My hips don't lie

As usual, some of my best clear-headed thinking comes at the gym.  There's a point in a workout that comes just after the "oh god, I've only run for three minutes?" dread when I start to really sweat and then at about fifteen minutes, a rush of endorphins courses through me and I can go for miles after that.  In fact, sometimes I run so long that the machine cuts me off; apparently, it can only count time up to 70 minutes.  Along with that rush of good feeling I imagine that at the same moment, all of the cobwebs in my head are dissipated by the blast - it's a great feeling and I love the sense of peace it gives me.  Some people meditate, I run.

I started to think about my rhetoric class yesterday and how exhausted it made me.  I have a couple of students who are driving me crazy - convinced that I am in fact their mother and not their professor and am thus capable of being sympathetic to their stupid little problems - but in general they're a good group.  They're young and active and chatty; I find late-teen naive optimism inspiring even when I know the smart ones will be jaded old curmudgeons like myself some day soon.  Because we've been talking about visual rhetoric and the first amendment, I brought in the Anti-Gym ads for them to watch.  I admit that part of my motivation in doing so was to get a rise out of them, but I also did it because I'm selfish and I wanted to vent my frustration to a whole group of people who might validate me.  In large part, that goal was achieved and they managed to learn something about argument and rhetoric despite my cheap motives.  I am no fool (most days) and know that what the Anti-Gym thing does is just great marketing - it's designed to piss people off and we all know that any publicity is good publicity.  Just look at hacks like Marilyn Manson and Britney Spears.  I know also that I'm reacting just how that guy wants me to react because it strikes a nerve with me, but here's the thing: that guy will make his million dollars and get fifteen minutes of fame but it will never make him more than a bigot and an uneducated and misdirected person whose only hope of being remembered in twenty years is a shot at replacing Jerry Springer.  And I'm upset about what a person such as this does in the world?  Really?

In any case, that isn't even the revelation.  I was running on my machine and listening to Bow Wow Wow on the iPod and directly in front of me was a woman on a treadmill who was nearly as wide as she was tall.  I don't joke here or insult - she was very short and extremely wide and middle-aged.  But she was walking on the treadmill and running in 30-second intervals, which was clearly working her hard and she was there the entire rest of the time I was, which was about 45 minutes.  She was soaked in sweat and sipping her water but she never paused.  The man two treadmills down was at least 300 pounds with one of those bellies that peeks out under even a long tee shirt, and he was walking at a pretty fast clip, breathing hard, and soaking his shirt.  Do you know what went through my head?  Not, oh god, look at those ridiculously fat people ("chubbies"), but Wow!  Good for them.  I wanted to walk up and congratulate the both of them, tell them to keep up the good work, and not to give up.  I could have hugged that woman.  I then looked all around me and realized that most of the people at the gym this morning were in fact what others might consider chubby, out of shape, unattractive - but you know what?  They were there; they were trying, and for any of us who knows how hard losing even a single pound can be when there are things working constantly against you like genetics and hormones and medications and illnesses, that's something worth talking about.

So I'm going to stop grousing about this kind of shit and take my time to think about others like me.  People are all different and who's to say what is and is not an ideal body weight?  The premise of the Anti-Gym and most of our media culture is that skinny is superior and we should all want that.  We should all want to be "hot" and we should hate ourselves if we eat cake; yet everywhere we turn is a drive-thru and every commercial at dinner time is for pizza.  We make organic food expensive and McDonald's cheap.  But I don't care about that because I'm over it; I'm going to focus on positive ways I see people trying to fight this instead of being angry at ignorant people who not only think I'm fat but that I subscribe to their idea of beauty.  That short and wide woman at the gym this morning was probably the most beautiful person I've seen lately and I say this to her and anyone else who struggles with the mirror and the scale: you're beautiful too.  Rock on.

Next week, I'm making them read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience instead.