Recapping a November to remember

Dadbods, unite!

Early last month, I published a post introducing you dear readers to my idea of participating in Movember, a social media campaign dubbed The Dadbod Challenge. The campaign aimed to celebrate the male body—especially the dad body—with daily photos (by the illustrious Kim Carroll) of yours truly in various forms of undress.

Thirty days later, the campaign ended yesterday. It was a smashing success.

First, we raised more than $6,500 for The Movember Foundation, the only charity solely dedicated to raising money to support and raising awareness for men’s health. Second, because I vowed to match all donations made on my 41^st birthday (Nov. 14, for those of you scoring at home) and send the matches to Planned Parenthood, we raised an additional $2,600 for PPFA. Third, we scored some pretty sick media hits (like this one and this one).

Do the math and we raised about $9,000 overall. In 30 days. With a bunch of Speedo pix and some witty captions.

On the most basic level, I am BLOWN AWAY by the generous support of my friends, colleagues, and family members. On another level, however, I’m super-proud of each and every person who got involved. Thanks to all of you.

I’m also excited about how the campaign paid homage to family travel. Because I’m the primary childcare solution for our family, I was forced to drag Baby G with me on a number of shoots. That means many of the images were snapshots of family travel—the Villanos in a vineyard, the Villanos at a luxury hotel, the Villanos at a boutique hotel’s pool (see picture above).

Whether your star-spangled Speedo is literal or metaphoric, I hope these pictures—and the success of the campaign in general—will inspire you to support men’s health and get out there to explore the world.