One of most well-known or thought of body practices would
have to be working out and strength training (for men). I am not talking about
your average 20 or 30 minutes on the bike or elliptical 4 or 5 times a week to
stay in shape. I am talking about the getting chiseled 6-pack abs, huge
pectorals, jacked thighs, and of course those massive triceps. I mean not to
the extent of the Govenator in his prime,
but more like Matthew Mcconaughey, and the rest of the men in Men's Health.
We talked about how women are docile bodies in the sense of
the magazines and popular culture shaping them into anorectic shells. But men
are also very prone this concept of docile bodies.
I know for myself I go to the gym 4-5 times per week; run,
bench, squat, curl, and crunch for about an hour each time, and if I don’t go I
feel horrible and like a lazy slob. I know that I am playing right into these
magazines’ hands and GNC with their overpriced protein powder but I when I go
work out and take these supplements, I feel good, I think.
These magazines that
influence our body practices have very influential rhetoric. They use these
banners about having more sex, and pictures with 2 or 3 women on one man (I don’t
care who you are, every heterosexual male dreams about multiple women at
once). They paint a fantasy, and they
make us believe the only way to achieve this fantasy is through these
supplements and workout regimens, so naturally as men we try them.
But it is a project without a terminus; the supplements are
always changing, as well as other things in popular culture (hair, clothes, shoes). So if you are able
to get the body, then you have to get the clothes, the teeth, and everything
else so you can try to fit yourself into these fantasies displayed in the
magazines.
This body practice is not bad; people should go to the gym,
but aspiring to look like the models in magazines and following popular culture’s
norms makes us docile bodies, which are not actually docile.
