Sunday 13 May 2007

Social Behaviour of the Gym Part 2: The Up-Market Gym

The suburban gym is never called a gym. Gym sounds too manky, so instead they call them "Health Clubs". Here, the TV's are plasma, wide-screen and stuck on every available bit of wall. The clothing is designer-label and the machines gleam. There's still fat wobbling about but it's interspersed on a fairly meager ratio with trim, lithe, athletic, tattooed young bodies that all seem to own efficient, expensive little sports cars (or gigantic late-model four-wheel-drive gas-guzzlers).

Among these beautiful and successful young people, the women seem more at home with themselves at the gym and generally don't exhibit many gym behaviours that wouldn't be equally observable in other settings; they preen, jut and pout to about the same extent as they would at say, a nightclub, their job or on a fashion-show catwalk. The men however, when communicating with each other, display a gesture that is particularly gym-centric. I have classified this gesture as; "the Powerstance".

The powerstance is often preceded by the Powergrip, a handshake of such overwhelming strength and power that it is designed to cause the recipient to faint under the power of the protagonist's aggressive masculinity. I myself have been fortunate enough to have had by hand crushed in this manner and was duly impressed by the Alpha Male who thus maimed me. Then comes the Power Stance itself; a primitive, testosterone-induced visual exhibition of male virility, characterized primarily by an extremely wide distance between the feet. The legs of the power-stander are usually set so far apart that he is in danger of falling over. This is designed to convey the impression that ones Testicles are so large that there’s barely room for them between the thighs.

The adoption of the power-stance is so widespread among male suburban gym-goers, that it is rare to observe a conversation in which it is not used. But you will occasionally also observe the power stance used outside the gym. A couple of weekends ago I was lucky enough to observe the guy who lives across the road from me, power standing while conversing with a bearded soil-delivery guy in front of his house. Power standers will occasionally employ the power stance in non-gym situations, but usually only when they feel their masculinity threatened by strangers. Ironically, by adopting the power stance in these situations they are much easier to push over, a temptation I felt tugging at me very strongly while observing my neighbour.

If you (like me) are significantly older than 25 you will find yourself frequented by looks of disdain by these young suburban gym-goers. In this sense the suburban gym is (as mentioned in my previous post) more akin to a nightclub, fulfilling a role similar to that of the Serengetti battle-grounds where young male lions compete in order to demonstrate their virility to the females. Compared to the nightclub however, the gym has the twin advantages that:

a) the males get to demonstrate their actual physical prowess (rather than their prowess at ingesting mind-altering chemicals - an ability that is arguably less relevant to their sexual performance), and
b) everyone's not wearing much.

In this blatantly ritualistic mating environment, older males are not wanted and are relegated to the role of passive observer who must occasionally be dissuaded from making any demonstrations of their own fading virility by judicious application of the Powergrip and the disdainful look. I get to pay thirty bucks a fortnight to go to this place, kill myself on the rowing machine and wish all these bastards the slowest and most painful of all possible deaths.

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