Love Handles, Actually

They say that exercise lengthens, strengthens and tones. If you do nothing then what happens? You put on a kilo a year–it is the easiest thing and you do that for five, ten years and suddenly your best self is way, way, way behind you.

Today, nothing signifies your status more than your fitness or your lack of it.

This obsession with the firmness of our abdominal muscles, quadriceps, the fascination with our muscle tone, the need to get on the scales at least once every day–frankly, it was always a chick thing. In my childhood at Canadian boarding school, fitness was a mandatory passion. Your family was paying big bucks for you to study and choose a sport every term to excel in–whether they showed up for the games was a non-matter because most of us were from lands far-far away. Fitness was a mandatory part of every old or new boy’s identity.

Fast forward into the 21^st century and our concept of success–financial, professional, emotional, social and spiritual is bound up completely with our physical appearance. Our fitness level. A man’s firmness–that’s what matters most. Not the size of his wallet or his heart or his knob. The size of his quadriceps. The size of his biceps. The size of his VO2 Max.

“Men grow cold as girls grow old and we all lose our charms in the end,” Marilyn Monroe breathed in “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”–the ultimate expression of 20^th-century females aspiration. And now the terrible knowledge haunts men too. Isn’t that why our lives revolve around this pathological obsession with health, with fitness, with the definition of our physical body? Isn’t that why we spend longer time in gyms than we do devouring food? Because now we know it applies to us too. We all lose our charms in the end. Once, being fit was about how young we were. Now being fit is about how we age.

What a strange, turbulent relationship we have with our bodies. Successful fat people have gone the way of the dinosaur, the dodo and Simon Le Bon. Once upon a time successful fatties walked the Earth. But they walk the Earth no more.

We can’t take you seriously unless you take your fitness seriously. Politicians are now obliged to be Olympian or actors. If you are fat and a party leader it is not going to work out. You have to at least be seen trying to work out. Throwing yourself into fitness can also backfire because you can’t always look cool when you are pushing yourself to the limit.

But it is not just image.

Keeping fit brings down blood pressure, lowers cholesterol, reduces weight, extends your life, and makes for a better sex life. We don’t endure all this pain because we want to be fit. We endure all this pain because we want to be sane. With advancing age comes the inevitable expanding paunch. But it’s no longer just women who are under pressure to remain lean and lithe gym fanatic.