E The Holistic View 157
work better with finite tasks.) What did you find? Does the term
“light in the loafers” come to mind?
As we age and add weight, the center of gravity usually heads
south. Nature takes away the squareness of most men through
muscle atrophy and padding at the mid-section. An old Southernism
calls this “furniture disease”—when your chest falls into your
drawers. Men start to lose muscle mass in the chest and shoulders;
what you get is a shrunken, droopy upper body, thickened waist,
and flabby behind. Oh, but chances are good he walks the same—
heel-toe-heel-toe—because of his muscle memory. Now, however,
the extra weight on his frame striking the heels jars his compress-
ing spine, so he shifts forward of the heel. The once tall-standing,
high-center-of-gravity man now pitches forward when he walks.
His square posture is more rounded and he looks centered closer to
the solar plexus or hips. His gait and appearance has become more
feminine with age. Reading the posture portion of his body lan-
guage must take this into consideration. With many older men, you
will need to pay attention to how they compensate for the changes.
Take John Wayne. How did he maintain his image of a super-
masculine man until he died at the age of 72? Did his weight shift to
his drawers? If you look at him in Stagecoach (1939) and again in
True Grit (1969), which he filmed 10 years before he died, he did
become a different kind of manly man. His shoulders were rounded
and failing in True Grit, and he had a large gut. He wears the well-
designed Hollywood trappings of a cowboy to help hide this, though.
The biggest thing that kept him from looking similar to Elmer Fudd
was his gait. John Wayne had a unique sideways gait that never