There\u2019s too much brightly coloured spandex in the world.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a gym in town that Mrs. H occasionally goes to to burn off a few hundred calories. I won\u2019t name the gym because its owners aren\u2019t paying me for the advertising, and in any case, in today\u2019s super-sensitive world, someone might take what\u2019s supposed to be an entertaining, semi-fictional article to heart, and tar and spandex me.<\/p>\n
Mrs. H. went for a workout on Saturday, and was struck by the sheer amount of spandex in the building. I don\u2019t know if it was more than normal\u2014perhaps 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\u2019t spandex fetishists.<\/p>\n
Whatever the case, she was struck by the sheer expanse of spandex.<\/p>\n
She, like me, doesn\u2019t possess a whole lot of spandex activity clothing\u2014in 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 \u201cgood\u201d is a subjective judgement (usually arrived at by the lecherous among us). Neither Mrs. H nor I have such a physique. I am<\/em> in shape\u2014pear-shaped to be precise\u2014and pears are not known for their spandex-wearing proclivity.<\/p>\n 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\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n These days, spandex is de rigueur<\/em>, whether it\u2019s 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\u2019t be worn under spandex\u2014the visible panty (or whitey) line would destroy the illusion as surely as the sight of someone walking across a green-screened sky<\/a> in an in-flight scene from a movie.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cmake it go away\u201d.<\/p>\n Yes I realize that I\u2019m being shapeist, but if I\u2019m not allowed to wear my speedos anymore, then I can sure as heck voice my opinion about this issue.<\/p>\n Why would a person who\u2019s 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\u2019s wearing hi-viz clothing, then no-one is highly visible anymore. It\u2019s the shorts-and-shirt guy who sticks out like a sore thumb.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s surgical stockings, and it\u2019s not limited to the legs. I clearly remember my mum peeling back those stockings and very gently aerating her newly-liberated skin. Is that\u2014minus the varicose veins\u2014what taking spandex off is like?<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s the attraction of this clothing\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s not that Mrs. H begrudges these people the need to breathe\u2014it\u2019s just that she puts these exertion noises in the same category of annoyingness as tongue-smacking eaters and people\u2019s ear buds leaking gangsta rap next to her on the train.<\/p>\n As if the neon uniforms aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n You need a master\u2019s 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\u2019t fooled when you let someone else drink from your bottle.<\/p>\n Of course, being so heavy, the water bottles have to be kept on the floor (no normal shelf would hold them), and now they\u2019re an obstruction hazard to us presbyopia sufferers.<\/p>\n Fashion has a lot to answer for. Because that\u2019s all it is\u2014a hotline to your wallet. Like the guitarist who has to have Gibson or Fender guitars (I\u2019m 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\u2019s 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\u2019t dress for the occasion(exercise) then you\u2019re riffraff; hoi polloi.<\/p>\n As Miss Piggy would say (and wouldn\u2019t she look great in spandex!), \u201cPretentious\u2014moi?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s too much brightly coloured spandex in the world. There\u2019s a gym in town that Mrs. H occasionally goes to to burn off a few hundred calories. I won\u2019t name the gym because its owners aren\u2019t paying me for the advertising, and in any case, in today\u2019s super-sensitive world, someone might take what\u2019s supposed to be an entertaining, semi-fictional article… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[285,286,288,287,284],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","tag-jocks","tag-miss-piggy","tag-neon-colours","tag-poser","tag-spandex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}