February 12, 2014 - Written by: Beth Teverson

B*tches Love Abs?

So I’m driving home from my temp job, feeling pretty content having made a couple-a-quid sitting around ‘playing receptionist’. I casually sing along to some drive time tunes on the radio when it suddenly hits me:

“Oh no, oh god no!”

I look down; sure enough, there is my Primani rucksack and it smiles at me with tartan teeth. Don’t forget you’re going to the gym Beth…

I turned the steering wheel a sharp right and hurtled the wrong way down a roundabout, colliding with a multi-tonne truck… Or so I wish I’d done; the next minute I’m in the gym, attempting to squat with some goddam heavy pole resting on my shoulders. My red-blotched face and my squinting eyes do not answer as I shout at my reflection: Why? WHYYY?!

(Image via)

At the Gym

Oh, how I hate that place. And not just because it’s the new social hub of old school mates (and hates). No, the gym is something else. Now before I go on about it, let me just re-iterate that my moaning mostly applies to the weight room, or whatever they call it. This weight room in question is always particularly male dominated. I wouldn’t even know how to use the equipment if it wasn’t for my friend; he goes there everyday and is a fast learner.

“What?” I reply. “You come here EVERYDAY?”

I look around and sure enough I recognise everyone from my last two visits. Two of the three baby-faced, adolescents stand parallel to the one sat lifting the bar, whispering words of encouragement. Opposite, a few gym elders prompt each other, bulbous veins palpitating under their greying hairs, as they pull and lift and push. The music is dulled under the sound of their struggling.

His name? Let’s call him Stevie.

One guy catches my eye in particular, and not just because I knew him once upon a time. His name? Let’s call him Stevie. Stevie and I used to be best friends in year 7. We bonded over our innovative Motorola mobiles and would speak until our credit ran out (remember when that was a thing?). I guess you could say Stevie was a bit of a scrawny kid. But his scrawniness didn’t stop him making friends with ‘the lads’, he always seemed to have a girlfriend and when, one day, he turned to me and called me ugly well… I thought Stevie was his own number one fan.

As for now, on the surface Stevie would seem just the same. From the waist down his legs look as emaciated as ever but then you look up. His neck seemed to be swallowed into his shoulders, his arms inflated to the size of watermelons and yet his head was as small as ever. He looked hideous; he looked unnatural.

My friend taunted me as I attempted to do some sit-ups but I just couldn’t distract myself.

“I just don’t understand; why would you put yourself through this?”

“BLA Beth: Bitches Love Abs”. I know my friend was saying it ironically, but from what I could see, all of this working out wasn’t about ‘bitches’ at all. It seemed to me to be far more homo social: ‘men fighting together’ – but fighting for what?

As I got off the whatever-machine-it-was, I tried to stretch my legs but they were too stiff after sitting at a desk all day. Everybody else had probably been at a desk all day as well.

Pondering

Think back to cavemen times when we were hunters. I mean, that’s what your job is for at the end of the day: to give you food, to help you survive. Even a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, we laboured for food, but now, in an increasingly digital age, there is little, if any, physical labour involved in our lives at all. Is that what these men were pushing weights for? The struggle?

Now, I’m not adverse to exercise. In fact, I’m running the Plymouth Half Marathon this year. But exercise inside?

I don’t know, man, it’s kinda weird when you think about it.

In a gym, exercise seems all about competition and control: you know how much your lifting, you know how many calories you’re running off, you work out who your competition is and push yourself to unnatural levels. I would rather advocate an active life: one where exercise isn’t some claustrophobic power struggle like Stevie’s. I prefer to keep active outside, without the constant reflection of my struggle and the disdain of others.