It’s a new year, and gyms across the country are flush with well-intentioned, resolution-minded converts to physical fitness.  Watching the men and women at my own gym (which I attend regularly, thank you, not just after the holidays) self-segregate themselves into treadmill runners (women) and free weight-lifters (men), it occurred to me that nowhere is the difference between men and women as apparent as in the realm of body image.  It’s not that women obsess about appearance and men don’t; far from it.  Both sexes, as far as I can tell, are mired in dissatisfaction with their bodies.*  But while women are perpetually trying to lose weight, men frequently want to gain it.  Of course, it’s muscle they’re hoping to gain, not the fat we’re hoping to lose, but still—to a woman, any attempt to put on pounds is sheer madness.

My husband K— is the one who made me realize that a lot of men harbor a desire to beef up.  When we first married, he’d often come home from the gym grumbling about losing weight.  “If you’re losing weight,” I thought, “why are you grumbling?”  It took me a while to realize that his fitness goals and mine were diametrically opposed.

For as long as I’ve known K—, he, like a lot of men, could eat anything he wanted without gaining an ounce.  A bag of potato chips at lunch, a pint of ice cream for dessert, a chocolate bar before going to bed…all the while grousing that the scale just wouldn’t climb.  You can imagine how I felt: I wanted to strangle him.  What kept me from being eaten away by jealousy was simple self-interest.  I asked myself which was worse, a husband who could consume a dozen doughnuts without ballooning, or the alternative? As much as I hated the fact that he could eat me under the table, I was secretly pleased at the svelte man on my arm.  Plus, I suspected that one day he’d start to fill out—just not in the places he wanted to—and then he’d be singing a different tune.

Well, lo and behold, whatever male metabolic magic was at work, it may have mutinied. With little fanfare, the other day he uttered the words I’ve waited years to hear: “I think I need to lose a couple of pounds.”

He announced this just before Christmas, which put me in a little bit of a pickle.  Every year, I buy K— a couple of pairs of his favorite jeans.  It’s a predictable gift, but at least one that won’t sit in the back of the closet.  Weeks beforehand, I bought the same size jeans he’s been wearing since I met him, but after his disclosure it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, he’d put on enough weight that his old size would be too tight.  Feigning interest in his newfound weight problem (but really trying to determine what size jeans he needed), I asked him one day, “How are your pants fitting?”  “Okay, I think,” he answered.  Then, with that sort of questioning suspicion men exhibit when they’re not sure if they just heard a hint or not, he looked sideways at me and asked, “How are your pants fitting?”  “That,” I said candidly, “is a complicated question.”

He chewed on my answer for a second before responding, “Okay, I’ll bite.  How can that be complicated?  Isn’t it kind of black or white?”  “Not at all,” I replied.  “It depends on which pants you’re talking about.  Nearly every woman has fat outfits and skinny outfits** for all the stages of fatness and fitness in her life.  There’s never a point in time when all of her pants fit.  So, it depends.  See?”

He thought about this for a moment and then, with unusual astuteness, observed, “So, you’re saying that if I knew you well enough, I’d recognize which are your fat outfits and which are your skinny outfits, and when you’re wearing a fat outfit I’d avoid making a joke about your appearance, even if it’s just a joke and I think you look fine?”

“Bingo!” I said, genuinely impressed.  “You just passed FemPsych 101.”

About a week later, the pants matter was largely forgotten because I’d become preoccupied with something far more gripping: I was thinking of coloring my hair.  The sight of some grey at my temples in the mirror one day had struck fear in my heart in a way I never thought it could.  For the first time ever, I worried that K— might look at me and think, “Boy, she’s getting old!”  So, I bought a box of hair color, but somehow, I kept putting off actually using it.  Dying my hair seemed so…shallow.

One day, it occurred to me that I was being silly, and I decided to ask K— outright, “Does it bother you that I’m starting to get grey hair?”  I was trusting that he’d be both truthful and kind, and my decision to color or not to color would depend on his answer.  K— turned to me, looked me up and down with the coldly appraising eye of a horse trader, and enquired, “Is that a fat outfit or a skinny outfit you’ve got on?”

As I write this, the box of hair color I bought is still sitting unopened.  A few pounds more or less, a couple of grey hairs—what do they matter?  K— still looks the same to me, which is to say, great.  This whole experience in vanity taught me something valuable: my hair color is “light burdock.”  I always wondered what to call it, and now I know.


*  Check out Adiosbarbie.com, where you can read one man’s angst at not meeting the Impossible Pitt Standard.

**  Don’t believe me about fat outfits and skinny outfits?  I can prove it.  Look at page 39 of the January 2006 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, which features an ad for Curves (the “women’s” gym), promising that their six-week nutrition program will allow you to “Say Goodbye to Your Fat Pants.”