Aesthetics and Exercise

I’ve been struggling with the whole shit on the “aesthetics” theme. I find it ironically both at CF and BodyTribe. Do, I really care what is the catalyst? Do I care that vanity is the motivator to get up off the couch, or to not stop at the drive through? I read historical body culture literature (which is a mythology that, in part, informs both tribes) yet aesthetics is certainly an important element in the physical culture’s notion of health. Admittedly a different definition of what constitutes body beautiful then what we value but that is the joy of historical research. Glassman rails against what he calls the “contortions” of the gymnast and dancer. And both Glassman and Conrad seem to snub the roid monsters – these are “bad” aesthetics it seems. Is it necessary to create philosophy against the extreme, the absurd, the exception? Rather, if Joe Sixpack and Jane Hiphugger are motivated to do something, anything, by vanity at least at first aren’t we big enough to seize that teachable moment with a little less judgment? Certainly, my own motivations for exercise are more complex, performance, adventure, fear, aesthetics all play a part and there probably are more – as I suspect is true for Conrad and Glassman too. Certainly both CF and BodyTribe are involved in the social construction of reality – a new body image being one element – a different aesthetic of health. But, is it really better, and truer, than any other aesthetic? It is important to understand the roid monsters as a synecdoche of Reagenomics, of Gay and Women's liberation, of entrepreneurial frenzy, of cheap and easy access to drugs, for some examples, situated in a particular historical moment. And to remember that CF and BodyTribe and their aesthetics of health is also historically and culturally situated? Perhaps it is too early in their evolutions to see what potential for absurdities they also contain. So then is it possible to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house? Can we greet Joe and Jane civilly and salt their exercise with a little education – at least until the spirit grabs them and they fall down, so to speak? Or, would we rather exclude these friends we haven’t met yet and leave them to the sharks of slogging on the ergs and shiny machines; yet, feeling all the while smug in our circle of knowledgeable and beautiful fanatics.