Searching for a Baby Daddy Without a “Dad Bod”
Some women date their fathers. And some, like me, look for the exact opposite.
Not that there’s anything wrong with my dad. He’s just stubborn and opinionated and likes to have his own way – just like me.
That’s why I always was attracted to the opposite of his tall, dark and handsome physique, which is larger than life, if you know what I mean. No, my papa doesn’t even have a “dad bod” – the slight over-the-pants pudge which portends the type of guy who will make a great life partner and parent to your future children.
I wanted a skinny blonde.
Not that that was easy to find, dating New York guys who looked more like Ben Stiller than Owen Wilson. But as long as I relaxed my definition of “blonde” – going for the dirty, dirty, dirty haired blonds (what normal people call light brown hair), or fair-skinned dudes who were probably towheaded as kids, I fulfilled my anti-Electra complex.
I wasn’t willing to give up on my physical requirements, though. I loved those rail thin types whose hip bones held up their jeans. No, my guys were not the sinewy Jesus types so popular in hipster circles today, they were simply skinny. Some would say scrawny.
There was Brian, a 6’ 3” Midwesterner who was a foot taller than me – and probably the same weight as me, too. Eric’s chicken legs were so white he refused to wear shorts. Johnny was more buff than I usually liked, careful about not exceeding his 12% body fat.
In other words, no Dad Bods, those out-of-shape slackers who would forego the gym for a night of snuggling. (The New York Times estimates a dad bod to be ten pounds overweight.)
I guess back then I wasn’t really looking for a father for my future children.
Take Dan, a half-Swedish blond (for reals, this time), who was so thin you could almost see his concave stomach digesting slice of pizza. “I make mannequins look fat,” he used to joke. He was fun and funny and although we dated for two years, we discussed the future vaguely, in the abstract, like it was happening to someone else. When I turned 30, I wanted to take it to the next level, but he didn’t want to move in together yet, didn’t want to stop hanging out with his stoner friends.
My early thirties coincided with the internet dating boom. It was pretty easy to sift through all the men who contacted me: I went for guys with amusing profiles and a low BMI.
“You’re so superficial!” my (mostly married) friends said. But wasn’t I allowed to have a type? Men do. Look, I know women are not supposed to care about that stuff (yet we’re allowed to care about a guy’s bank account?!), but in my case it wasn’t only about externalities: I was trying to find a man different than my own father, one I’d click with, not clash with.
But by my mid-thirties – reeling from a string of skinny guys who’d initially seemed so promising but did the fade-out after two months – I started to wonder if my type was my problem.
If I really wanted to settle down and start a family, then why, oh why, did I keep picking the wrong guys? (At a certain point I had to admit it wasn’t them. What they all had in common was…me.)
I thought about all the men I admired as husbands and dads over the years, and wondered what their profiles might have looked, and if I would’ve agreed to go out with them on a first or second date. Would they be jokey and light, like Dan, which would cause me to fall for a relationship that probably would never lead to anything serious?
By working backwards from the end, I thought I could reverse engineer a suitable partner. That meant I had to stop putting such a premium on looks, in my case, weight.
That’s why I was really proud of myself for dating Paul, a lawyer with soulful brown eyes and a rather cuddly shape. “Do you want a gold medal for dating a chubby guy?” one of my friends said. I did not. Yet I thought expanding my search criteria – literally! – would land me The One. But after two months of dating, when Paul mentioned he wasn’t sure he really wanted kids, I realized I wasn’t searching deeply enough. A “dad bod” did not a dad make.
Amy Klein and husband Solomon on their wedding day. (Photo: Amy Klein)
A few months later, I met a dark, handsome muscular guy named Solomon. Definitely not my type. Wait! I didn’t have a type, right?
Solomon was athletic. A cyclist, an outdoorsman – and a family man too. When his sister joined us briefly on our second date, I could tell by the way he watched her how caring and protective he was.
No, he’d never be a skinny blonde (and neither would I, for that matter), but who cared? He was easy on the eyes, easy on the heart, unlike almost every other guy I dated.
When we married nearly two years later, Solomon didn’t have a dad bod.
But now, as my stomach distends in my last few months of pregnancy, he’s getting that slight over-the-pants pudge too.
A sympathetic pregnancy. (Photo: Amy Klein)
A sympathetic pregnancy? Now, that’s what I call a good guy—one who will, shortly after Father’s Day, make an amazing dad.
Related:
On Mom Bods, Dad Bods, Granny Hair, and Silver Foxes: the Celebrated and the Unsung
