My husband is in his fifties, weighs 105 kilograms, smokes, drinks and never, ever takes any exercise. Yet his body is perfectly firm, no sagging whatsoever, very much like a freshly caught mackerel. The rest of us need incessant trips to the gym to avoid looking like jellyfish. Can his incredible luck be explained in biological terms? And given that a nice firm body is an obvious advantage in the breeding game, why isn鈥檛 it more widespread?
鈥� I鈥檝e never heard anyone so full of praise for their other half鈥檚 physique. However, 105 kilograms is quite heavy and if he isn鈥檛 a large-boned man he must carry quite a bit of fat.
Young people can carry fat and look good 鈥� even very good. But as we age, the fat redistributes onto tummies and hips and goes bumpy and wrinkly as the strands of connective tissue weaken and so have a harder job holding it in place. The result is what is commonly known as cellulite.
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Sexual attractiveness is more beneficial to the young than the old. Young adults are more likely than older people to produce live children and supply genes to the next generation. They are also more likely to survive to carry out their protective parental role. So individuals who thought that young people were attractive successfully passed on their genes; those who didn鈥檛 aren鈥檛 represented any more because their genes died out. The notion of what is attractive and what is not became built into our instincts. One could speculate that the changes that occur with age occur to specifically mark out the elderly.
Have your husband鈥檚 genes just failed to do the normal thing? Without wishing to cast aspersions, female warthogs find male warthogs very attractive, so attractiveness is often in the eye of the beholder.
鈥淔emale warthogs find male warthogs very attractive, so attractiveness is often in the eye of the beholder鈥�
There are no easy ways of stopping fat redistribution with age or we鈥檇 all be doing it. We can only presume your husband is lucky and a tribute to natural variation.
Steve Bloom, Department of Investigative Medicine, Imperial College London, UK