicts. Whereas once men could get a bit rounded as they got to their forties, now they're pre-diabetic. Plus there's also the uncomfortable and divisive 'discrimination' that, as a society, we're skating around the edges of when it comes to size.