A small fold of skin spills over his swim trunks. Tufts of fluffy hair frame a soft belly button. And those big beefy arms are calling out for a cuddle.
Forget six packs: If a man doesn’t have at least one love handle, I’m not interested. And countless women feel the same. Trust me. America went wild this week over a juicy set of topless beach pics; hirsute and extra hunky Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce vacationing in the Bahamas with his songstress sweetheart Taylor Swift.
The power couple looked blissfully happy and comfortable in each other’s company. Travis was even so bold as to rest his hand on Taylor’s butt – a PDA I very much respected. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed scrolling through the various shots, as I imagine many ladies did.
I also found the images rather refreshing. All too often, celeb beach snaps are a stream of stick-thin bodies or ultra-cut abs, only attainable via LA surgeons or starvation. But here was a couple in fantastic shape who looked… well, healthy. However, according to a frighteningly large swath of social media, Travis’s physique wasn’t something to be marveled at.
Apparently, this back-to-back Superbowl champion has ‘dad bod’ – a slightly chubby body that you might expect from a middle-aged man with a lapsed exercise routine and a beer habit. The inference: he’s let himself go. (Reminder that Superbowl LVIII was last month). Astonishingly, Travis, 34, felt compelled to defend himself against such ludicrous slurs, taking to his podcast to tell fans he’s only carrying a bit more weight because he’s on Spring break and enjoying a well-earned offseason period.
How ridiculous. Famous females have been subjected to criticisms about their perfectly healthy bodies since the dawn of time. And now we’re applying the same toxic standards to men. First of all, as a health and science journalist, I can categorically tell you that Travis’s missing six pack tells us absolutely nothing about his actual health.
As we know from his on-field performance, Travis is built like a house. That we can’t see every vein and muscle sinew is down to a slightly higher level of body fat than that of a Dior runway model. That’s not a bad thing.
Studies have shown that men with less than 13 percent body fat (considered ‘athletic’) are at risk of critically low testosterone – which can play havoc with everything from mental health to the immune system.
Intriguingly, other research even suggests that too much abdominal-muscle mass raises the risk of heart disease. Scientific conjecture aside, it hardly needs stating that Kelce – a man with more than a decade’s worth of elite sport under his belt – couldn’t be further from ‘unhealthy’ if he tried.
Sorry to break it to the weightlifting-obsessed gym bros, but a lifetime of regular physical activity is a better predictor of a long, disease-free life than the amount of visible muscle on a body. Studies have long proven this.
