Amazon is a website that sells things, lots of things, all the things. Instagram is a place to post pictures, everyone’s pictures, all the pictures. Amazon has facilitated the process of cultivating want and offering the means to satisfy it. Unfortunately, you can’t just find something on Instagram, decide you like it, decide you want it and then buy it. No, not when what you are liking are other people’s lifestyles and bodies. I hate to say it but your trainer can't do that either. Ah, you might think, but what about those trainers that train celebrities; I bet they can. Yes, those that have found their niche in training the small cross section of genetically gifted and enormously wealthy people are clearly doing god’s work and capable of anything; good for them. For everyone else, we saunter through the cold reality that we are not them. We are not the bestowed, we are not the exceptional, we are part of the ever-quivering, ever-striving mound of humanity struggling for distinction amongst the masses.
I know, all of that is disappointing; and it's about to get worse. What that means for fitness and body image is that you, even in your best shape, are going to look different than someone else in their best shape or even their mediocre shape. We don't all magically morph in the same plastic action figure mold once we are deemed fit. Everybody’s body is different. It more readily stores fat and muscle in different places. It is good and bad at different things. Now I know this all seems so obvious and I know you know but I also know that you don't know. You know this to be true when thinking of other people. You will tell your siblings, roommates, partners, teachers and mail person this kind of thing and wholeheartedly believe it. But when it's just you, you and your body alone; you don't know. We wish/shame ourselves into:
1. Believing that, sure failure looks all kinds of different but success looks just one way, the right way, the way you want to look. The way you know you can look
And
2. You will not allow yourself to love your subpar body or to truly experience joy while using it until you achieve the body you want. Nope, joy is for winners and winning looks like…. And then open up Instagram.
Let’s pretend I’m wrong. Let’s fantasize about being able to buy a six pack, your six pack, a rippling rectus abdominis, your very own tight and toned tummy on Amazon. Since we are fantasizing, we might as well pretend that in this scenario you are also a Prime member and this sextet of muscles will arrive within 48 hours. If bodies were a commodity like say gold or oranges used to make orange juice or pork bellies used to make bacon, what would it be worth? What would you be willing to pay?
Before you answer please take into consideration that if we put anything on the market it will be absorbed into the rules of that market meaning it will be subject to supply and demand and a hierarchy will quickly develop as well as the pay structure to support it. This means that the best tummies will be the most expensive and hardest to get while the mildly toned, a bit cheaper and the simply lacking a muffin top being the basic and accessible price. Okay so now what would you pay? Wait, sorry a few more things. This new tummy will be yours in every sense, meaning not simply that you own it but that you also own the care of it. Your blood will flow into those muscles. Your brain will command them to engage. Your hormones will drive their behavior. That is to say that you will need to take care of it and the slimmest and strongest of tummies can feel high maintenance if you are not acquainted with the lifestyle it has become accustomed to. This unfortunately means that the toned commodity you bought may not remain as such. Like all our parts and like all aspects of our life, it will adapt to being part of the ecosystem that it finds itself within. That ecosystem is your life. Also I should mention it will be hard for you to use them at first since you are buying purely the form, not the function. You can expect a few weeks of being unable to sit up-right, this side effect will undoubtedly be marketed as part of your rebirth as you will obtain the core coordination and function of an infant who is also meeting their new muscles for the first time. You don’t get the function because all function is neuromuscular and you are not also buying the brain. If you did that then none of this would matter because you would be a different person. With a new brain you might become someone that didn’t feel like they needed a new brain or body in the first place. You will have gone on a journey robbed of that journey, unconscious of your decisions and motivations for those decisions. If your new body and brain is the destination of an invisible and unknown journey then your destination is nowhere. Do you hate everything about you and your life so much that you want to have no memory or connection to it? Do you hate your body so much that you want an upgrade at the cost of your identity? I am not here to judge so please answer freely,
If you said yes, that you hate your body and life so much that you are ready to trade it in, then I honestly don't think your tummy makes much difference. I mean no matter what you pay or how good it looks, do you really think that it, on its own, would be enough to make you stop hating everything else about you? Probably not. And so yes maybe you're ready for the full package, the complete upgrade, the literal new you. All you have to do to get it is change your mind. Right?