Ollie's Modern Life : Ollie Peart has inner beauty

The other week I was offered a unique opportunity. Several days to myself, in my own house. It sounds awful to describe this as an “opportunity” but I literally don’t care. I could do whatever I wanted without being judged by my partner and/or my dog. I mean, they don’t really judge me anyway, it’s just I didn’t need to worry as to whether they were or not.

Naturally, being a man, I immediately bought a pizza and some beer. It was all I could see on the shelves of the supermarket, everything else was a blur. When I got home, I heated up the pizza, grabbed a can (yes, a can) and slumped on the sofa. I was one layer of clothing away from fulfilling optimum ‘man’. If I didn’t have such a gaping hole in the crotch of my pants, I probably would have gone the whole hog, but even I have standards. Still, the sight of it must have been pretty disgusting, and I was delighted.

Night two came along and I decided to push the boat out a little. Fish and chips. Yeah, that’s right. Fish and chips. On my own. Drinking beer and watching crap on TV. The attire was much the same as the previous night and I can’t imagine the sight was any prettier. Again, I was delighted.

The third night came around and frankly, I wasn’t feeling too good about myself. It was like I’d swallowed a balloon and the grease from the fish and chips was resurfacing on my skin. I needed to up my “night-in” game with a bit of sophistication. I popped to the shops and grabbed a pizza but this time, with salad. I had some craft beers at home (thank you very much Beer52) and all I needed was a little something to class it up. “I know,” I thought, “Something to read!” Now, I wasn’t about to buy a book – this was Tesco for fuck’s sake – so instead I opted for a magazine. And no, not that kind. Buying a magazine makes me feel like a wanker as it is. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because a lot of them are put together as an almost status thing, something you hold or have out on your coffee table to give whoever visits you an idea of who you are. This wonderful magazine for example, shows people that you like craft beer and are likely to engage in beery conversation with someone even if they don’t want to hear it.

Other magazines, like the one I was about to pick up, tell people that you’re a wanker and like looking at adverts of expensive watches that you’ll never be able to afford. Still, tonight was about being sophisticated, so if that meant looking like a wanker in the process, so be it.

I got home, slung the pizza in the oven, cracked open a bottle of craft ale and settled down to flick through my glossy-papered, smattering of sophistication. Not long into the ‘read’ (most of it was spent staring at ads, smearing perfumed paper on myself and looking at cool gadgets) I began to notice something. I look like a sandbag with hairy shoulders, have a face like a chipmunk and about as much sexual prowess as a leftover pizza crust covered in mayonnaise. In the space of 49 pages, I had become fully aware that optimum ‘man’ was not how things should be.

There was a new man in town, and it was 6ft 4in, rugged and had arms like a veiny cock. This was the new ‘optimum man’.

I have never been worried about how I looked, ever. I mean, I’ve done my hair a bit, of course. That’s just something I do, almost to make life easier rather than to look good. But all of a sudden I was looking at perfectly carved examples of how the male body could look, presented to me in a way and with the attitude that this is how it should look. With every page I grew more anxious. Page 50, you don’t have a six pack. Page 51, you probably have a really small penis. Page 52, When did you last message your partner? She’s probably shacked up with the bloke on page 42.

All of this had come from a magazine that had a picture of Jeremy Corbyn on the front of it for goodness sake. How could this happen? I had to control myself and my thoughts. We’ve all heard the stories of this happening in women’s magazines, almost to the point where we’ve become numb to it, which we never should. But we never really hear about it for men, but it just happened to me. Why? Who are these people telling me that I should look a certain way? Who says I need to have a six pack, should wax my back and buy a £3,000 blazer to go with some £380 shoes?

And then it hit me. These aren’t people. Not really. These are writers, journalists, interns and busybodies who spend their entire day behind a desk, scouring the internet looking for things to write about. They are people who create something out of nothing, tricksters, illusionists and con-artists. They package their stories up in glossy, image-heavy perfumed pages and present to us, the reader, as real life. As the ideal. As things could and should be.

Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s a load of old bollocks. I don’t want anyone indirectly or otherwise telling me how I should or shouldn’t look. What I should or shouldn’t wear. Wear what you want. Sure, eating fruit is great and making sure you eat plenty of veg is a good idea, but if you want to eat pizza and beer all the day long, you know the consequences. You’re an adult for fuck’s sake.

To take a stand, here’s a photo of me. It was after I’d been surfing. Surfers are used a lot in the world of marketing to represent an outdoorsy, rugged, masculine ideal. Tanned bodies, toned muscles and a physicality that is at one with mother nature. In reality, all surfers want is to ride waves and have a good time, and sometimes, just sometimes, they will look like a bag of sand. And that my friends, is absolutely the way it should be.