The dad-bod manifesto

Or rather a reconsideration

Dear M,

Probably the biggest insult leveled at a grown man — other than being a liar, or a weenie — is that he’s a dad. Do your jokes suck? Then those would be dad jokes. Are you a fat piece of shit? That would be due to a dad-bod.

If you dress like a dad, it means beige shorts with tube socks and sandals. If you listen to dad rock, it means a band that hasn't made anything good in decades, and probably because they died from an extreme case of osteoporosis, or dementia. And if they survived, they look stupid now like Rod Stewart and Julian Casablancas. Simply put, they’ve either been wearing the same thing for 20 years, or are 80 years old and trying too hard to dress like 20 year-olds. And they usually have a dad-bod.

The great irony of this insult is it’s a testament to the opposite. It is we, the dads, who are the only people on the planet charming and virile enough to have gotten anyone pregnant. Some of us have done it five times. Some of us (in more dignified countries) have done it with four wives. Some of us have been so sexy that we have to pay six women money every month. (This last part, of course, is only [partially] braggable if you can afford it).

I would argue that, so far from being an insult, a dad-body is the body you have that convinces a woman to carry your baby. A dad joke is the joke that makes her snort out her Coke in a restaurant. A dad band is the band you play in the car when you’re on your way to second-base.

Do I dress like a dad? That should be because I’m about to become one — again. And any man who can convince a woman to do anything as crazy as putting on a dress, finding a priest, and pledging her whole life to you, no matter how shitty you actually are, should be teaching master-classes on the art of charm and persuasion. No apologizing for the state of his jokes: I propose that at the very least they’re good enough.

The counter-argument to this is that somewhere around 80% of all men globally make babies, and in the US, at our peak during the Baby Boom, around 79% of all people ended up married. This, as you might guess, is more a testament to women’s stupidity or desperation than man’s usefulness or charm — especially since we can see the great majority of men, we don't want to be like any of them, and around half of all marriages currently end in divorce. But this still reinforces my original point. Most women, good taste or bad, still choose to make these men fathers, year after year, and there’s no more reliable marker than this.

Gen Z seems more sensible on this issue. They refer to every man who’s fat and embarrassing not as a dad, but an unc. This is still an outright disrespect for their elders (and maybe their elders should try being respectable first). But this shifts the whole gist away from fatherhood and pictures an irresponsible old boob who’s as unsexy as our relatives but hasn’t necessarily made any whoopie. An uncle doesn’t even have to be married. He could be living in your grandma’s basement. He could be in jail.

To make fun of your dad is to make fun of yourself. A dad is where you came from. He’s the one who bought you the clothes you think are so cool. He either trains you right or screws you over. To shift the focus from your dad to your uncle isn’t just more respectful. It’s more egotistical. You can fall close to the tree and land softly. You can pick a man to marry and feel like you have good taste.

Another reason I respect Gen Z more than the Millennials. They seem to have more respect for themselves.

Yours,

-J