Man Boobs

Years ago I worked in a corporate office where we hardly ever saw the owner of the company, but one day the big cheese himself was coming in to crack the whip on us peons. My boss helpfully informed me how to recognize him: "He's the one with man boobs," she said. I giggled, quite sure she was exaggerating. But I stopped giggling when I met him and had to will my eyes to look up instead of down. I felt a little bad for him (you know, as bad as one can feel for a man whose cup size surpasses her own), and then I ate a brownie after lunch because I felt sure I needed a little extra fat to pad my own sad excuse for cleavage.

But, B-cup or not, he seemed masculine in every other respect. And I'm quite sure he had no plans to put his unfortunate assets to use. It's too bad the same cannot be said for the latest loon in the news, Swedish father Ragnar Bengtsson, who is determined to pump his breasts until they produce enough milk to breastfeed his future children.

Raise your hand if you just said, "Eeeeewwwwww!"

Bengtsson has no plans to use any type of hormonal therapy, but an endocrinologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm says it might be possible for him to produce a "drop or two" of milk after three or four months of pumping.

The full-time student is willing to pay the price for a chance at producing those little droplets even if it means pulling out the breast pump in the middle of a classroom lecture. "...it doesn't bother me if it makes people uncomfortable. If they have issues with it that's their problem," he says.

Yeah, it's just so petty and judgmental to get upset about the whirring of a breast pump drowning out a lecture on the theory of relativity, never mind having to avert your eyes as the guy next to you is using machinery to suck his nipples all the way to Alaska.

Of course, Bengtsson could just take the Karolinska endocrinologist's advice to offer his milkless breast to any of his future offspring: "Men don't need to strive to produce milk but they should take the opportunity to get closer to their child by offering them their breasts in the same way as women," she said.

And I thought that whole breastfeeding doll thing was weird.