Turns out your uncle Mort—you remember him; he’s the one who spends most of Thanksgiving in his recliner, looking and sounding like an elephant seal—is a trendsetter! In the U.S. and especially Britain, the incidence of gynecomastia, or enlarged male breasts, is on the rise. In the U.K., male breast reduction is the second-fastest-growing category of cosmetic surgery.
Your instinct might be to blame this on hormone-infused beef or other food additives, but the actual cause is less freaky: Most of what’s being reduced in these reductions is fat tissue, and our nations’ increasing adiposity is to blame. That, and it’s linked to marijuana consumption. (Not just because of the Dorito consumption that goes with the pot-smoking, apparently.)
Somewhere in this story is a Seth Rogen screenplay, fighting to get out. (“Okay, here’s the pitch. A guy who spends his whole life trying to get his hands on a big pair finally acquires one of his own.”) Or, alternatively, they could just buy the rights to make a movie about this guy.
There’s a billboard ad I see when we sometimes take the Verrazano bridge to Staten Island. It has two side-by-side, before and after shots. “Mike on Monday” and “Mike on Friday”. It advertises man-boob reduction services. Unfortunately, we always end up laughing too hard to remember to look at the doctor or medical practice offering this service.