Is that a surprise gift under the shirt? Not sexy

2011-11-06 10:00

Obesity and ill health prohibited Khulubuse Zuma from giving testimony at this week’s insolvency inquiry. Picture: Sunday Times

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Mokgadi Seabi

There’s nothing sexy about a big round gut, especially on a man. I don’t care how many of them believe it is a sign of prosperity or happiness.

As a child I learned to accept that every man grows up to have a big tummy, like a rite of passage.

I believed that, to look like a proper adult, you would have to lose some hair on the dome to go with the boep.

Now the boep has become a must-have BEE accessory.

You are not a proper empowerment beneficiary if you don’t have it.I mean, really, how can a tender administrator trust you to deliver on your mandate if you’re skinny?

Clearly you’re a starving tenderpreneur – which just goes to show that you don’t get a lot of business, right?

I wonder if there is some kind of a form that must be filled in attesting to a boep being a requirement to becoming an empowerment beneficiary? And am I the only one who thinks about the irony of the “broad-based” part?

How many of the empowerment beneficiaries and tenderpreneurs do you know who don’t sport luggage up front?

I even had a couple of skinny friends who aspired to have the empowerment boep but unfortunately, their fast metabolisms let them down.

It always surprises me when I come across an old school mate looking . . . err . . . robust.

Unfortunately, my mouth doesn’t have a backspace key and the first thing I usually ask them is: “Is that a surprise gift you’re hiding under that shirt?”

But seriously, gents, this is a worrying situation.

There’s nothing as uncomfortable as seeing a handsome man only to look down and wonder if he’s five months pregnant or actually trying for a “one-pack”. Such men also tend to look shiny in the face, as if the fat is trying to escape through their pores.

The worst part is when their clothes don’t look good on them and they don’t seem to notice!

These are the ones who wear starched, high dodgy-double collars and pointy shoes (I think the pointy-toed shoes are simply there to reassure them that their feet are still on the ground).

There are a couple of men who could do with a little trim in front, like Mampintsha’s (of Big Nuz) gut which has been growing in direct proportion to the success of the band.

Gayton McKenzie and Kenny Kunene’s guts make the ZAR print on their T-shirts stretch to look more like ZAAAAAAAAAR.

Julius Malema also went from petite to round and bouncy as soon as he took over as leader of the ANC Youth League.

Gentlemen, it is time to stop “intending to lose it” and just do it. And those who say the boep is “more cushion for the pushing”, stop it.

It’s not sexy.

- City Press