‘I call for the right to bare arms’

On Monday, December 3, political journalist Patricia Karvelas was allegedly removed from Question Time in Canberra for ‘showing too much skin’. The offending body area was… her upper arms.

I’m here to tell you my upper arms have been offending me for years. I used to have well-sculpted, quite nicely defined, normal upper arms and then one day I woke up and somehow I didn’t. Seems to me it happened overnight. No permission was sought or given for this body alteration to take place and yet there it was for the world to see.

Suddenly, the tuckshop lady, bat wing, bingo wing, nan flaps, nanna wobble jokes weren’t so amusing anymore as the horrible, undeniable fact dawned that these jibes could now be directed at me!

Ridiculous notion; I’m sure this can be fixed. I just have to apply myself with a ‘Call to Arms’ for the ‘Right to Bare [bear] Arms’. Sorry, I couldn’t help the pun silliness, the grammar naughtiness and flat out need to break the rules. Flabby armed folk are apparently rebels.

Action stations! A flurry of flabby upper arm research ensued and to say there is a plethora of condition-solving experts, a myriad surefire exercises and a ‘whole heap’ of success stories would be to minimise the volumes of data and texts. So many answers and scientific information were presented for my consumption, I just knew my problem was fixable and I was the gal to beat this new affliction of mine.

The only course of action appeared to be movement and my exercise solution-of-choice was two water-filled 2-litre bottles slowly raised and lowered by each arm 3,457 times, each, per day, EVERY DAY; so simple! It was either that or surgery.

I raised and lowered those damned bottles like a woman possessed. Whether babysitting, reading or watching TV these arms did not stop. Enjoying my evening tipple became somewhat problematic, but with determined practice, minimum spillage occurred (the booze, not the arm fat).

Personally, I enjoy, nay embrace, the fashionable look of ‘the sleeve’; elbow length, flutter, loose-fitting, bell shape and, my special go-to favourite, the long sleeve. I proclaim sleeves season-friendly and temperature-neutral with the only pitfall rookie mistake being fabric choice. That, my friends, can only come with experience and experiment. Problem solved.

One day, in her distant future, Patricia Karvelas may look back on her recent crime in parliament with amusement and a deep longing. Not for her heady days as a well-respected political journalist but for her slim, taken-for-granted upper arms lost in the folds of time and sagging maturity.

Do you have a problem with flabby arms? Have you changed your style to hide ‘problem’ body parts?

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