Crimes of Fat and Fashion

Kerry Howley | July 26, 2006

The U.K.'s Daily Mail has been running a must-read, hard-hitting series on well-fed men who bare their ample, pasty British torsos in the summer heat, prompting a "wave of revulsion" in the sea power that was. Now the paper is taking credit for a local movement to have all topless men labeled "anti-social" and forced to cover up. The justification? Slow-moving, bubble-and-squeak-scarfing, male breast-baring Brits "look aggressive and occasionally behave aggressively."

It's a mystery to me how anyone who eats and drinks in the U.K. can avoid being as fat as, say, the scale-tippers in our own fattest state. But the big men of Britain can keep this in mind as they sadly layer up: Britain, like the rest of the developed world, is getting fatter by the minute, and the shrill skinny will be overrun soon enough.

The Daily Mail's "gallery of topless men" is here.