Ripped

~ Laura

Nothing says wealth more than a nice pair of guns.

Here in this upper middle class suburb, the women show up to parent functions at the school flashing their perfectly toned arms in sleeve-less dresses. During the day, they walk around town in yoga pants and tight shirts that show off their tight core muscles. A good part of the morning is spent at spin, hot yoga, and strength training classes.

These women are ready for battle with their tattoos peeking out from under their sleeves and an arm full of  leather wrist cuffs. It’s a new standard of beauty that requires a signficant amount of time and self-control. A bottle of blond dye and a curling iron isn’t enough.

I have entered into a new, delightful period of self-hate for my aging body, so I’ve been stepping up my own exercise regime. For the past year, I’ve gone to the gym for a fast walk on the treadmill a few times per week, while watching reality TV re-runs. But that half-hearted workout is no longer doing the trick. So, I’m doing a spin class on Sunday mornings and running the two miles, instead of walking them. I’m rethinking my routines to make sure that exercise is no longer last on the list of priorities.

Exercise is, of course, a good thing. I feel better when I’m strong. My thighs ache right now, and I kind of like it. But there is a line that can be crossed. Sometimes, muscles can become another way to display conspicuous consumption. One really should have other priorities in life than self-maintenance. Luckily, I’m too lazy to really put too much time into my exercise regimen, so there’s little danger of crossing that line.

Published by Laura

37 thoughts on “Ripped”

  1. The hot yoga studio in my neighborhood is right above the Coldstone Creamery. The space used to be a Curves, but we’re getting fancier around here.

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  2. At least muscles send a healthier message than diamonds or expensive highlights. Sometimes I think it’s great that women are taking care of their bodies no matter what age they are–I have a colleague well into her 50s who just did a triathlon–but other times, I think it’s just one more social pressure, one more aspect of Having It All for women to strive to grasp.

    I started taking exercise seriously this year too, and partly it was for health reasons, but I admit that spending my days surrounded by athletic, toned, UMC girls and women certainly made me want to have arms more like Michelle Obama’s.

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    1. Yes, as behaviors go, I’d rather people spend time becoming strong than wearing diamonds and staying soft. Body modification trends can become obsessive, though, and in that form, I don’t like any of them. But all in all, I like strong arms and legs better than obsessively stick thin ones.

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  3. These women are ready for battle with their tattoos peeking out from under their sleeves and an arm full of leather wrist cuffs.

    Is that a real description? If so, it sounds like a new trend to me.

    Maybe you should consider adding some weights. They are good for muscle tone, of course, but also for bones and can be sort of fun, especially to add variety.

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      1. Also, I’m not so sure about “One really should have other priorities in life than self-maintenance.” If we want to live healthy lives, self-maintenance is crucial–unless you don’t really mean “self-maintenance,” but something else entirely and more superficial. Taking care of our bodies makes us better able to be good wives, friends, mothers, employees, etc.

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      2. (Replying to Jackie) Yes, a certain amount of self-maintenance is necessary. Don’t want to scare small children and all. But one should not spend an entire day on the gym, hair blowouts, manicures, and shopping.

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      3. Really, I don’t care what people spend their time on, if it’s enjoyable to them, and not hurting anybody else. What should the women be spending their time on? reading? gardening?

        (Oh, and small children seem to quite enjoy the squishy mama look, so the muscle toning probably isn’t for them).

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  4. My sister, who lives in Westport, describes the same aesthetic: women whose primary form of self-expression is looking good in Lululemon clothes. It seems pretty vapid compared to my mother, who made her own dresses, and considered being a wife and mother her primary role, or my wife, who does the wife and mother thing and worked 60 hours a week in financial services, but to each her own. I’m just happy not to be married to that sort of women myself.

    My sister didn’t say anything about tattoos, though.

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  5. Replying to our fair hostess above: blowouts/manicures/shopping not mentioned in the original post, which focused so specifically on muscles and exercise. I can get behind seeing that as a waste of time!

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  6. Do you guys remember the movie “I don’t know how she does it?” There’s one character who kind of narrates things who is only pictured walking on a treadmill. Throughout the whole movie, they keep cutting back to this woman at the gym, and I think at one point she pretty much says that she drops the kids off at school, then heads to the gym until it’s time to pick them up from school. I know it’s supposed to be a sort of caricature, but it’s pretty funny.

    I haven’t really ever been able to make myself and my physical appearance my main priority. For me, working out definitely feels like just another obligation on top of an already full plate. For awhile now, I’ve been blaming the fact that I only got tenure last year and before that I had to work like a fiend all the time. But I’m starting to realize that just like the statute of limitations on blaming the baby for the weight runs out, the tenure excuse has probably run its course as well.

    I walk my dog on this exercise trail on weekends, and lately though, I’ve been noticing the women wearing expensive workout clothes and riding really expensive bikes on the trail, and I’ve been overhearing conversations about people taking airplanes to travel to other parts of the country to run marathons, triathlons, etc. I’ve been realizing that people who are seriously committed to their bodies spend as much money on that (airplanes, hotels, trainers, equipment, gym memberships) as someone else might spend on a boat or a rare musical instrument. And I guess it does strike me as a bit selfish if you still have kids at home to be spending that level of money on yourself, unless you truly can afford it. I guess I have picked camps and lessons for the kids over a personal trainer for myself, but it still hurts to then be judged as lazy and out of shape, while working out is somehow regarded as extremely virtuous, even if one has to take all the resources for oneself in order to do it. I’d feel guilty spending all my money on a boat and then telling my kids we don’t have money for a math tutor, but there seem to be a fair number of ladies in our neighborhood who spend a lot on their personal appearance and don’t feel guilty about then telling their kids that there isn’t money for other stuff.

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    1. The women I know with trainers have money for both (or, at the very least, are thinking through the prioritization). The needs of everyone in the family have to come first, but parents should get their share of wants, too.

      If the culture and aesthetics become about exercising and not about liposuction and breast implants, that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned. I’m not at all interested in exercising or working hard to make my body look good, but discussing others investment seems to me to be one more example of judging other women’s choices, because of how it makes us feel about themselves (so, why am I judging liposuction/breast implants? I think ’cause I see it as being bad for people’s health, but, it’s iffy).

      I do wish people would tell us how they got their arms/flat bellies/breasts/programming skills/photography skills/wonderful meals so that we didn’t think that doing 10 reps on 5 pound weights would give us sculpted arms or that dinner could be prepared in 15 minutes and be glorious (if it’s not true).

      Is this a Michelle Obama generated trend?

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    2. It is genes. I’m a marathoner & had to fight to keep my weight down until I went Paleo. People who say things like “it’s just lifestyle” or “you just need to exercise” make me want to punch them in the throat. (I run because it is cheap. I spend for shoes, but not the fancy running shorts etc. I do travel to run marathons, but I only do 2 halfs and 1 whole per year.)

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      1. Re: “you just need to exercise”

        I remember reading somewhere that the average woman needs something like an hour of exercise every day just to maintain weight. Forget losing weight–that’s just maintaining.

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    3. Louisa said:

      “I think at one point she pretty much says that she drops the kids off at school, then heads to the gym until it’s time to pick them up from school. I know it’s supposed to be a sort of caricature, but it’s pretty funny.”

      I had a good friend back in DC who had more or less that schedule, but it was largely due to the fact that just fighting her way across town to do school drop-off and pick-up ate up vast amounts of time. My friend was not meticulously groomed, but she was in awesome shape.

      (I did one of her cross town runs once or twice with her, and it took an hour or so in the car to traverse just a few miles of DC.)

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  7. Yes, I agree with you, BJ. What I have been finding depressing lately is I’m starting to think that a lot of the people who look great probably also just have really awesome genes (unlike me. I got my German grandmother’s genes, not a pretty sight).

    I’ve noticed a lot of women and men in their late 40’s, early 50’s, like me, who go to the gym every single evening to run or walk and who limit their calories and write everything down — and I’m realizing that all this effort is required just to be seen as ‘normal sized’ — not excessively fat or excessively thin.

    I was at a conference recently where we ended up eating all our meals together for three days and I saw a lot of people eating just salad at lunch and dinner, in order to look normal — and meanwhile, I work with this tiny lady who is constantly eating candy, and I hung around with another extremely thin lady at the conference who was also constantly scarfing down M and M’s and eating cake. I’m thinking maybe it’s a bit like people who got an easy baby and who think that it’s their awesome parenting that caused them to have a kid that never cries. Maybe some people just get the great genes and then judge others who didn’t. I know that some people seem to have to work a lot harder than others at fitness and diet, that’s for sure. Over the years, I have come to realize that in order for me to ever be really fit, it would essentially be another full-time job on top of the two that I already have (the one that pays and the parenting gig). I’m thinking maybe once the kids go to college . .

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    1. Maybe some people just get the great genes and then judge others who didn’t.

      Or, maybe they are bulimic. I would normally speculate in individual cases without personal knowledge, but who know?

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  8. I think both genes and personal preferences play a big part. Some people do really like to run, feel better when they are more active, like to exercise, prefer salad to bread. And some people store fat around their belly and others in their thighs and others not at all.

    The same is true for many forms of success, too, the politician who really likes to talk to people, the scientist who likes to work all night (and doesn’t like to read or talk to people) might be able to accomplish more.

    I get the impression that Laura was just effortlessly fit for a long time, and then required some effort and now maybe a bit more. Well that’s great! there are things that come effortlessly to me, too, but being fit is not one of them.

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    1. “I get the impression that Laura was just effortlessly fit for a long time, and then required some effort and now maybe a bit more.”

      If you want to be depressed, play with an online calculator for figuring out how many calories you can have to maintain the same weight and just keep adding a few years to your age.

      The older you get, the fewer calories you’re allowed, all other things being equal.

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      1. Yup – that slowing metabolism – it’s ridiculous.

        There’s also a social factor to fitness – my husband’s co-workers and neighborhood friends are hugely into road biking. That’s become how you hang out with guy friends and clients here on the west coast.

        If you can find something active that’s also social/fun, you’ll be more likely to keep at it.

        For people who aren’t physically active, I think they imagine this onerous boot camp situation. All or nothing. Hours in the gym or running. Even just getting a pedometer and trying to get those daily 10,000 steps can make a huge difference.

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      2. Interesting article in the nytimes today saying exactly that — exercise that’s considered play seems to have a different effect on weight gain than “exercise.” The study design compared walking, for fun, with walking for exercise. The mechanism might be the effect on appetite — exercise makes us feel like we deserve the reward of eating, while fun doesn’t get rewarded with extra chocolate.

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    3. Yeah, I stayed the same weight from high school to 38. Even after 2 kids. I went back to 112 lbs. I never dieted. But I did live in Manhattan in a four floor walk up. I walked two miles to take Jonah to pre-school. I hefted the laundry up and down the stairs. Strollers. Then I moved to the burbs and instantly gained 10 pounds. I’m still relatively small, but things are shifting and I feel like I’m in an alien’s body. I have to think about my weight for the first time. It’s cool. I’ll whip this body into shape, because I actually do love exercise. For me, it’s most about scheduling. I have to figure out how to fit it into a packed day.

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      1. That’s the other insight gleaned from research — people who are “effortlessly” thin often have higher baseline activity levels. They walk when they could be sitting, they move. That result was found in a study in which people known for being “naturally thin” and having “high metabolisms” because they ate what they wanted and still remained thin into middle age were given whole body motion sensors and their activity level compared to people who were heavier (while giving both groups of people the same diet).

        Walking 4 miles a day, as a matter of course, would be an example. That’s exercise by most standards.

        Don’t know how people deal with the lack of time, though. I wonder if for the naturally active people, treadmill desks and the like would actually work? because, they’d actually prefer to be standing/moving?

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  9. I don’t object to taking care of your health (in fact, I’m having surgery in a month in another attempt to cure vertigo/dizziness/balance issues) but I’d much rather be known for my kindness, for my creativity, for my amusing and intelligent conversation, for my supportive friendship and family relationships, and for my devotion to duty and responsibility toward others. And I’m willing to sacrifice some time and money that might be spent on getting thinner and stronger to work on the goals I’ve named above.

    But I’m glad some people beautify the world through their appearances, too. Being beautiful doesn’t preclude being any of the things on my list; it’s just that my time and money are limited and I pick these.

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  10. Another online friend described settling in today to write at her local coffee shop where the next tables were filled with women whose conversation revealed they had no young kids to care for or much in the way of domestic responsibilities to manage, but they did have diets and exercise over which to obsess!

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  11. (I did one of her cross town runs once or twice with her, and it took an hour or so in the car to traverse just a few miles of DC.)

    An hour or so? Just a few miles? Sounds perfect for a bike. Or is that part of the world horrible to ride in?

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    1. This was a kid-transporting commute (with two kids in tow), so a bike wouldn’t be feasible.

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      1. They make bikes for that. Also trailers for regular bikes. I know a guy who took two kids to the JCC every morning.

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      2. “They make bikes for that. Also trailers for regular bikes. I know a guy who took two kids to the JCC every morning.”

        Eh, I wouldn’t want to bike from Capitol Hill to Georgetown or the National Zoo in rush hour traffic, particularly not with two kids. Megan McArdle has had a number of posts on the subject of how terrible it is to bike in DC.

        “They are also terrible, terrible drivers. I don’t know what it is about DC, but the city hosts a kind of driver that I have never encountered before: aggressive, yet hesitant. Usually you get one or the other.”

        http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/07/drivers-or-bikers-who-sucks-more/3800/

        http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/07/making-dc-safe-for-bikes/3799/

        DC was built by a French guy–it’s got traffic circles and 21st century traffic on an 18th century grid, and even for a pedestrian attempting to cross a crosswalk with a light, it can be a pretty frightening place. I was often nearly mowed down by a large black SUV (typical important person vehicle in DC at the time) when trying to cross Wisconsin Ave. with a stroller in full compliance with all pedestrian regulations.

        DC is not anything like Pittsburgh.

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      3. Somebody just gave me a bike, so I’m going to see if I like it and feel safe. But I’m not going to be hauling anybody.

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