Panting and sweating, I laid on the squishy yoga mat, dead center of Gym #2 at the Serf. I had just completed my fifth group class of the week and the class was doing a meditative cool down. As the bright florescent lights shined down on my glistening skin, we were instructed to concentrate on our “core energy.” The instructor whispered into the mic, “Concentrate your energy into a ball as you breath in and out. Move the energy throughout your body, push the ball through your shoulders down your back. Release your stress, relax your muscles.” I stared at that ceiling trying my hardest not to laugh, not because we were imaging a strange ball of energy floating around in our bodies but that everyone was actually doing it. Relax? Hell no. I lay on that damp clammy floor and the only place I was concentrating my ball of energy was between my legs.
I hate working out this time of year. Each spring campus gyms are flooded by chubby freshmen that have just stepped off the scale. They now realize what the affects of beer five nights a week does to your hips and gut. (The past few weeks have been no better.) I have to fight through the crowd and wait in line just to get on a damn elliptical. This experience has got me thinking. Why do we go to the gym? Are we all thinking of coronary heart disease, diabetes and obesity? I don’t think that’s quite it.
Vanity and sex appeal is more likely the fuel that drives the fitness crazy. Most people won’t admit to this vain secret. Instead you’ll find excuses such as “I just feel better when I work out” or “I like to stay healthy.” These statements may be true since they are side affects of keeping fit and trim. After digging deeper, skin deep, you’ll find that there are three vain reasons why we workout: for the mirror, the opposite sex and to compare yourself to the same sex. Simple right?
How many times DO you look at yourself in the mirror? Naked? If you were given a pencil and asked to draw an accurate picture of yourself, could you? Most people would attempt to but find that they could just never get things perfect. This is the same scenario that happens with lifting weights or applying makeup. Spending two hours a day in the gym and measuring your biceps will not guarantee a truce with the mirror. Keep in mind: what our own eye sees as potential improvement may be perfect in the eye of someone else.
We all know those people at the gym that come dressed to the nines and barely break a sweat. A friend recently told me that when she was in the weight room doing arm curls she just about fell over laughing. This chick dressed in an incredibly skimpy outfit, her long hair down around her shoulders and heavy makeup on was sitting on the leg butterfly machine. If that wasn’t bad enough she was slowly pumping her thighs together all while talking on her cell phone. These are the extreme cases of “working out” for the opposite sex.
People that work out to attract others, make up the masses at the gyms. These are the girls that worry about their ass fitting into the skirt from last summer and the guys getting nervous about the inevitable love handles. We all would like to be appealing and sexy. Hard work in the gym does have its rewards, if a few more phone numbers a week is what your after.
Bodily self-image is largely based on how we perceive our bodies in comparison to others’ bodies, sometimes our formerly firm, high school bodies. We all play the comparing game at some level and have subconsciously rated ourselves. “Is my ass tighter than hers?” or “my arms are more defined than his,” and “I’m a nine, she’s a seven.” Don’t deny it, you know you do it.
To say that everyone works out for purely selfish, egocentric reasons is a copout. I understand that there are other reasons, but I know I’m not sweating my ass off for anything else. Surrounded by 30 other stinky people that day, on the gym floor, I was asking myself why am I here? Part of me wants my track body back from five years ago and the rest is just a mix of all the other reasons. I am not ashamed of admitting that I check myself out in store windows and act cocky sometimes. If vanity causes me to sweat, stink and suffer, but get laid, I’m there five days a week.
Lindsey is a junior majoring in Graphic Design and graduating in May. She would like to encourage men with six-packs to remove their shirts while working out for her pleasure. Lindsey can be contacted at [email protected]
