CANKLES, THANKLES AND MANKLES

Nov 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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I have something to get off my chest and the only comforting thought in this insane scenario is that there are many other people who, like me, have things to get off their chests and other parts of their bodies.
Had I not wondered what the word “moobs” meant and relentlessly pursued it on the internet, I would never have known that I have moobs and might soon be a suitable subject for a present day Herman Melville.
Although Arnold Schwarzenegger might precede me because of the size of his, the dreaded spectre of morphing from Moby Dick to “Mooby” Dick will now constantly haunt me.  Because the “Dick” part of the title deserves separate treatment not suitable for anything but very mature audiences, I will concentrate on the “mooby” blues.
The Urban Dictionary explains “moobs” as “a combination of the words ‘man’ and ‘boobs.’ This is what happens when fat gathers in a male’s chest area, and gives him the appearance of having breasts.  Usually seen in overweight males, but can strangely also occur in men who are not really overweight.”
An article by Finlo Rohrehr in the BBC News Magazine said, “When both the then Prime Minister Tony Blair and leader of the opposition David Cameron were pictured enjoying the sun in the summer of 2006, newspapers from tabloid to broadsheet passed comment on their ‘moobs’.”
The article pointed out, “A search of the LexisNexis newspaper databases suggests the word made its debut in a British newspaper in June 2004. Since then it has been used 161 times. There have been more than 350 references to ‘man boobs’ over the same period. ‘Moobs’ clocks up 281,000 hits on Google.”
In other words, many of us have moobs but until now did not know what to call them.  One of my friends pointed out that as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and experience have taught us, men have various names for the second half of the book title that comes after “Moby” but until now had none for enlarged breasts.
The next step is a “moob” job which is the opposite of a “boob” job.  The boob job adds, the moob job minuses and it is a way out for men who have something more on their chests than hair.
Fohrehr explained, “Every man has breast tissue, but some have excessive breasts…But whatever the cause, British men seem to be increasingly concerned over the state of their chests.  The latest figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) seem to bear out this obsession.  Surgeons carried out 323 male breast reduction procedures in 2008, up a staggering 44% from 2007.”
One of my male friends pointed out that life is unfair and that women have it easy.  What is a source of shame for us is a source of pride for them, what detracts from our attractiveness as men adds to their desirability as women.
That may be so for breasts but in today’s world, overweight women have it hard and not in a sexual sense.  There are people who ostracise them for their “cottage cheese” thighs, a reference to cellulite.  It gets even worse and unkind when applied to their posteriors.  Then there are “thunder” thighs or the loud noise that the legs of overweight women make when they slap together.
Another term of derision is “saddle bags” or extra storage of fat on the outside of the thigh resembling a horse’s saddle bags. The Urban Dictionary’s example is “She’s an attractive lady even if she is packing saddle bag.”  Worse even than that is “chub rub”.  Again, using the Urban Dictionary as the source we get, “The rash like symptom that forms between a FAT GURLs legs that result from the friction that occurs because of the constant rubbing of the FAT GURLS legs.”
The tasteless example, “GURL u need to lose some wait, all that chub rub is making ur thighs bleed”
Isn’t that a terrible thing to say?  What about “muffin top” as applied to women more than men.  A “muffin top” is “The phenomenon resulting from the trend in tight low-rise jeans coupled with midriff baring shirts on girls who should not be wearing them, causing a spillage of fat resembling the top of a muffin spilling out of its paper. Dude, did you see that girl walking by? She totally had a muffin-top!”
Now we have “cankles”, “thankles” and “mankles”.  “Cankles” is slang for the part of the leg where the ankle meets the calf when there is no definition or indentation.  Val Willingham of a CNN Medical Producer says, “In most cases, cankles are just large ankles — what used to be called ‘big bones.’ But in society’s quest for all things thin and shapely, big-boned ankles have taken on a name — and a life — of their own.”
The Urban Dictionary definition describes “thankle” as “An exaggeration of ‘cankle’. Whereas ‘cankle’ is a contraction of ‘calf-ankle’, ‘thankle’ is ‘thigh-ankle’. Indicates that there isn’t just no discernable ankle, but no knee either.”
Then “mankle”.  In Japanese it is supposedly the female sexual organ.  The one printable definition (i.e. one not homophobic) is “a skull so thick it replaces the brain.”
In checking “cankle”, “thankle” and “mankle”, I encountered the following “Often overshadowed by the mullet, midgets, and unibrows, Thankles & Cankles deserve some of the limelight.”
That’s it, I thought.  Maybe one of these days I would be brave enough to try to find out what mullets, midgets and unibrows are in the context of ‘thankles’ and cankles, but for now, and pending further research, a mullet is a fish, a midget is a politically incorrect term for someone who is vertically challenged, and a unibrow is the combination of a high-brow and a low-brow, essentially someone who is semi-illiterate.
Given the way the world is getting meaner and meaner to people who do not conform to the present definitions of physical beauty, I prefer the bliss of ignorance to the folly of wisdom.
*Tony Deyal was last seen saying that cosmetic surgeons, dieticians, fashionistas and body sculptors are cashing in on these “defects” and laughing all the way to the bankle.

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