“Let it go,” my wife instructs whenever she catches me in front of the mirror of our bathroom vanity, pinching my jiggly love handles. I’m staring at the reflection of a body in transition. I’d heard about the softer side of fatherhood – the research that links declines in testosterone and muscle mass to becoming a father – but I never thought adding one word to my identity (dad) would introduce a two-word certainty: dad bod. You may recall the term’s explosion into pop culture in 2015. Clemson University sophomore Mackenzie Pearson published an article that went viral, titled “Why Girls … [Read more...]
This Father Opting Out of the Midlife Crisis
Welcome to my midlife crisis. According to a random dictionary app, middle-age starts at 45, which I turned months ago, and lasts until you run out of excuses. To really belabor the point, I was only able to read said definition because I use the largest iPhone font currently known to science. I’m not even trying to hide it (not that I could — it’s freaking huge). I am, apparently, in crisis mode. I always thought there would be more sports cars. Wikipedia states that a midlife crisis lasts two to 10 years, and can be triggered by changes in an individual’s sense of normalcy, be it loss … [Read more...]