By Jim Hagarty
1992
Recently, the issue of whether or not men should be allowed to parade their bare beer bellies around town, came up for discussion and the controversy has been ballooning out of control ever since.
Please, allow me to inject a little perspective into the debate.
First of all, it took men a couple of hundred years of concerted political pressure to win the right to get those bellies out there where everybody can have a good look at them. (As powerful as King Henry VIII was, he was not at liberty to let that big gut out of its confines. For that matter, neither was the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.)
If we are going to turn back the clock and force men back into covering up, we are going to have to be prepared to accept some of the other niceties of those ages, like spitunes, bleedings and beheadings. Seen in this light, the unrobed beer belly is a true sign of social enlightenment. (Seen in another light, it might be a sign that its owner has been drinking too much beer, but that’s another subject.)
Secondly, this idea that a great big, floppy, spongy belly is to be considered somewhat of a human eyesore, just doesn’t make sense. Exactly what part of the belly is to be found repulsive? The fact that it’s big? Bigness isn’t despised when it shows up in other men’s parts such as the shoulders or biceps. Do we object to it being floppy? If it was a pillow, we’d think it was great. As for spongy, what’s the problem? Serve up a cake that flexible and Betty Crocker would be breaking down your door to get at your recipe.
No, it’s obvious, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and, therefore, there can be no test to determine that a large, unclothed, male belly in a public place doesn’t belong there.
Thirdly, though it may seem to be a bit of a leap in logic, the bare beer belly is, in many ways, modern society’s last defence against the tyranny of youth and beauty that is always waiting around the corner to jump us. This week, it’s beer bellies. Next week, it will be knobby knees. Then freckles. Double chins. Bald heads. Soon, teams of Ugly Police will be enforced to cover up those parts of the male deemed to be repulsive.
So, in many ways, man’s struggle to bare his bloated belly is the struggle of free people everywhere. “Let my belly go!” should be our cry.
And lastly, and I want you to think about this carefully, if men are determined to shed some clothes on hot summer days, and the law allows it, is it not possible that the shirt could be the lesser of several evils. Imagine, for a moment, a situation where those men with the bellies decide one day that the shirt will stay but other garments just have to go. Is this a scene we want to contemplate?
Therefore, I see any criticism of the male right to expose yards of hairy, sweaty, bouncy, belly flesh on hot days as an attack on vital freedoms. And that is why I am proposing we march bare bellied through the streets this weekend. And I invite women everywhere to shed their tops and join us, as a sign of solidarity.
So, if you happen to see groups of women parading down the street this weekend with their shirts off, you’ll know my call for action has not gone unheard.
(Background: Around the time I wrote this column in 1992, a young Canadian woman walked topless down a street in her city on a hot summer day. She did this purposely, knowing the result. She was arrested and charged. She had her day in court. She won, thereby giving women the right to be topless in public without harassment from the law. For a month or two after the decision, women here and there went topless in public, in part because they could, and in some cases, as a lark. But this is a right that is rarely exercised in Canada, even on public beaches. As elsewhere, there are a few “topless” and even nude beaches, however.)
