Many thoughts on bodybuilding

Today I thought I would do some talking about the cultural obsession many men in the "developed world" have nowadays, with obtaining a muscular physique.

To begin, I think I might as well just cut straight to the chase: While I certainly -- like everyone else -- do find the muscular look aesthetically appealing, I also can't help but feel that there's something particularly sad about it. Beyond that, I also think there is something a bit...how could I put it.... regressive about it. And let's not forget that other word, too, which rhymes with regressive. You know that one? Obsessive.

Indeed, if I had, say, 10 male friends on the day I turned 20, it now seems that 8 out of those 10 guys, has fallen complete victim to the bodybuilding "trend" (or whatever the hell it is).

For the most part, I try to keep my negative comments around these guys to a bare minimum. Not because I'm afraid they're going to knock my lights out -- the guys I know who went on to become obsessive bodybuilders were often actually the most polite -- but rather because a lot of these guys just seem to sorta hurt easy. Say one wrong thing and they're all sorts of tragically depressed, insulted, blahblah blah. And then of course, there is always that awful fact about how, the moment you might voice your opinion on bodybuilding, the bodybuilder in question will immediately shout out some reply to you, listing all the ways in which he knows you most certainly live an "unhealthy disgusting life".

What is better, the strongman asks, being buff and healthy, or being weak and unhealthy?

Now I will admit that a lot of the points the strongmen among us make about health are certainly true. I, for one, have always had an abysmal diet, thanks to being poor mostly, and I wouldn't be surprised if it kills me early. This is probably one reason I never bother to really question the bodybuilders I know too often. Believe me: I let them do their thing. 

 But lets also be honest for a moment: Being a strongman and a bodybuilder isn't really about health. There are plenty of people who are immaculately healthy, who eat healthy etc, who are not bodybuilders and muscle freaks.  Which brings us to the conclusion that, in truth, bodybuilding is about something much different. Mostly, I would imagine, ego and a sense of security and protection. It must be assuring, after all, to know that you look "Scary" and "massive" to everyone. (As well as attractive, we are told, to the womenfolk and gays....).

It's no coincidence that the vast majority of bodybuilders seem to come from either the tortured lower classes or what I call the "I'm so embarrassed to not be a tough street guy" middle classes. 

Men who are obsessed with muscles seem to come from depressed areas of our culture, almost as a rule. And before you get started on famous and rich men with muscles, please remember: Famous rich movie stars will do whatever it takes to get the love of the lower and middle classes. In other words, whatever we are doing, they'll start doing. There is a constant give and take with things like Hollywood and magazines. Its not just "them" eternally influencing "us". So don't blame Hollywood for the muscle obsession. The truth is that a great deal of it all initially came from the places most things come from: regular neighborhoods. 

Some people,at this point, will get in my face and tell me there's simply no reason to rip on bodybuilding, because --as my cousin Dominic says --- "it's better than playing videos games or smoking crack and what else am I going to do anyways?" 

I think its this idea, however,  that a man has nothing else he can possibly do besides lift weights in his free time, that has always bothered me most. This is the most poisonous idea of them all to me.

The idea that there is nothing better to do for a young boy or a man to do, in the 21st century world, other than lift weights, is absurd.  It especially bothers me because, coincidentally in our capitalist society, bodybuilding isn't just a way to pass free time --- it also seems to be a way to spend tons of hard earned money. 

All the guys I know, including my own young brother Federico, who bodybuild, all seem to spend literally outrageous sums of money on the activity. They eat more food than would ever otherwise be necessary, they buy all the protein shakes, they pay for expensive gym memberships, the list of things to buy never seems to end. I remmeber one afternoon, for example, when I followed my friend James around some store that just seemed to sell nothing but 'whey protein'.  I must have watched him easily spend 200$. I have no idea what he spent it on to this day. It was kind of shocking to watch, however, because this is the same kid can't seem to wait to give you 30 minute speeches, about how broke he always is.

Could the fact that he seems to regularly spend hundreds of dollars on whey protein have something to do with it?

My friend James, of course, is probably the biggest 'victim', in my mind, of the bodybuilding craze tha "8 out of my 10 male friends" have now fallen into.

A long time ago, James used to come over and talk about interesting things for hours at a time. He spoke of history, he dreamed of maybe writing a book about Ancient Rome (which he used to study), he sometimes showed an interest in computer languages, et cetera. Then one day when he was 23, his long time girlfriend split with him, and ...bodybuilding. At first, I actively applauded James and his decision to bodybuidl. He had always been a bit overweight, and it was cool to see how lively and energetic he became, as he lost the weight and got strong. I was truly proud of him. It was fascinating to watch the change. He tried to convince me that I also had to bodybuild. I tried once, got bored, and found myself reading Scientific American in the back of the gym. But I always kept trying to encourage James to keep going with it. I would tell him not to let anyone make him feel bad about bodybuilding! The break up had been pretty gruesome; I was glad to see my old buddy happy again.

At some certain point,however, James didn't just become insufferable---he became downright pointless to communicate with anymore. This is because the only thing that James ever talks about now is bodybuilding, lifting weights, and getting stronger. This, of course, is assuming that James talks at all, because he really doesn't seem to be interested in talking much these days. After all, the way James sees it, what kind of fool would waste time conversing, when he could be spending that time productively at the gym, pumping iron, or running on a treadmill, etc?

I haven't talked with James about anything interesting in literally years now, and, unfortunately, no one else has either. His bodybuilding does not seem to have earned him a single new friend (unless they're other bodybuilders) and it also hasn't earned him all the beautiful women that the gym magazines seem to promise. So far as i can see, his life is just as it always was, except now he doesn't bother having conversations, because conversations are pointless, and all he does is bodybuild, and spend money on bodybuilding. When I last visited James, I saw that he had no working computer in his room anymore.  It shocked me, because James often worked with computers. In high school, I watched him build one.

 "I just sort of find computers pointless now..." he told me, "Like, what the heck would I do with it?"

Again, there's something extremely weird and regressive about this -- especially when the thought occurs to me that, what happened with James and others, seems to be happening to millions and millions of other men. There's something, i dare say, arguably even a bit "Luddite" about the bodybuilding movement. It's almost as if some subconscious part of the modern male psyche has realized that technology has, for example, helped women and given rise to feminism...so they want to throw it out ...so they can get back to the good old days of when the strongman ruled the roost.....

Here's one thing I Find interesting, for example: In the exact same manner that the weight lifting culture shames a skinny nerd, they also actually shame technology itself, just like James did, unless the tech suits them. Tech, within this culture, is not seen as making society stronger. It's seen as making us weaker and "Dependent". So they don't dig it. Who needs a computer? Who even needs a TV? Get rid of all of it. Except the mobile phone. DOn't get rid of that, bro...you need to use it to take photos of your thigh muscles.

The bodybuilder will use tech to take 25 selfies a day of his muscles, he will use it to get himself new whey protein products,he wil use it to access dating apps -- but beyond that, of what use is tech? It's for nerds and faggots is very much the prevailing philosophy.

James doesn't just find conversations pointless now. He finds computers a bit pointless too. He finds art a bit pointless (unless he's got death metal in his headphones as he pumps iron). Everything besides weightlifting is pointless.

With my young brother ,my cousin Dominic and the countless other guys I knew years ago, the story is also exactly the same as James. Once upon a long ago, they had wide and varied personalities. Now, those personalities have been replaced, as if someone got a mask and burned it onto their faces. They are now just "bodybuilding guys". It's all they talk about. ALl the time. Every time you see them. If they don't talk about it, then they'll probably talk about how bad life was for them, before they started it.

As you can imagine, this is another part of the narrative --- the one that says "I used to be a real piece of shit, before I found bodybuilding!"--- that I find incredibly unsettling and strange. Generally speaking, its not good to completely despise any one version of your self that may have existed in the past. THis is because, even if that self is in the past, that's still a major bit of self-rejection. In the bodybuilding culture, of course, this type of narrative doesn't just seem to be prevalent -- it seems to almost be required.

After all, if one does not actively develop a distaste for ones self as they were before bodybuilding, then whose to say they won't fall out of the habit of going to the gym, and become that hated thing all over again? Essentially, the bodybuilder lives in constant fear of what he once was, before his triumphant work out regimen began. He looks at old pictures of himself and seems to feel he's lookig at some type of primitive, subhuman lifeform. As if he was inferior prior to becoming a bodybuilder. My friend James clearly thinks this, which is why he now rejects having a computer in his room, and why he finds a 2 hour convo about the future of space travel boring, whereas he used to find it fascinating. James has now come to see all of that as the mark of the "loser" he used to be.

Now another thing I find truly interesting about the pro-bodybuilding argument is that many people will tell you that this culture "isn't really a choice, but a biological need." I.e. Yes, it might be true that bodybuilding is a bit of a waste of time, but in the end, this is literally what we are forced to do as human beings. We are descended from apes and humanity is about Survival of the fittest, like Darwin said, and so that's what we are doing here at the gym....we are becoming the fittest, so that we can survive. 

Bodybuilding is using Charles Darwin as an excuse to support their ridiculously time consuming work out regimen. Unfortunately, they don't seem to understand that Darwin's "Survival of the fittest" theory has next to nothing to do with pure muscle mass and how well you can do in a street fight. If Darwins theory about the 'fittest' had to do with muscles, the gorillas would be the dominant species on Earth right now. The gorillas seem to have lost pretty badly. Humans won. Why? Because humans used their brains to trick and kill species that were much stronger than them. That brain has now built a computer that my friend James doesn't want in his room, however, because....bodybuilding. See where I'm going with this?

The real thing thats pointless, you know what it is?

It is bodybuilding.