Men telling other men to lose weight is cruel... but is it ever beneficial?

When Peter Mandelson suggested that the Labour leader could do with losing a few pounds, the tut-tutting was deafening. Not so fast, says Simon Mills: when men talk openly about other men’s waistlines, there is a lot more going on under the surface….

Man-on-man body shaming is seen as a big joke for a lot of men (PA/Getty)

Lord Peter Mandelson was on a podcast the other day, talking body politics. “My problem with Rishi Sunak’s fashion is that he wears these skinny suits and narrow ties… and they diminish him,” said the former secretary of state. “Just to be even-handed about it, by the same token,” added Mandelson, “Keir Starmer needs to shed a few pounds.”

Shed a few pounds! Back in the knife drawer, Mandy!

In the House of Commons yesterday, chancellor Jeremy Hunt doubled down on Mandelson’s comments. “I know he has been taking advice from Lord Mandelson, who yesterday rather uncharitably said he needed to shed a few pounds,” Hunt said to Starmer. “Ordinary families will shed more than a few pounds if that lot get in.”

Now imagine the hoo-ha, if, say Edwina Currie or Amber Rudd had appeared on a talk show, discussing how “Esther McVey’s Zara suits make her look too thin” and how Ann Widdecombe, on the other hand, “needed to get down the gym.” Not going to happen, is it? Not even on a Piers Morgan show.  

But the brutal truth is that Mandelson’s man-on-man fat shaming is not only pretty standard behaviour for us fellas, it can also be, whisper it, quite effective.    

You see, in the man’s world – in the locker room, at the bar and workplace – there exists no kindly, pussyfooting, sensitivity-aware body-positivity terminology when it comes to male shapes – a bloke is not a “plus size” or a “person celebrating his obesity”. Men have no hesitation in calling out one another’s (even minor) weight issues.

In pubs and under communal showers and at drinks parties, they throw insults at each other with insults; “paunchy”, “porky” “lardy” and “tubby”. “Mr Blobby” and “fat arse”. (Anecdote tells me that mothers and mother-in-laws can be even worse offenders).   

They poke an index finger at a spare tyre or beer belly. From the terraces, they will chant “Who ate all the pies?” at a footballer carrying the merest splinter of extra timber. This refrain, to the tune of “Knees Up Mother Brown”, usually spilling from the mouths of overweight men, stuffed into replica shirts two sizes too small for them while eating said pies as they sing. 

These starkly direct, larky, banter-based body-shame tactics might seem cruel and worn lightly when tossed at us, but they can spur the thickest of skins into action when we get home. He may have styled it out in the commons, but if Starmer is anything like me (my ex-father-in-law once saw me on Newsnight, and had no qualms about telling me the very next day, that I looked “fat” and “overweight”) he’ll be on the exercise bike right now, investigating intermittent fasting, bench pressing and steps monitoring. Planning a long-distance bicycle ride and probably signing up for a half marathon. 

Even Donald Trump isn’t immune to weight jibes. Anyone can see that the orange Maga lout is obese. Anyone, that is, except Trump… who claims his bathroom scales read 239 pounds, recently dropping to an even lighted 215 pounds (15 and a half stone approx). American football superstar Tom Brady weighs in at 224 pounds, so blowsy Trump is now claiming to be skinnier than the world’s highest-paid athlete and supermodel magnet.   

But the constant, late-night TV attacks from Kimmel, Colbert, Myers and co, the endless fat photos online (the big-bottomed Donald in tennis whites is a particular low point) seem to have finally got to him. Rumours are that Trump is now “on the pen” (ie injecting Ozempic) and seems to have already dropped several pounds.  

These starkly direct, larky, banter-based body-shame tactics might seem cruel and worn lightly when tossed at us, but they can spur the thickest of skins into action when we get home

Don’t laugh. Trump’s preposterous fib is also most men’s big fat lie – all part of the truth dodging, mirror avoidant, self-deception that is male weight loss-talgia. A la recherche du tums perdu, if you like.

Typically men will alight on a set of vital statistics, gleaned from their waistband labels and jacket sizings from their early to mid-thirties when they were at peak hunk, and then stick with them. For the rest of his life, it’ll be a 32” waist and a 15 1/2 collar. And no amount of tape measuring and seam splitting will convince him otherwise. Even when he can’t complete a run for the bus without risking cardiac arrest. He will deny that his bulk, flab and timber has become an issue (67 per cent of men in the UK are overweight or obese, compared to 58 per cent of women). At this critical stage sometimes only humour can save him.  

Government research, looking into male attitudes and behaviour in relation to health, led by the University of Aberdeen with the University of Stirling and Bournemouth University, has previously shown that friendly joking can help men with weight loss.

The report’s findings showed that the majority of weight management programmes were regarded by men as “feminised spaces”, and the idea of being big may be actually regarded as a good thing by some men with socio-cultural influences seeing a larger body as more masculine in some cases. As well as deploying individual goals, gadgets and stats, the report also recommended that “using humour and encouraging camaraderie” makes weight loss more attractive to men. 

It’s something head chef Jamie Brooks can relate to. Once weighing in at 36 stone, he managed to lose more than half his body weight in just one year, thanks to what he calls “tough love” from a friend who bombarded him with text messages that called him a “fat f***, 2 every day for six weeks. Ditto, this is why men like me and Jamie and Trump lose weight. Not to be laughed at by our friends and enemies. 

Who knows how Starmer will be taking Mandelson’s meow? But let’s hope the Tories haven’t taken Mandelson’s idea and run with it. I can see the billboard now. “Labour isn’t working out”.