It’s time your dear Agony Uncle took a stride onto his Aēsop pump-action liquid handsoap dispenser and addressed a pressing issue: male side boob. It’s an alarming trend gripping the globe; more prevalent during the summer months but also making an unsightly appearance throughout the winter by the shameless and the insane, men must be informed of how ungentlemanly the entire practice is.

Its beginnings were humble: the V-neck t-shirt. The innocuous neckline has been favoured by most men; the garment elongating the neck, displaying the clavicles and in some cases, alluding to a hint of chest hair. Sufficiently conservative and attractive for most, there were some who had to push the manilla folder on common decency that bit further.

Take, for example, this V-neck undershirt by 2(x)ist—clearly intended as underwear and designed to be worn under an open-necked button-down shirt in the cooler months, it is sensible and practical. Not according to American Apparel. They had to take the neckline that is suited to someone with a bust ie. women and produce it in every colour of the spectrum (and poo brown). Sadly, those men who feel they are allowed to get away with this kind of neckline usually have little-to-no chest definition and accompanying chest acne. This is not a good thing.

This was indeed the opening of the floodgates for bad fashion with a myriad of variations on the plunging male neckline theme appearing—deep round neck, deep scoop neck—which indeed made chest-proud men look like they’d borrowed their mother’s blouse. Again, not a good thing.

Finally, the revealing t-shirt made its final transformation in its gestation of bad taste: it developed barely-there shoulder straps and lost its sides—it became the ‘slut singlet’.

I won’t attempt to think of some witty contraction like drunk journalists do when they should be poring over their style manuals instead of making up buzzwords (Well, perhaps with the exception of ‘cankles’ and ‘gunt’, which are both descriptive and onomatopoeic. If you’re unsure of their meanings, please refer to Urban Dictionary.), instead let’s call it as it is: it’s a horrible easy-access excuse for a shirt.

Let’s take this little trio below. Aside from presumably shopping at the same specialist slut singlet dispensary, they’ve managed to learn the primary colours and how best to coordinate them … with each other. Wearing matching outfits only ever worked for Destiny’s Child and the House of Deréon, and even then they struggled to pull it off outside of an awards show. Sure it was the Nineties, but lest we forget Justin and Britney’s quadruple denim ensembles.

Whilst I should acknowledge their (financial) commitment to Fitness First, Body Bronze and their local waxing salon (don’t make me say ‘manscaping’), their perfectly defined pectorals look like they are the incorrectly glued rejects of novelty boob aprons for which a small ten-year-old Chinese child is going to lose a hand for in a sweatshop somewhere.

A half-inch of fabric away from a nip slip, such a display of flesh will lead to the bulging corpus beneath to involuntarily escape the indignity of such a scanty garment. Going on appearance, are these men you’d take home for dinner and discuss the finer points of Existentialism? No. Are these the men you would find in multiple trade costumes—firemen, builder, police officer—at an all-male revue for gagging females out on hens’ nights? Without a doubt. The question is: With such skimpy outfits, where does one stick the five-dollar bills?

Perhaps what I take such umbrage to other than how it represents inelegance and poor taste, is the double standard it conveys. If a woman were to wear such an outfit, she’d be called a slut … or Jodie Marsh ie. a slut. Unfortunately, gents, enough is enough—the sooner you realise how ridiculous you look, the better. Even rent boys know that not showing all their wares at once increases their commodity—and if you’re going to dress like one, you might as well get paid.

I can only hope that you take heed of my warning and adjust your wardrobe accordingly, for forget not that we live in a digital era. I made have made my fashion faux pas in the mid-late-Nineties, but negatives and originals can be burnt—the Internet is forever.

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