The Mirror Rarely Lies
After years of hunting, I’m pleased to report that I have found a second good side.
My first good side, as everyone knows, is my calves. They are bodaciously bulbous bulges of beefcake, if I do say so myself. And I don’t always have to! Someone at my gym told me they look swole in the squat, which is a compliment. (I googled it.)
Still, it’s difficult to allow my inflated calves to equally inflate my ego. Calves are a terrible good side. It’s difficult to admire them in the mirror without an elaborate system of straps, scaffolding, and elastic tubes. The only way someone will even notice them in casual conversation is if they’re lying face-down on the floor and I’m sitting on their back — and even then, only if we’re both facing the same direction. It’s almost impossible to casually expose them in an office setting to intimidate a business rival. And while Rule 34 proves it’s technically possible to find calves erotic, it’s not easy. Only 506 of Pornhub’s 7,103,256 videos highlight calves, meaning that calf porn represents only slightly more than 0.007% of the adult content produced in the world today.
Nobody will ever market “8 Minute Calves.”
And even if they did, that’s not where mine came from. You could say I got them by biking, and walking, and even running a bit, but mainly I got those calves by doing all those things while weighing 260 pounds. My splendid calves are really just the consequences of my distended belly.
That said, I do work out, and it’s starting to pay off in one other way — that the mirror does show. One night, I was brushing my teeth, and I noticed that my arm looked good.
OK, not my entire arm. I’m not Hugh Jackman. But the shoulder looks tight. Part of it, at least. If you go too far down you’ll run into an unsightly thicket of hair, sharp and wiry and better suited to scraping burnt lasagna than decorating a chest. Too far up you get more hair, a bit thinner, but reminiscent of and as socially acceptable as Howie Mandel’s soul patch. There’s some creepy crepey cellulite on one side, and you obviously have to be careful not to stray into armpit territory on the other. But nestled inside those danger zones is a solid 2½ inch by 3½ inch shank of shoulder that’s defined, taut, and just plain awesome.
Only the left shoulder, obviously. The right is still trash. It looks best when I’ve got my hand against the wall. Also, I need to cock my arm forward just so to make the deltoid pop. And I do need to turn off the harsh bathroom lighting and bring in a well-angled softbox.
But as long as I do all of that, I could be an upper middle left shoulder model.
Of course, I can’t stay in that pose forever. Eventually I need to pee or floss or the softbox falls into the shower, and the effect is ruined.
Still, it’s progress. Based on the Du Bois formula for calculating the surface area of the human body, fully 5.3% of my body looks good. (The other nine commonly used formulas will give slight variations.) That means I’m 1/20th of the way to a positive self-image.
Instagram fame, here I come!
