Akademik

n.

Excess fatty tissue that causes a man's chest to resemble a woman's breasts. Also: man-breasts.

Those of us with average to below-average bodies need a hero.

We don't have many to work with. Watching a "Seinfeld" rerun, we see George Costanza, his "man breasts" visible beneath his polo shirt, and we see ourselves. We wonder why he tucks in those shirts, why he wears them in the first place. Doesn't he know how he looks? We can't believe he's eating French fries at Monk's Diner, or asking for bread from the Soup Nazi.

— Paul Brownfield, "The uncomfortable middle," Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2003

Singer David Lee Roth and former teen idol Leif Garrett have fat necks, as does every artist featured on VH1's Where Are They Now? program. Gary Shandling's got one. Courtney Love had one — but then had a surgical defatneckification.

Park Avenue plastic surgeon David Rapaport has an at-home exam for early detection of fat neck syndrome. "Pinch that spot just right under the chin and above the larynx," he instructed. "If that's a fat-necked person, you're pinching a big wad of fat."

The necks of James Coburn and Nick Nolte both delivered Oscar-caliber performances in Affliction, but these necks are, respectively, hangy-gobbly and foldy-flappy, not fat. John Travolta has perhaps the fattest neck in Hollywood, but Mr. Travolta also has a fat belly and fatty man-breasts, which qualifies him as a fat person.

— "Curse of the Fat Necks," New York Observer, January 25, 1999

And host Ellen DeGeneres chats up the goth-to-glam transformation of Marilyn Manson.

"He's got man breasts installed, which is always sexy on a man," DeGeneres says of Manson's puzzling prosthetic devices. "My father's done it for years."

— Jane Stevenson, "Stars look better than they sound," The Toronto Sun, November 6, 1998