Making a Boob of Myself.

The other week, I was at the "China Gardens" at the Festival Park in Etruria, where myself and other volunteers at the Media Action Group for Mental Health stopped off for a little light refreshment after taking a walk through the park area of the site as part of an art project we are currently undertaking with the help of a local artist. As I sat there sipping my coffee, I looked over to the right, where I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that someone had scratched some kind of message into one of the wooden tables which populate the garden area. Upon closer inspection I could see that the message inscribed simply read, "I like boobs". In fact, it didn't even make that much grammatical sense, and in truth all it really said was, "I like boob". As I sat there, I pondered the level of a mind that would write such an inanity, with Philip Larkin's poem "Sunny Prestatyn" going through my mind, but ended up thinking, well, I suppose I like boobs too.
But, this is not going to be a post about the male love of that particular part of the female anatomy. Rather, it is going to be about the male propensity to develop such things themselves. Indeed, the "man-boob", also referred to as the "moob", seems to be an ever-increasing problem faced by a number of males, and appears to be getting much mention in certain sections of the media. In the latest development, we are told that celebrity comedian David Walliams suffers from "man-boobia". And, looking on the internet, there are a veritable plethora of sites dedicated to helping sufferers of the "man-boob" phenomenon.
So, where has all this talk of man-boobs come from? A few years ago, I'd never even heard of man-boobs, but now, it seems, you can't escape the term's ubiquity. Perhaps it is that men are just becoming that bit more sensitive about their bodies. It would appear that women have always been objectified by men, and we are told of the pressures women face from continual media representations of the "perfect" female form. Now, though, it seems that men can't escape such scrutiny, as we are told by women just how unattractive man-boobs can be, and increasingly the promulgation of the perfect physique is not restricted to just the female body. Perhaps it is also that an increasing number of us are becoming obese, probably exacerbating the possibility of developing man-boobs.
It should be said, though, that the man-boob phenomenon is a genuine, recognised medical condition, called gynecomastasia or gynaecomastasia. It is often associated with disease or metabolic disorders and occurs most frequently in adolescents and the elderly. The cause has been generally attributed to an imbalance in sex hormones. Genuine gynecomastasia, though, which is the actual growth of glandular tissue, should be distinguished from psuedogynecomastasia or lipomastasia, which is due to excessive adipose tissue or fat.
To link this, in an obscure way, to mental health, I suppose that the taking of anti-psychotic medication, which can induce weight gain, may lead to the development of moobs, albeit not the genuine type. I was even told by one psychiatrist that such medication sometimes contains the female hormone prolactin which may induce the growth of man-boobs and even lead some to secrete milk (yuk!).
So, having at one time been grossly overweight, I can attest to once having my own glorious pair of moobs. Now, though, as I have lost a great deal of the old poundage, this problem has abated somewhat, and it would seem that I never had genuine gynecomastasia. All I can say of my man-boob phase, then, is thanks for the mammaries, and I certainly hope that I haven't made a boob of myself with this post.