Recently when Akshay Kumar sashayed down the ramp topless in an unbuttoned pair of jeans, a pertinent query about how a 40-plus actor gets chosen to be the face of youth apparel, almost threw him off-balance. Regaining his composure quickly, Akshay broadened his shoulders and argued,”Amn’t I fit enough?” Well that seems to be the general refrain of most of the 40-something B-towners.

Dino Morea scoffed at the six-pack phenomenon as ‘been there done that’ saying that he was a six-packer even before anybody knew what it meant! Going back, the provenance of the topless mania is easily traced back to Salman Khan. He took the shirt off his back to show off his rippling muscles and become unparalled gym icon for over 18 years since he entered filmdom. But he admitted recently,”It’s very painful, very, very painful to keep myself in this form. Given the fact that my lifestyle is not all that correct,” he confessed.

When it comes to ranking heavenly bodies, the spot next to Salman certainly belongs to Hrithik Roshan who moulded his upper body to perfection and displayed it to full advantage in Jodhaa Akbar and his female fans have sigh delightedly at the montages of his bare, glistening torso daily as they play that particular scene on their Jodha Akbar DVDs.

Shah Rukh Khan celebrated the appeal of bare torso in Om Shanti Om re-iterating that the six-pack abs have nothing to do with age. Ajay Devgan was also spotted bare-chested in Golmaal. And so was Chhote Nawab Saif in Omkara.