Anti-workout propaganda

[avram]

So I was working out this afternoon (weighed 282 this morning), stretchin’ out my thigh muscles on the hip abductor, which I had to wait for four other people to get finished with first, most popular damn machine in the joint, and a scene from an old episode of M*A*S*H floated up into my head.

I don’t remember what the main plot was, and I’ve been unable to find it by googling, but there was a sub-plot in which Radar was thinking about taking up weightlifting, and Hawkeye and BJ (or maybe Trapper) talk him out of it! What the fuck was up with that? Doctors telling a patient not to bother exercising?

When I was a kid, I figured being in good shape was just something some people were and some weren’t, like height or skin color. I wasn’t in shape, but it was OK because I was smart (I thought), which was (I figured) more important. If I’d really been smart, I wouldn’t have bought into that essentialist smart-or-athletic paradigm.

Anyway, I can imagine a bunch of out-of-shape writers sitting around, having bought into that same paradigm, trying to pass on the idea that being in good shape isn’t really important, that working out is the equivalent of putting on a false face, trying to be “something you’re not”.

And speaking of trying to be something you’re not, has anyone else noticed how very well-suited that particular sitcom vice is to its medium? Sitcoms are all about stasis — there’s a setup, and each week something happens to threaten the status quo, and at the end of the episode everything’s back the way it was. If a character actually changes, the success of the show is imperiled.