If you’ve been watching your beer belly expand with a feeling akin to abject terror, it’s time to reevaluate your entire life. According to a new book, older fathers with a little meat on their bones are actually much more attractive to women and have healthier immune systems that will allow them to outlast and outlive their more buff contemporaries.
The book, entitled How Men Age, is written by Richard Bribiescas, professor of anthropology and deputy provost at Yale University, and it’s dropping some really interesting ideas, like the fact that men who get chubby after fatherhood (that’s the catch: you gotta be a dad) actually spend more time with their kids and have stronger immune systems due to lower levels of testosterone.
From The Telegraph:
There is evidence that these men are less likely to suffer from heart attacks and prostate cancer, while a study in 2008 found that men with high metabolisms were around 50 per cent more likely to die in a given year than those whose bodies burned up less energy at rest.
“Macho makes you sick,” said Prof Bribiescas. “The Hollywood image of the swaggering, dashing man dispatching bad guys and carrying the day conjures up a perception of indestructibility.”
You’d think that there would be a trade-off — lower testosterone, less attractive to women — but the opposite appears to be true. According to Bribiescas, dads who are slightly chubby and loving it are more likely to be attractive to the opposite sex (due to their new layer of fat) and are also less likely to run around on their significant others (if that’s a part of the relationship agreement). And the fact that chubbier men are more likely to invest their time in their kids is a plus, too!
This doesn’t, of course, mean that you should rush out, get yourself a baby, and then spend all your time eating cheesy poofs — in fact, a different study recently suggested that long-distance runners may be the best bet when looking for viable partners with whom to have kids with — but it’s nice to know that there are some benefits to looking more like Seth Rogen than Hugh Jackman as you get older!
