The Beautiful Masochists
Beads of sweat dripping down my forehead, face frozen in a tight grimace of pain, dance music playing in the background but this is not a nightclub, there is no dancing, if God is a DJ then Satan with bulging biceps in place of great horns, dressed in head-to-toe Nike exercise gear rules this coop……
I was lying on an exercise bench at the gym on the verge of what could possibly be both a physical and mental breakdown. My friend loomed above me, arms crossed, smile on her face toeing the line between encouragement and sadism. She was chanting, “One more, one more, Maryam, just one more leg raise….” She tempted me with promises of having, sculpted, enviable abs like The Pussycat Dolls, like Britney Spears . Long-abandoned fantasies of wearing tight pants with crotch-skimming waistbands, cropped tops and string bikinis resurfaced in my mind. Yes, I told myself; one more leg- raise and Britney can kiss my belly button. The problem was, by that point, my abdominal muscles had severed contact with my brain and was largely unresponsive to any sort of mental command. It had taken a lifelessness all its own. My legs gave a little jerk, one last attempt at obedience to the motivated spirit, before flopping to the floor in defeat.
Drowning in my own sweat with muscles too tired to swim for life, I began to think that beauty, in the most conventional, physical sense, is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain. The beautiful are masochists. Madonna is the mother of all masochists. You don’t get a hot, beautiful body like that without lots of pain – be it pain in the form of cosmetic surgery or exercise. How many times have you heard Madonna championing power yoga? I once took a power yoga class and ended up with my kidney in my forehead. Stuck in a “downward dog” position, I thought I was going to start peeing through my nose.
There’s a machine at the gym that possesses an uncanny resemblance to the guillotine. I wonder if some French dude had witnessed the public execution of Marie Antoinette and thought, “Wa-‘ey, I could use ze same contraption zey use to chop ‘er ‘ead off to work out ze deltoids and ze triceps instead. All it takes is ze few minor adjustments and….. Voila! An exercise machine zat will make ze fatties very ze beautiful and haute!” There’s another machine that looks like the spitfire grill at Kenny Rogers Roasters with you as the roasting piece of chicken. I bet if a guy from medieval times were to be magically transported to a modern-day gym, he would think that he landed in the torture chamber of a nearby castle, where everyone had too little clothes on and were made to wear spandex, just to add to the horror. Medieval Man would think that the crappy Euro-dance music being played in the gym were the ghostly voices of those that had died hellishly of torture. He wouldn’t be entirely wrong. If I had died on the exercise bench that day, I would come back to haunt my fellow gym members as a Tiesto song.
But lets not just focus on the body, let us now talk of the pain we put ourselves through for that supposed-aesthetically perfect face. Take the eyebrows for example – one is told that neatly arched eyebrows work wonders for the face. Yet, how many of us are actually born with the perfect arch? Most of us are only lucky enough to barely escape having eyebrows that look like a cross between Colin Farrell’s (don’t worry, I still love you, Colin , bushy eyebrows and all) and King Kong’s and if we care enough, which many of us do, will have to go through the process of tweezing, waxing or threading our eyebrows– any of which will require some degree of yanking, pulling and tugging, all of which will result in Pain, all done in the name of Beauty. Don’t be surprised if your face looks frozen in a single expression (part surprise, part horror) after an eyebrow grooming session – the pain caused by all that yanking out of hair doesn’t allow for more expressive movement of the facial muscles without causing even greater discomfort. It’s like Botox only without the potentially fatal, paralysis-inducing toxins. Who needs Botox now? Oops, I forgot lots and lots of ageing people ill at ease with the usual course of nature. Look at that needle. You’re willingly letting them stick it in your face? You go, girl. Cosmetic surgery? Cut, cut, crush, crush, stick, stick, sew, sew – you’d only have to watch an episode of MTV’s I Want A Famous Face or Extreme Makeover to know that getting that perfect nose/ cheekbones/ boobs you weren’t born with is not all thumb-sucking, painkiller-induced joy.
I was watching a documentary called ‘The Science of Beauty’ some time back, and they mentioned something about how a woman’s physical beauty is greatly linked to how fertile she is. Among the physical cues to a woman’s fertility is a) an hourglass figure and b) long legs. Hence, in an effort to make ourselves look more fertile, thus more attractive, we stick ourselves in a corset, for that coveted baby-making hourglass shape, only to have a)our breathing restricted, depriving our body of much needed oxygen and b) our internal organs to get dangerously squished and mushed together. So much for being fertile when you’re dead. What about the long legs? What do we do if we’re not genetically blessed with such proportions? Well, there are high-heeled shoes, classic fashion item noted for its leg-lengthening effect and also, the great aching pain it causes to one’s calves and back. Try walking a whole day around town in them and you might find yourself thinking that you might not be able to walk another day, ever, again.
Of course, some people are just born more aesthetically-pleasing than others. But hey man, those looks aren’t going to stay that way forever. Without proper maintenance and beautifying applications of pain, it’ll all start to go to shit after their 16th birthday. No one remains effortlessly slim, taut and gravity-defying forever.
Now, here’s where I would usually start my rant on the pressure society places upon us, particularly women, to be physically beautiful. Here’s where I would usually question the reason behind why even the most “liberated” and intelligent of women still obsess and place such great importance on appearing physically attractive. Here’s where I would usually start tearing apart society, the media (the society for influencing the media, the media for influencing society, society for swallowing media crap which was initially their own crap in the first place.). But I would save this all for another day, another entry, maybe.
Right now, all I’m really going to say is that more and more, it seems to me as if conventional physical beauty is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain.
But I once saw a t-shirt that read: Pain is weakness leaving the body. If this is true, than beauty is really a willingness to free yourself of weakness. If this is true, than Beauty is Strength.
With this in mind, I felt my body come to life again on the exercise bench. I gritted my teeth with a new found resolve and determination to see my exercise routine through. I breathed in deeply and blew out hard -my ab muscles contracted and up my legs went. “Tt…tw…twenty!!!!!!!” I said. My voice was strained yet triumphant. I’ve won the battle.
Then my friend, still standing above me, grinned and said, “Right, just forty more leg-raises to go, after we work on those triceps….”
I might have just lost the war.
I was lying on an exercise bench at the gym on the verge of what could possibly be both a physical and mental breakdown. My friend loomed above me, arms crossed, smile on her face toeing the line between encouragement and sadism. She was chanting, “One more, one more, Maryam, just one more leg raise….” She tempted me with promises of having, sculpted, enviable abs like The Pussycat Dolls, like Britney Spears . Long-abandoned fantasies of wearing tight pants with crotch-skimming waistbands, cropped tops and string bikinis resurfaced in my mind. Yes, I told myself; one more leg- raise and Britney can kiss my belly button. The problem was, by that point, my abdominal muscles had severed contact with my brain and was largely unresponsive to any sort of mental command. It had taken a lifelessness all its own. My legs gave a little jerk, one last attempt at obedience to the motivated spirit, before flopping to the floor in defeat.
Drowning in my own sweat with muscles too tired to swim for life, I began to think that beauty, in the most conventional, physical sense, is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain. The beautiful are masochists. Madonna is the mother of all masochists. You don’t get a hot, beautiful body like that without lots of pain – be it pain in the form of cosmetic surgery or exercise. How many times have you heard Madonna championing power yoga? I once took a power yoga class and ended up with my kidney in my forehead. Stuck in a “downward dog” position, I thought I was going to start peeing through my nose.
There’s a machine at the gym that possesses an uncanny resemblance to the guillotine. I wonder if some French dude had witnessed the public execution of Marie Antoinette and thought, “Wa-‘ey, I could use ze same contraption zey use to chop ‘er ‘ead off to work out ze deltoids and ze triceps instead. All it takes is ze few minor adjustments and….. Voila! An exercise machine zat will make ze fatties very ze beautiful and haute!” There’s another machine that looks like the spitfire grill at Kenny Rogers Roasters with you as the roasting piece of chicken. I bet if a guy from medieval times were to be magically transported to a modern-day gym, he would think that he landed in the torture chamber of a nearby castle, where everyone had too little clothes on and were made to wear spandex, just to add to the horror. Medieval Man would think that the crappy Euro-dance music being played in the gym were the ghostly voices of those that had died hellishly of torture. He wouldn’t be entirely wrong. If I had died on the exercise bench that day, I would come back to haunt my fellow gym members as a Tiesto song.
But lets not just focus on the body, let us now talk of the pain we put ourselves through for that supposed-aesthetically perfect face. Take the eyebrows for example – one is told that neatly arched eyebrows work wonders for the face. Yet, how many of us are actually born with the perfect arch? Most of us are only lucky enough to barely escape having eyebrows that look like a cross between Colin Farrell’s (don’t worry, I still love you, Colin , bushy eyebrows and all) and King Kong’s and if we care enough, which many of us do, will have to go through the process of tweezing, waxing or threading our eyebrows– any of which will require some degree of yanking, pulling and tugging, all of which will result in Pain, all done in the name of Beauty. Don’t be surprised if your face looks frozen in a single expression (part surprise, part horror) after an eyebrow grooming session – the pain caused by all that yanking out of hair doesn’t allow for more expressive movement of the facial muscles without causing even greater discomfort. It’s like Botox only without the potentially fatal, paralysis-inducing toxins. Who needs Botox now? Oops, I forgot lots and lots of ageing people ill at ease with the usual course of nature. Look at that needle. You’re willingly letting them stick it in your face? You go, girl. Cosmetic surgery? Cut, cut, crush, crush, stick, stick, sew, sew – you’d only have to watch an episode of MTV’s I Want A Famous Face or Extreme Makeover to know that getting that perfect nose/ cheekbones/ boobs you weren’t born with is not all thumb-sucking, painkiller-induced joy.
I was watching a documentary called ‘The Science of Beauty’ some time back, and they mentioned something about how a woman’s physical beauty is greatly linked to how fertile she is. Among the physical cues to a woman’s fertility is a) an hourglass figure and b) long legs. Hence, in an effort to make ourselves look more fertile, thus more attractive, we stick ourselves in a corset, for that coveted baby-making hourglass shape, only to have a)our breathing restricted, depriving our body of much needed oxygen and b) our internal organs to get dangerously squished and mushed together. So much for being fertile when you’re dead. What about the long legs? What do we do if we’re not genetically blessed with such proportions? Well, there are high-heeled shoes, classic fashion item noted for its leg-lengthening effect and also, the great aching pain it causes to one’s calves and back. Try walking a whole day around town in them and you might find yourself thinking that you might not be able to walk another day, ever, again.
Of course, some people are just born more aesthetically-pleasing than others. But hey man, those looks aren’t going to stay that way forever. Without proper maintenance and beautifying applications of pain, it’ll all start to go to shit after their 16th birthday. No one remains effortlessly slim, taut and gravity-defying forever.
Now, here’s where I would usually start my rant on the pressure society places upon us, particularly women, to be physically beautiful. Here’s where I would usually question the reason behind why even the most “liberated” and intelligent of women still obsess and place such great importance on appearing physically attractive. Here’s where I would usually start tearing apart society, the media (the society for influencing the media, the media for influencing society, society for swallowing media crap which was initially their own crap in the first place.). But I would save this all for another day, another entry, maybe.
Right now, all I’m really going to say is that more and more, it seems to me as if conventional physical beauty is nothing more than a willingness to suffer pain.
But I once saw a t-shirt that read: Pain is weakness leaving the body. If this is true, than beauty is really a willingness to free yourself of weakness. If this is true, than Beauty is Strength.
With this in mind, I felt my body come to life again on the exercise bench. I gritted my teeth with a new found resolve and determination to see my exercise routine through. I breathed in deeply and blew out hard -my ab muscles contracted and up my legs went. “Tt…tw…twenty!!!!!!!” I said. My voice was strained yet triumphant. I’ve won the battle.
Then my friend, still standing above me, grinned and said, “Right, just forty more leg-raises to go, after we work on those triceps….”
I might have just lost the war.
