Acceptance
Say it with me: I am always already “beach-ready.”
‘Tis the Season of the Bootcamp. A poster at an intersection near my house touts the miracle of the “Booty Bootcamp” - for the ladies, according to the sign. My workplace is partnering with a local gym for a “Beach Ready Bootcamp.” Bootcamp, bootcamp, bootcamp, everywhere you look.
The notion that one’s body is unacceptable for public display after six months of winter’s indoor huddling is patently ludicrous. In this day of supposedly liberated ideals, it should be painfully unnecessary to say that it doesn’t matter what you look like. And yet, we have the bootcamp. A four-week (or so) intensive set of workout sessions, designed to whip our flabby sedentary bodies into a semblance of attactiveness, that we might once again attain a form suitable for scanty swimwear. As if we aren’t always already suitable to wear whatever we damn-well please.
Naturally, these bootcamps are largely just a symptom of entrenched unattainable ideals, but it’s hard to see language like “beach ready ” or “booty bootcamp” and not see them as a perpetuating engine of the Myth of the Perfect Physique. Mind, the notion of an intensive workout is not in itself an offensive thing. Exercise is healthy, and if the bootcamp gets an otherwise inactive person doing something physical, so much the better. But please don’t say it’s for the sake of beauty: it’s the wrong motivator, one that can only lead to dissatisfaction for all but the most dedicated, disciplined, and genetically lucky (not to mention the large role class plays in being able to “work out” at all).
Why do I even need to say this? Why are we still so cowed by society’s expectations that so many of us still believe ourselves to be ugly, when we are not? Why stress and strain to be beach-ready? We always already are.
In a later post, I will explore the linguistic implications of “working out” in one’s spare time, and the philosophical difficulties of repeatedly lifting the same heavy objects for hours on end.