Poof! Instant access to $whatever->main_message and $whatever->main_message($value).

And if you dont like that style accessor there is MooseX::FollowPBP for Perl Best Practices style accessors (like you have in your example), MooseX::SemiAffordanceAccessor (for foo/set_foo style) and MooseX::Accessors::ReadWritePrivate which pretty much handles everything else (so the docs seem to indicate, I haven't used it myself).