The Real Reason You Exercise: To Get a Man

Tagline: "It's all about men."

This is exactly the type of idiotic advertising that companies do just to get a rise out of people so we'll all post it on our blogs and natter about it and give them lots of viral publicity and attention.

Sadly, I am unable to resist the bait and so I'm giving it to them. ("That's what SHE said!" ba-dum-bum.)

Men's Health magazine has launched a new advertising initiative ostensibly targeted at men but really aimed at getting the women folk up in arms. Probably because we're so cute when we make that little scrunchy mad face!

The basic gist - as you can plainly see; it's so unsubtle that I'm probably lowering your IQ by explaining it to you - is pictures depicting women exercising all alone, covered in sweat and exhausted. Why, you ask, is this poor woman blowing off a fun night with the girls to ride the one stationary bike in the deserted gym that isn't facing the beautiful scenic view? You see, it's because she wants a man. And as we all know (or at least so the magazines keep telling us), a man will only love us (subtext: will want to give us a good tumble on his high heat cycle *wink wink nod nod*) if we are svelte. Nay, not just svelte but skinny.

I mean, Lindsay Lohan's got nothing on this bony chick:

And this poor woman? Begging to have somebody jump out of the woods holding a chainsaw. Do women not watch horror movies? And why has nobody told us about reflective gear? And pepper spray??

The truly crappy thing about these ads are that they're partly true. As much as it pains me to write this, a primary motivating factor in getting women to exercise is their looks. You can enthuse about heart health and longevity and increased intelligence all you want and we'll all nod and agree. And then we'll jump on the elliptical and whine about how we're "working off dinner" last night or "running off the thigh jiggle". It's a sad state of affairs but it's true. And to any woman who denies being at least partially motivated to work out by her looks, I would ask "What if exercise gave you all the health benefits - but made you fatter. Would you still do it?" Of course not. It's why you see Katherine Heigl running on the treadmill for an hour and then lighting up a cigarette in the parking lot.

But there is one little nuance that the marketers forgot (perhaps intentionally?). Women don't get thin for men. We get thin for other women. We know that men like a few lady lumps. And yet we pursue perfect thinness. Not because it makes us more sexually desirable - often it has the opposite effect - but because it makes us the Alpha Female. We're competitive like that. Sigh. Stupid Men's Health.

I've created a poll. The optimist in me wants you all to prove me wrong. But the cynic in me just wants you to be honest. We can't change what we don't acknowledge. (Holy 900-pages-of-advertising-in-Vogue crap, did I just quote Dr. Phil on here??) Anyhow, those of you reading this post in a reader won't be able to see the poll unless you click thru, which you know you want to because any poll I create at midnight is guaranteed to be awesomely awful!

Can You Spot-Reduce Your Thighs

Leave it to an incorporeal computer to give me a reality check about my body. Somewhere Isaac Asimov is smiling. But just as the Internet giveth, so does the Internet taketh away... and now I'm just confused.

Every woman has a body part that she just doesn't like much. (Strike that - while most women do, I imagine there are some who love every inch of themselves and more power to them!) Oh sure we'll gripe about there-ain't-no-love-in-these handles (so says TurboJennie) or our Oprah-waves-goodbye upper arms (so says Oprah) but there is usually one extra special body part that we focus most of our attentions on. For me, that part is my thighs.

I've had a love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship with those womanly fatty bits pretty much ever since I came to associate "womanly" with "fatty bits" - so you know, like 5 years old. My "athletic" thighs are the reason I go through denim hell trying to find jeans that fit. Every single pair I own is too big in the waist and too tight on the thighs. Why oh why have shoulder pads, leggings, dingy flannels and for the love of unholy fashion banana clips come back into style but not my precious 90's sk8r grrrl wide-legged jeans? Clearly the pants aren't the problem, it's got to be my legs! (Now be a good little consumer and write that 100 times on the chalkboard before you leave adolescence.)

All I wanted were legs that didn't touch anywhere between ankle and pelvis; is that too much to ask for? Yes, yes it is. Even at my skinniest-skinny (to quote the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin who also shares my thigh woes) my thighs were still best friends. And, as any reputable personal trainer will tell you, there is no such thing as spot reduction. Or - say it with me! - "everyone who chews gum would have the skinniest face ever!" Thank you endless stream of P.E. teachers and personal trainers for that witticism. Basically Suzanne Sommers was selling you snakeoil in the form of a spring-loaded contraption you pumped between your legs that was just this side of socially acceptable.

But conventional wisdom is wrong on this one, says Tim Ferriss, author of the hugely controversial and popular book The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman. (You have an hour to kill? Go read the reviews on that sucker - your head will spin faster than Christina Aguilera in a shoe store.) For those of you uninitiated into the Ferriss-verse, he is known for being a human lab rat and trying out every body hack imaginable. Similar to yours truly in concept only - that man tries stuff so far on the other side of extreme that I wouldn't do even if you paid me in Lululemon outfits. I can't comment on the whole book - haven't read it yet although I plan on doing so - but he put up a "bonus" chapter on his blog about, oh yes, spot reducing the upper thighs on women. According to him it is possible. And for the low low price of $39.99.

Apparently I am not alone in my dilemma. Ferriss, to his credit, really does his homework and the whole science-y explanation is on his site. Here's the short version: he tried two creams containing compounds that theoretically had the chemical properties to alter fat storage under the skin. The prescription cream failed. But the other cream - a super gimmicky sounding CelluThin - actually did work. It reduced his body fat measurement on his treated thigh by 1 mm. I know 1 mm doesn't sound like much but he isn't measuring the circumference of his thigh with a tape measure but rather measuring his fat thickness and 1 mm is a big deal there. I almost bought the CelluThin on the spot.

But then something else caught my eye (ooh, shiny!) - a designer clothing site having a super clearance sale. (I know, I know we talked about this but I was just looking I SWEAR. I did not buy a thing. Just drooled on my keyboard.) This site, weirdly, was called MyShape. I say "weirdly" because fashion is never about my shape. Fashion could care less what shape I actually am. It's all about making me fit into their shape. But this site is based off the idea that women should by clothing according to their actual body shape. Forget "apples" and "pears" - this site offers 7 different types to choose from.

Being the Cosmo-esque quiz lover I am, I read through all the body types and picked the one I thought I was but when I tried to go further into the store, it stopped me. They wanted measurements. And not just your bust-waist-hip that we've all got memorized but about 20 different measurements including everything from the breadth of your shoulders (another problem spot for me, holla for the pull-ups!) to the height of your knee above the floor. Curiouser than Alice in CotureLand, I pulled out my trusty tape measure and went to work.

15 minutes and a ton of numbers entered later, I closed my eyes and clicked submit. (Not really. Not even I'm good enough to web surf blind.) It gave me an "S" shape. (Another bonus: their shapes are just named by letter with no judgement word attached to it like "athletic" or "curvy" or "boyish.") Turns out an S shape is "evenly proportioned." Excuse me? My thighs aren't transplants from Godzilla?

As kooky as it sounds it made me realize that maybe I don't want skinnier thighs. What if I got my dream of an inch off each thigh - would my shoulders look freakishly large then? Would my hips look weird? What if the problem isn't my body not fitting the clothes, like I'd assumed for so many years, but rather the clothes not fitting my body? I'm just going to come out and say it - for the first time I can remember - I like myself the way I am, thighs touching and everything. You can keep your cream.

Have any of you ever tried a spot-reduction technique or cream? Did it work for you? Do you remember a moment where you learned to like yourself? What sparked the change in you? Or are you still looking for it? Opinions on Tim Ferriss or The 4-Hour Body??

Do Boobs Make the Fit Woman? [The Controversy Over Breast Implants in Fitness Models]

Image from Natalie Dee

"Knockers!" "Jugs!" "Fun bags!" "Sweater puppies!" Sitting in the darkened audience at the talent show my friend put on as a fundraiser for breast cancer research, I listened as all my friends called out their favorite euphemisms for boobs. I wanted to contribute - what's more fun than sitting in a big room talking girlie bits with all your best girls? (And no men, we weren't wearing panties and having pillow fights.) - but the pressure mounted as all the good ones were getting taken. Looking down for inspiration, it came to me: "Rocks in socks!" I blurted out. Silence. Then my friend next to me giggled, "Really??" I stood firm in my answer. "Indeed."

Nursing four babies has not been kind to me in the chest department. Sure I look amazing as long as I'm slinging the milk shakes but as soon as my drive-in becomes take-out only, I end up worse than before I began. And I'm not the only one. Plastic surgery is a topic that comes up among the Gym Buddies from time to time - it did this very morning in fact! (See, now don't you wish you came and worked out with us?) While there are a couple Buddies holding out for a tummy tuck and one who wants a reduction, the rest of us, if money grew on trees, would get the girls fixed.

Part of it is because while we can lose the baby weight with nutrition and exercise, we can never fix the saggy bits and we'd just like to have our old selves back. But part of it - the part we don't talk about very much - is based on a fundamental unrealistic yet oddly pervasive belief in the fitness world: that you can be very lean and still have very big boobs.

Image from Muscle and Fitness Hers

Reader Juni, obviously tuned in to the Gym-Buddy wavelength, sent me this question:

"So I buy just about every fitness magazine on the market and I gotta say that it makes me sad that I find it quite rare if I see even ONE model without breast implants. It’s such a strange contradiction, you know???? I mean, I do get it, you have a low body fat percentage and you likely have what I like to call “Boobinis”. Yet, as a women who works out to feel strong and happy with her capable body it makes me sad to see this and conflicted…. "

Juni makes an excellent point (and also "boobinis" is hilarious - I'm totally stealing that one from now on!) In case you missed 8th grade health class, breasts are largely made up of fat. So if you lean way out, reason stands that your chest will disappear just like the fat off your stomach. This is a conundrum for fitness models. Traditionally female "fitness models" had a very specific look, something akin to this:

Body fat low enough to show 6-pack abs yet still enough on top to fill out a sports bra with cleavage! Image from Muscle and Fitness Hers

While it's no secret that in the larger world of movie stars, Maxim and reality TV shows stick thin with grapefruit halves is highly desirable, you'd think that in the health and fitness realm with its emphasis on muscle mass over Barbie limbs that we'd get some slack in the chestal department. Not so. If anything, breast implants seem more prevalent in fitness modelling than typical women's modelling.

While some fitness professionals, like the ever-controversial Zuzana of bodyrock.tv, are unapologetic about their augmented assets, others are starting to buck the trend. Top fitness model Kim Strother (if you have read any health or fitness mag in the last two years I can guarantee you've seen her, even if you don't know her as anything other than "girl demonstrating ab crunches on large exercise ball") talks openly about losing jobs because she refuses to enlarge her athletic chest.

Self magazine's features director/fitness Meagan Murphy calls Strother the "new-school archetype" saying that she is "healthy, strong and aspirational." Murphy adds, "The supermodel won the genetic lottery. The fitness model worked damn hard for that body, and you can tell." She even points out that Strother differs from traditional female models in that most of the sample clothes sent for photo shoots are a size medium to accommodate her athletic build.

Kim Strother, full-time fitness model. Image from Slate.com

Normally "athletic build" is seen as a derogatory term - I remember the first time a gymnastics coach told me I had "athletic thighs" I cried for a week and went on a crash diet - but these days some fitness magazines want a model that can do more than just look pretty in booty shorts. They need someone strong enough to hold a plank in the sand for five minutes while wardrobe and lighting are adjusted, someone who can jump 83 times in the air to get the perfect "spontaneous" shot, someone who can demonstrate proper squatting form. And with online video complements to articles, that is getting harder and harder to fake.

Personally I hope that Strother is the wave of the future, if only for the fact that with as many kids as I have there's no way I'll ever be able to afford implants (and also, did you know you have to replace them every decade or so? A little too high maintenance for this surgery-squeamish girl!). On the other hand, I had two mommy friends get implants just this last week and they're super happy with the results (or at least they will be when the swelling goes down.)

What do you think - is the fake boobs/tiny figure still the gold standard or do you think smaller boobs are the next big thing? Are implants a way to restore you back to you and increase confidence or are they just more evidence of the unrealistic standard women's bodies are judged by? Do you have a favorite term for your boobs?

PS. Check out Slate.com's entire fitness issue for more interesting stuff like this - thanks to the reader who tipped me off to this! I wish I could remember who but I'm totally having a brain fart - leave me a comment so I can give you proper credit!