This article in GQ about Equinox Gym does a great job of describing the kind of gym and exclusive cliquish membership that might just send shivers up your spine.
The female author revels in and celebrates and promotes this Dystopian gym’s retina scanner in place of a membership card and its social-climbing, vacant, status-seeking preening posers. In the process she disparages all other gyms, claiming Bowflex at-home workouts are “bogus,” and claims that Gold’s Gym members are all steroid users. She also seems repulsed by actual muscle: “Lean is the physical ideal here; company executives actually use the term Equinox body—a toned, androgynous shape designed to glide in and out of $300 Acne jeans and sleep (“regenerate”) on the finest linens.”
Androgynous? Sounds like a nightmare.
My chosen gym is frequented by old people, really obese people, muscular Marines, hard workers, female bodybuilders, and all kinds of others whose main goal at the gym is not schmoozing, networking, or feeling superior to all others.
The article makes for an interesting, albeit creepy, read. You may end the article, as I did, with a new appreciation for your current gym.
Great stuff Richard...will you ever write another book? Your first book was outstanding!
ReplyDeleteThanks John. I'm working on a new book in fits and starts, focusing a bit more on working out at home more than in a gym. I'll post here when it comes out.
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