Operation: Time Thwart

The male physique at its best can only be the handiwork of celestial engineering, don’t you think? The inverted triangle of the male upper body is a marvel of divine architecture. The broad shoulders; narrow, narrow hips; protruding chest; taut, chiseled abdomen; athletic thighs and sculpted calves are testimony that perfection in proportion can be achieved only by a higher being. Even when not at its best: When limbs are shorter, torsos are wider set and heavier, necks thicker, these variation in form remain a source of wonder. But these, just as all else, degenerate with age. Yet unlike most aging women among my ranks who opt to die in active combat against the agents of time and gravity, most middle-aged men have yet to bother with battling the eventual and irreversible demise of their youth. Could it be apathy on their part, smugness, aversion to the pitfalls of vanity, or utter cluelessness on what measures to take? Whatever it is, is the real tragedy.Along with the seeming inaction of some men against aging, there is, on the other hand, the issue of a handful who resort to doomed measures to foil the wear and tear on their bodies by advancing years. They sadly call attention to and at times even magnify their problem areas instead of camouflaging them.Let us now, with the requisite amount of clemency and humor, go through the male body from the top down.

1. Cease and desist from tampering with Ground Zero. From here onwards, we shall let the head be known as "Ground Zero." Ground Zero on 40-something gentlemen is almost always sparsely forested, if not completely denuded (translation: balding, if not in fact entirely bald). Gentlemen, please try not to fashion elaborate comb-overs to camouflage your balding pate. Don’t twist, twirl, tease, redistribute, realign, redirect your strands to reforest your denuded Ground Zero. Compensating for hair loss by growing longer side burns, a moustache, goatee or a full beard doesn’t quite work either, lest some toddler say that your face is "upside down," like my three-year-old once did. Either celebrate your baldness and revel in the "macho" image it projects (think Bruce Willis, Tyson Beckford, The Rock), or zoom over to Manila’s best follicle transplanter, Dr. Andrew Pineda.

2. Deflect glare with sensible glasses. Please try at all costs not to mask droopy eyelids, gargantuan eye bags or failing eyesight with those gaudy, gilt-framed glasses, hinged at the temples with screaming designer initials. Only BIR collectors are allowed to wear them to remind us that we are upstanding citizens who dutifully pay our taxes promptly and in full. Kindly stick to clean, simple modern lines in your choice of eyeglass frames.

3. Pulverize the paunch. No one is spared from the bitter fact that everything south of Ground Zero succumbs to gravity and the degree of overhang is directly proportional to time elapsed. Nothing proves this phenomenon better than the beer belly. By sheer mass alone, across the girth and North to South, from pole to pole, the male paunch attracts the most attention. It is to the female beholder’s anguish when a man inadvertently plays up this matter by committing one or all of the following blunders: wearing athletic-themed T-shirts that say "University Track Team" or "All-Star Basketball Legend" straining to contain a bulging tummy; by hitching his trousers way, way up and anchoring them in place with his belt just above the navel, hoping to hide the paunch from plain sight by creating the "turtleneck effect"or the "penguin syndrome"; by sliding his pants way down to a comfortable zone, directly under the down-slope of the paunch, letting it perch on his belt to allow for lots of breathing room. This phenomenon, flipped over, creates the "plumber crack syndrome"(translation: man with low riding pants bends over and shows more than anyone wishes to see).

4. Neutralize the knees. I am definitely no expert in the field of aesthetics, but I am convinced that the least desirable feature of the male anatomy is the knees. These knobby, wrinkly protrusions that connect the femur to the tibia are nothing short of ghastly. Yes, I am intensely aware of their indispensability, for how else would men drop down on the ground to profess undying love and propose marriage to us women? But for the sake of aesthetics, gentlemen, please heed us. Cover them up! Shorts are for sports. They are meant to be worn within the confines of the gaming fields or in the home. If you are an athlete, go ahead and wear them. Live in them if you want because chances are you are lean, fit and muscular and your knees are free of fat or saggy folds and dark crevices. The ultimate curse is those tailored shorts that are actually pleated trousers and cut abruptly above the knee. Men wear them with leather belts and promenade around the malls with exposed knees. Unless you are Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy, or Colin Farrell as Alexander in the movie of the same name, hide your knees. Remember, even Russell Crowe as Maximus in Gladiator failed miserably to glorify knees. His were chubby and sat atop "cankles" (translation: stumpy legs with virtually no ankles, looking like calves from top to bottom). Please, please, this is an earnest plea, a cry for help! Banish those shorts from your closets.

5. Don’t flaunt that flab. It is simply torture of the slow and progressive kind for women to look at men dressed only in Speedo bikinis at the beach or poolside. It is truly, truly the worst affront to sartorial decency. Unless you are Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps, don’t you dare strut your excess fat in a Speedo! If you have even a tiny measure of a doubt that you may have some flab along your mid-section, you probably do, so tear apart your bikini and bury it six feet under.If you are one of those who fall into one or more of the syndromes described above, fret not because we, as wives, mothers, lovers, siblings and friends, will stand by you. But deep, deep down, we are staunch supporters of Operation: Time Thwart, so we exhort you to rethink your grooming options.