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Welcome to the real arms race -- at the gym
© St. Petersburg Times At 10 a.m. on New Year's Day, one of the women at the gym had a tape measure wrapped around her waist. "You're measuring yourself today?" I asked, astonished. I mean, give yourself a break. Another woman on the elliptical was doing just that. "I'm not getting on the scale until the end of the week, Friday, maybe," she said, "and before that I'll sit in the steam room and sweat off a couple of pounds." She has a scale that also tells her her body mass index. Let me add, she has no body fat. None. Weight Watchers didn't even wait until the holidays had passed to send me an invitation to come back at a special rate. And then, in my e-mail, a message from "yrfMichael." I do have a friend named Michael who e-mails me a lot, but if he ever sent me a message with the header "No Diet, Lose Weight" I'd never talk to him again. I'm not sure what they're selling, but it also promises to reverse aging, and you can do it in your sleep. "AS SEEN ON NBC, CBS, CNN AND EVEN OPRAH!" So you know it's legit. My fax even spat out a page titled LOSE WEIGHT FAST!, which I tossed before I could see the gimmick. I started counting the number of women's magazines at the supermarket checkout counter that had a cover line on losing weight, but I lost count. South Tampa will soon welcome three new fitness clubs: Lifestyle Fitness in Old Hyde Park Village, Calta's on Gandy Boulevard, and Curves on Henderson. And I'm all for fitness, in moderation. Now, the truth is, of course, that 60 percent of us are overweight. And as more of us get fatter and less fit, the media images of a woman's body get more radically thinner and more muscular. In a recent photo, Madonna has arms that look like those on a 20-year-old foundry worker. I mean, have you noticed this thing with arms? It used to be women had to care about their waist, their hips, their thighs. Now we have to have arms with definition. Women on TV are going sleeveless, even in the winter, to show off those sculpted arms. Women in film, too, are costumed to display their arms. We have sleeveless sweaters. ("Isn't that missing the point?" my husband asked. He thinks sweaters are to keep warm!) Arms are the new breasts. At least to women, looking at women. And it's because the arms on a woman are generally the first body part to go. If you want to know how old a woman is, take a look at her upper arms. In a heartbreaking short story by Alice Munro, which I read long before I had a clear understanding of it, a woman is told by her husband she ought not wear a halter top. "Your armpits are flabby," he says. Arms, also, are the very most difficult if not impossible part of the body to get right by exercise. Most women who work out would probably rather show their butts than their arms. I have one friend who has conquered the arm thing. She weighs maybe a hundred pounds. She also works out with 12-pound weights, lifting them above her head about a million times a day. She's still not satisfied. However, she can wear halter tops. So can Madonna. So can Kelly Ripa. So can you -- maybe -- if you quit your job, throw out your kids and your dog, and spend your day with those weights. Forget your husband; he's so out of it, he's probably still looking at your breasts or your butt. There seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between the media image of a woman -- and what women really look like. Or can look like. Did you see Roger Dodger? It isn't very good, but at the end, the main character, a supercilious New York ad guy visiting his family in Ohio, says on his way back to New York, "Got to get back to work making people feel fat and ugly." Keep it up, you're winning. -- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com . City Life appears on Saturday.
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