(~5 minutes to read)
There’s too much brightly coloured spandex in the world.
There’s a gym in town that Mrs. H occasionally goes to to burn off a few hundred calories. I won’t name the gym because its owners aren’t paying me for the advertising, and in any case, in today’s super-sensitive world, someone might take what’s supposed to be an entertaining, semi-fictional article to heart, and tar and spandex me.
Mrs. H. went for a workout on Saturday, and was struck by the sheer amount of spandex in the building. I don’t know if it was more than normal—perhaps weekend workers-out are greater in number than the mid-week variety, or maybe they are just greater. Or it could be that the mid-week patrons aren’t spandex fetishists.
Whatever the case, she was struck by the sheer expanse of spandex.
She, like me, doesn’t possess a whole lot of spandex activity clothing—in fact you could count her inventory of such clothing items on the bellybuttons of one hand. Spandex requires a body of a certain shape to look good, and even then “good” is a subjective judgement (usually arrived at by the lecherous among us). Neither Mrs. H nor I have such a physique. I am in shape—pear-shaped to be precise—and pears are not known for their spandex-wearing proclivity.
Time was when a person exercised in shorts and a shirt of some kind. (The hemline of shorts has both risen and fallen in my lifetime—the lower hemlines of my childhood are currently favoured, and are completely at odds feng-shui-wise with my stubby little legs. But I digress) If one was exercising outdoors in the cool, one wore track pants, or an entire track suit. It was loose-fitting in order to give a person room to move.
These days, spandex is de rigueur, whether it’s black or any of a number of neon colours. These pinks and greens and yellows draw the eye (reluctantly or otherwise) to the wearer, much like hi-viz vests do. The difference is that hi-viz vests are baggy, whereas spandex exercise clothing is tighter than tighty-whities, which, incidentally, daren’t be worn under spandex—the visible panty (or whitey) line would destroy the illusion as surely as the sight of someone walking across a green-screened sky in an in-flight scene from a movie.
But as I said, neon colours draw the eye, and when a neon spandex outfit is fighting a losing battle to contain its owner, it makes an onlooker want to reach for the knitting needles to poke their eyes with in an effort to “make it go away”.
Yes I realize that I’m being shapeist, but if I’m not allowed to wear my speedos anymore, then I can sure as heck voice my opinion about this issue.
Why would a person who’s eggplant-shaped want to make themselves as visible as an eggplant floating in a bowl of mayo? Although; come to think of it, if everyone’s wearing hi-viz clothing, then no-one is highly visible anymore. It’s the shorts-and-shirt guy who sticks out like a sore thumb.
I cannot believe that spandex is comfortable. My mum wore elastic stockings for her varicose veins, and she hated them. That spandex workout clothing looks just as tight and just as strong as Mum’s surgical stockings, and it’s not limited to the legs. I clearly remember my mum peeling back those stockings and very gently aerating her newly-liberated skin. Is that—minus the varicose veins—what taking spandex off is like?
Perhaps that’s the attraction of this clothing—a masochistic urge to add to the punishment of a workout by wearing it and then to add to the joy of finishing the workout by divesting oneself of it.
Another thing that Mrs. H noticed is that there’s a direct relationship between the amount of spandex worn and the vocalization of exertion. Nary a sound from Mr. Shirt-and-shorts, whereas Spandex Guy grunts and groans and otherwise vocally ejaculates in a manner that makes most latter-day tennis players seem stoic by comparison. It’s not that Mrs. H begrudges these people the need to breathe—it’s just that she puts these exertion noises in the same category of annoyingness as tongue-smacking eaters and people’s ear buds leaking gangsta rap next to her on the train.
As if the neon uniforms aren’t enough, in order to be identified as a hard-core, badass jock (or jockess), you have to have a water bottle whose contents would hydrate an entire African village for a week, and which is as complex as the International Space Station.
You need a master’s degree to open and close some of them, you need to be mega-fit to pick one up and carry it, and the gadgetry on them? Bluetooth connectivity to your smartphone to monitor how much water you drink; built-in timers and alarms to tell you when to stop the jumping jacks and start the push-ups (oh, and when to drink); and the top-of-the-line models have lip recognition technology so the water-monitoring software isn’t fooled when you let someone else drink from your bottle.
Of course, being so heavy, the water bottles have to be kept on the floor (no normal shelf would hold them), and now they’re an obstruction hazard to us presbyopia sufferers.
Fashion has a lot to answer for. Because that’s all it is—a hotline to your wallet. Like the guitarist who has to have Gibson or Fender guitars (I’m looking in the mirror here!) or the photographer who has to have a backpack full of Nikon lenses so he can impress his peers, workers-out need to look the part. It’s no different from the clothing that the upper crust wore in days of old to go grouse shooting or punting or painting or merely smoking: if you don’t dress for the occasion(exercise) then you’re riffraff; hoi polloi.
As Miss Piggy would say (and wouldn’t she look great in spandex!), “Pretentious—moi?”