Sure, it takes a lot of focus and daily effort to develop the ideal beer guy, but for me it's worth it.
This is unremarkable? Really? Like, there are other sites like this?
Sure, Emerson swears by ultimatetonedcalves.com
Unremarkable in that "abs" are the focus of quite a lot of obsession, particularly among youngish men. If there's a cover of Men's Health that doesn't have the word "abs" on it, I haven't seen it.
Oh, so you mean the focus on abs specifically is unremarkable. I can see that.
When the Eskimo / New Guinea highlander physique becomes hott, even at 60+ I will be a sex god, especially for calf fetishists.
Then, of course, there's all the working out. I don't have a big point to make, just that, for most people, getting something like an "ideal" body is a full-time job.
I think it's even beyond a full-time job, just because you have to have the appropriate genetics in the first place. I'm thinking of the height/weight picture grid. Your natural proportions have to line up with whatever is fashionable, too.
I think for some people there are brief periods in their life when their metabolism and genetics just line up. I've had friends with decent six-packs who did almost no exercise at all and ate crap. It's not that hard for some men in their teens and early 20s to maintain low body fat for that brief period.
For everyone else, it's just an unconscionable amount of work.
The thing that I find silly about the whole six-pack thing is that hyper-toned and defined abdominal muscles are basically a product of modern fitness regimes; to me they're as odd and unnatural looking (on both men and women) as fake breasts (on both men and women).
I wonder when the first use of "six pack abs" was and who coined the term.
Internet -- go!
Abs are important, as I am discovering this week. The ability to rise from a recline or sitting position without using my hands lets me avoid putting stress on my damaged wrist.
I knew somebody, who after several abdominal surgeries, was unable to sit up in bed. The arms really don't help much in some positions. A terrible loss of comfort & dignity.
Of course, this has little to do with this post.
By some odd quirk of genetics, I get very muscular abs (something like a four-pack?) whenever I'm going to the gym with any regularity. Very strange. And I can work out as much as I want and see practically no effect on my lower body.
Training for health, for sports, for body-building, and for cosmetics (getting the six-pack) are four different things by now. There's some overlap but plenty of conflicting regimes, even if you leave steroids out.
I haven't studied it but I tend to feel that the most powerful, best athletes don't have a lot of definition and often don't have beautiful bodies at all. Football linemen, obviously, but I think also power lifters, a lot of baseball players, power forwards, and maybe boxers.
Subject to correction.
best athletes don't have a lot of definition
I'd say there's little correlation, not inverse correlation.
Haven't answered Becks' question yet, but it appears that beer was sold in six packs by the fifties (the plastic rings were invented in 1960), and this page is kind of fascinating.
11: I bet it's quite old -- probably right after 'six-pack' was coined at all. I'm waffling on about vague impressions here, but the late-19th-early-20thC writing about men's bodies as esthetic objects I've read is largely about boxers (don't ask me for specific examples. Jack London, maybe?), and that's someplace where you're going to get six-pack abs even without a modern gym regimen because their body fat is cut to the bone to make weight. There's a passage from "How Green Is My Valley" talking about a boxer with six squares of muscle you could have rattled a stick over which struck me because I didn't know the phrase "sixpack-abs" when I read it (I was eight or so, maybe?), and really couldn't picture what was meant by it in anatomical terms -- if the writer had had the term "sixpack" available to him, it seems like a coinage that would happen immediately.
The inverse correlations are high-impact exercise and steroids with health. But my guess is that body builders and narcissist often put muscle on the useless places which, for a particular sport, just act as dead weight.
Ogged's soccer-player pinup had a body customized for soccer. Lots of definition, but he had some weird bulges in his upper leg area which were not esthetic.
getting something like an "ideal" body is a full-time job. I realize the important of this message is probably wasted on regular blog readers.
You mean because we're fat slobs, or because for us, reading blogs is a full-time job?
Jack Johnson. And when did boxing get weight classes, anyway? That said, washboard abs (there you go) aren't just a modern development.
The late-19th-early-20thC writing about men's bodies as esthetic objects I've read is largely about boxers .
The pro boxer I knew back in the day said that he felt like a topless dancer, with all the guys looking up at him from the front row with their tongues hanging out.
By some odd quirk of genetics, I get very muscular abs (something like a four-pack?) whenever I'm going to the gym with any regularity.
I have not been going to the gym regularly since, heh, sometime before the wedding, and I still have visible abs. It's just a bizarre genetic thing; I have fat. I just store it all in my upper thighs.
I'm going to guess it was sometime in the fifties, coincident with the popularizing of the bodybuilding/muscle beach culture. That's the first time that explicit attention to muscle definition, beer drinkers, and metal cans were all in the same place at the same time.
"defined abdominal muscles are basically a product of modern fitness regimes"
don't think so. check some greek sculptures (doryphorus, riace bronzes). sometimes even the torso-armor had defined abs built into them.
(which could make a come-back).
So the women of Unfogged are genetic freaks who have visible abs? I love you all.
I, on the other hand, store any and all my body fat right on my stomach (and my cheeks--my face cheeks), so I've never had visible abs, even in high school when I was playing basketball for hours a day and doing leg lifts and all that.
I still have visible abs
Cala, arent you 22 or something? You dont count.
20: No, silly, I wasn't asking for a boxer's name, I was saying maybe I was thinking about Jack London's writing. And I think weight classes in boxing go back to the eighteenth century -- I haven't looked it up, but the names of the weightclasses sound old.
I'm 28 and horribly out of condition at the moment.
25: Not here. When I was skinny as a rail I still had a soft little belly -- I can do all the situps I like, but there is a perma-layer of fat covering the abs up.
So the women of Unfogged are genetic freaks who have visible abs?
And don't forget the giant racks.
27--
good point.
welter? bantam? what century is that from?
Add "chin" and "love handles" to the mix, and my fat distribution pattern funhouse-mirrors ogged's.
"Hey mom, check it out! This mirror makes me look twice as wide!"
I was saying maybe I was thinking about Jack London's writing
Oh. Oops.
It seems to be legit and to offer good advice
Yes, but. Yes, but. The site looks like a late-night tv extended promotional ad. For, like, well, six-pack abs. I can't take it. Sorry. This is supposed to speak in aesthetic terms about anything? heh.
Oh, right I guess I have two places where I store fat. I blame my Sicilian ancestors.
I'm 28 and horribly out of condition at the moment.
Total lies. I saw the pictures.
In your twenties, abs are relatively easy. Thirties and forties.....much harder.
It's not only abs, though. There's also GetBigGuns.com.
And don't forget the giant racks.
Yea! Take that, Salon! And you thought this place had smart women!
All the country singing keeps you toned, Blume.
35 to 30
I thought that was the point.
Poor Cala and Blume, when they get out of shape they have cut abs and big breasts.
But most of that 'six meals a day, carefully measure your meals of plain brown rice,' etc aren't necessary for fitness/sculpting. Most of it isn't even helpful. Its just that people really want to accomplishi their goal, and so want to DO more things related to it, to feel like they are working towards it.
42: it.. really?
Dude! Awesome!
(beer can forehead crush)
And pudgy legs. I don't even know how much weight I'd have to lose to have the trendy little stick legs that seem to be required by all fashion at the moment, but I have a feeling that it would be a) a dangerously high amount of weight and that b) the boobs would go before the legs.
B-Wo is obviously full of old-school chivalry, gallantly swooping in to change the subject from boobies to typos.
Poor Cala and Blume, when they get out of shape they have cut abs and big breasts.
So......uh....are they coming to Dc Unfogged?
Poor shivbunny just threw his monitor out the window in a rage.
Poor chubby-mixtape-dude doesn't know what he's missing.
All the country singing keeps you toned, Blume.
No, it's the boogie-ing at home by myself to my chimneyville records.
Poor chubby-mixtape-dude doesn't know what he's missing.
Ehh, he knows pretty much exactly what he's missing. (Maybe he just can't handle the nonstop soul dance party at my house. That must be it.)
(Maybe he just can't handle the nonstop soul dance party at my house. That must be it.)
Dude, way to totally not invite your pretend internet friends.
Blume:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qsFpZ4b47A
Dude, way to totally not invite your pretend internet friends.
Dude, it just breaks out without warning.
Maybe he just can't handle the nonstop soul dance party at my house.
Betcha it is. Guys get freaked out by dancing. It's weird.
Also, ditto 47. I should have lived in the days of corsets. Though I guess I would have looked pretty silly then dancing to King Floyd.
I dance like a crazy person. It has been known to freak people out, I will admit.
We live in the city and have a glass door and big windows in the front.
The kids, the gf and I dance around all the time. Not infrequently, the neighbors will say "saw you dancing last night."
My daughter loves to pseudo tango with me.
I think I dance like a not-crazy person.
There is one way to determine these things, though: dance party at the next Boston meetup! [I suppose the alternative is to start dancing at mcmc's opening, but that seems like not the best idea.]
Hell yes! Boston meetup dance party!
I love this idea. Karaoke was just a warmup.
I think I dance like a not-crazy person.
What does this mean?
I've taken a short latin dancing class. I need to take a longer one.
Boston meetup dance party!
Dude, way to preemptively not invite me.
Just that no one would see me dancing and think I was crazy, or the dancing was crazy, or anything about me was crazy.
AWB and I seem to be polar opposites this way: no one ever thinks I'm crazy/insane.
Indeed, broad statements like "guys get freaked out by dancing" are intended to get those of you who are not to identify yourselves for future reference.
Duh, as if anyone didn't know that Sifu dances like a crazy person.
Dude, way to preemptively not invite me.
You can be the official reporter the mineshaft the next day, evaluating everyone's dancing on a scale of crazy to not-crazy.
I am not twitchy or anything. I kind of seem like someone who is constantly tamping down back to sanity, as if I used to have psychotic episodes, but have undergone a lot of behavioral therapy. At least, this is what the boys tell me. Plus, I appear do things very quickly, without deliberation.
None of this is actually true. My mom was psychotic, and I do treasure my sanity for that reason. Also, I don't deliberate out loud because I'm easily talked out of things I want to do.
I usually hate dancing, but I've been in the mood for it lately.
I usually hate dancing, but I've been in the mood for it lately.
See you there!
(For the record, I didn't mean to imply any sort of AWB: twitchy! Me: not twitchy! comparison.)
One caveat: the dancing meetup cannot be the Jacques meetup.
Oh, no! I didn't take offense. I just figured I'd better make it clear. I think someone at a meetup once said they expected me to be a lot creepier and more poorly socially adjusted than I am or something.
I don't think I've ever danced at Jacques. I've been danced at, maybe. I am reminded, though, that I should be checking the Jacques schedule more regularly, so we can actually do that meetup.
I wonder if there are any good funk DJs left who aren't like wrapped up in childcare and saving for retirement? Are there any iPod nights in Boston? We could just go monopolize that shit: it'd be like a mixtape thread made real.
Are you still here in November, Sifu? Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings are playing here on the 9th.
Yay! Though the M.E. is a shitty place to see shows.
Shitty but classic.
I can't talk shit about the middle east just because I've seen so many cool bands there: crappiness mitigated by volume.
Tough guys don't dance, or something like that.
getting something like an "ideal" body is a full-time job
Not wasted on us at all. That's why some of us don't give a shit.
That sounded rude and hostile. Sorry.
This will sound droopily sentimental, but I think the pursuit of an "ideal" body is about a desire to make the self an abstraction. I prefer people who look comfortable with themselves, and people with this desire rarely look happy in their skin because they're always pushing toward something like the complete invisibility of their identity as it might be visible in the body. When I have been with guys who had "ideal" forms, I confess I always looked for "flaws"--scars, acne, a flabby spot, asymmetries--because those were the parts that were "his."
Typo in the post!
I believe ben is referring to the same class of error that ben himself made in this post.
Actually I was referring to "I realize the important of this message …", Stanley, you goon.
re: scrollback, etc.
The attention to ab muscles is very very old. Turn of the century strong-men like Eugene Sandow were totally cut. There's a bunch of net sites with reprints of all those Edwardian training manuals. Often surprisingly practical.
http://www.sandowmuseum.com/sandow1893.jpeg
The photos are all incredibly homoerotic and camp to a modern eye, too.
Ben, I looked back on that old thread and could find no evidence that anyone but me and my Megan are hanging out with you. We are glad to do so, but where's the love, New York?
Oh, man, I love the tiny little stem on the literal fig-leaf.
86: Handcuffed to my computer, trying to think of various reasons why the unpleasant people who employ me should not be legally compelled to stand by their agreements, in my case.
He does seem to have caught the shaving fever somewhat early, doesn't he?
Your love needs to get out more, dear LB. Sunshine is a vitamin, as is live music.
New York is full of lonely people.
Oh, right I guess I have two places where I store fat.
I'm willing to bet there are two others.
82:
but I think the pursuit of an "ideal" body is about a desire to make the self an abstraction
AWB waxes overkill.
No doubt this is true, but in a real-life scenario, if you're developing a workout schedule, a diet and exercise plan, you must realize that achieving perfection will require making this goal the central thing in your life. Practically speaking.
That, I take it, is the important of the message.
82: It seems to me like a sort of self-objectification, making yourself into the Other watching you, and then transforming your body for the sake of the Other you have already made yourself into. I don't usually do Heideggerian-Lacanian shit, but to me that stuff is weird and horrible.
96 = my favorite comment in a long time.
I was obviosuly born in the wrong millenium.
27: You were thinking of London. But not necessarily of his boxers: his autobiographical proxies were always, um, manly men:
She had come back to his side, and she saw him double his arm at the elbow, the biceps crawling under his shirt-sleeve and swelling into a knot of muscle, heavy and hard.
Likewise her feminine eye took in the clothes he wore, the cheap and unaesthetic cut, the wrinkling of the coat across the shoulders, and the series of wrinkles in the sleeves that advertised bulging biceps muscles.
And on this night, as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter...
Of course, this and this constitute the physique he's describing.
OK, who got SEK started? LB?????!
Shut it, Emerson. I'm topical. Plus, look at the pictures!
Hey, I love that shit. If London didn't have that unpleasant racist streak, I can't think of another author of the period I'd rather read. Violence! Sled dogs! Labor relations! This, my friends, is what I want out of literature.
And he doesn't look that bad, if you forgive him for the diaper -- for an alcoholic writer, it could be much worse.
The weird chest-puffing thing cracks me up. No, you're not fooling anyone into thinking you're muscly by pulling your arms back and jutting your midsection out.
95: Why is it bad?
94: But its not necessary. It is true, though, that most people that engage in body-sculpting DO make it central to their daily activity. I'm interested in why this is.
104: Well, all right. I'm also cutting him slack for posing oddly because it was a long time ago and he was almost certainly drunk. But the man was a teenage oyster-pirate -- how cool is that?
That chest-jut is much more effective with girl-boobs for some reason. Maybe he's just going to far with it.
98: Nobody said it was right. John. We're miscommunicating anyway. I took your 95 to be describing narcissism. Which is the modern condition.
He was muscly, for his time, and the puffed chest is actually overkill. Here's the aforementioned Jack Johnson, second-to-John-Henry himself, described (by London, among others) as the largest, most powerful man they'd ever seen.
A kid I babysat when I was young spent his high school years becoming a competitive bodybuilder. It was a very strange transformation. Before then, he was a slightly shy/goofy intellectual type, obsessed with Kids in the Hall, that sort of thing. Then, I came back from college and visited his family. He made us all sit down and watch his competition video, which he narrated with this obsessive tale of what he ate every day before the competition (nothing but creatine and canned boiled chicken with the salt washed off, no water for two days before the show). He was trying desperately to get us all to see that success in life was all about finding the right "instructions" and following them, without question.
Yes, he ended up in the Army and is now stationed in Iraq.
Someday I will start the iconic artistic movement of the modern era. Called Narcissismo, I will be both its charismatic leader and its sole disciple.
109: hell of a twelve pack, though..
Didn't Dalí already do that, Tweety?
112: I believe the more apt alcoholic-container metaphor for the time would be "a keg."
I may be going apple picking on Saturday or else I'm going to watch a softball game. If the latter, I'll definitely come to the opening. Even if I go to Ips/wich, I'll try to go anyway.
Blume, I'll probably send you an e-mail. I get lost very easily and would love to tag along with someone else.
foolishmortal, Please come to a meetup sometime. I've despaired of ever getting baa to show up, but you have to come one of these days.
109: How tall was he? The picture doesn't have much to scale him by, but while he's not cut (what I said about boxers making weight doesn't apply to heavyweights) he looks like a powerful guy.
113: I have no time for Dalí. Beefo Meaty is my only muse and inspiration.
I don't think he ranges far north enough or into the mountains for sled dogs, but Frank Norris did violence and labor relations. The Octopus is kind of clunky, though.
I dunno about 'powerful.' He'd probably do better in fights (though worse in long runs) if he gained some weight, even though that would get him farther from being cut.
Oh wait, i was looking at the wrong picture.
116: He was 6'1" and about 200 lbs. in his prime.
122: I'm bigger than Jack Johnson? Color me heavyweight champ!
I think most of the blame for the ab-phenomenon can be placed on Charles Atlas's mighty shoulders.
125: he didn't have very good abs, though, by modern standards.
This is one of the most gently wafting thread-drifts in some time.
From Christopher Lasch's The New Radicalism in America: The Intellectual as a Social Type :
In the modern world, so comparatively uncomplicated an emotion as ambition is an anachronism. In a world which manifests itself through the mass media, ambition is more likely to take the form of a kind of voyeurism directed in upon oneself, a longing to see oneself as one appears to the world, immortalized in the glare of publicity. One's own life, even when it promises to realize the adventures which for so long seemed to happen only to others comes to be lived vicariously. The self becomes an other to itself.
It still seems profoundly weird to me that people who work out obsessively never look very good in clothes. Something about hardness under cloth is unappealing, and, from what I understand, it's nearly impossible for very built women or men to find anything that fits them, so they tend to wear ill-fitting flapping things.
Thanks, eb. Second recommendation of Lasch in as many days.
football players, if you mean american ones, tend to be something in the glandular freak range, so unlikely to be attractive, baseball players do not play in a sport much associated with top fitness. That said, there is something of a correlation if the sport is something that trains all muscle groups, and with body weight, for example lots of martial arts, but there needs to be attention to not eating a lot. There is a slight correlation.
The Lasch quotation confirms my sense that amour propre is the defining modern sensibility.
That reminds me of Beaudrillard "To see without being seen in a banal phantasm - this is the fate of the voyeur. Being seen without seeing is a more original move - this is the fat eof the idol."
Guys who are really, really skinny often have natural six (or so) packs.
re: 125
No, Sandow and the others predate him. And Atlas wasn't really in the same sort of shape as some of the other earlier strongmen a lot of whom were hugely muscular and also genuinely very strong. A lot of them were also a lot more massive than Jack Johnson or other heavyweight boxers.
Up until very recently the heavyweight champions seldom weighed more than 200 lbs. Marciano boxed at 185 or so.
"much more than". 220 was tops until ~10-15 years ago, and a lot of people think that boxing has gobe downhill.
Count me in for dancing!
While my metabolism permitted, I did just fine with a combination of laziness and vanity. I like to look good, but I can't be too bothered, so I end up with a little zhoozh in the hair, but not actually done correctly; a decent physique, but no patience for exercise, etc. Now my early middle thirties are upon me and the metabolism won't quite cooperate, and I have to choose between lazy and vain (or just make up for it by getting more frequent haircuts).
129: Off-the-rack clothes for men aren't at all cut for in-shape people. But tailored clothes (can) fit fine. Of course, that means tailoring, which is why you see broke athletes in poorly-fittong off-the-rack stuff.
well there is also the weird interaction of clotheshorsing=tehgay (and jocks are espcially not ok with that) even though it seems that gay stereotypes include both lots of clothes, and working out a lot.
sixpacknow.com
I'm imagining a Kozmo.com for sweet, delicious beer. How much better would that be?
I think the pursuit of an "ideal" body is about a desire to make the self an abstraction.
I think this is true. But isn't this just another kind of asceticism? I don't see much difference between mortifying the body for the sake of a religious or spiritual abstraction and mortifying it in the name of some aesthetic ideal. On the contrary, I don't think there's anything peculiarly modern about this desire at all. Surely, in the West it can be traced back at least to rise of Christianity--hello, mortification!--and probably further.
Very true, Populuxe. I think it's not irrelevant that the above-mentioned boy I used to babysit also got really into the church at that the same time that he got into bodybuilding, and repeatedly used bodybuilding training as a metaphor for his Christian life. He'd say, "The Bible tells me what to do. I don't have to understand it. I just do it. Just like, if I want to have a good show, I have to just eat the food, lift the weights. I don't ask why."
