The cultural artifact on which I'm reflecting is the Soloflex, one of the first home fitness products I saw advertised on television and in magazines. I was 15 years old when the Soloflex was created in 1978.
The first Soloflex advertisement I remember seeing as a teenage boy resonated with me because it reminded me of myself. A geeky-looking slender boy is posing in the mirror, wishing for a more muscular body. I was that boy. I was teased throughout middle and high school because I was a nerd -- the boy who ran the wrong way with the football, who was always picked last for teams in gym class, but who excelled in academics and choir. I was relentlessly bullied for being a "sissy." I was a straight A student from elementary school until my junior year of high school, when I received a B in swimming class because I was ashamed to take off my shirt and would often make up excuses for not participating. And so I created a fantasy in my mind: if I could build muscles, I could take off my shirt with pride, and all of the bullies would become envious of me. But I had no idea how to gain muscle. There were no gyms in my small Texas hometown, and I had no family or friends who knew anything about working out. My P.E. coaches were all out-of-shape ex-football players who sometimes joined the boys in teasing me. I decided that the Soloflex was my game changer.
I was in my twenties and had graduated from college before I could afford to buy a Soloflex. At this point, I had still never stepped foot into a gym. While the bullying stopped (for the most part) once I moved to Austin for college, I remained uncomfortable with my body. I no longer needed muscles to make the bullies envious; I needed them for my own self-confidence. I was now out of the closet as a gay man, and I found (and still find) the male gay/queer community very obsessed with bodies as a measure of one's worth. And so, in 1988, when I was 25 years old, I created my first gym in my apartment. I owned one piece of equipment -- my Soloflex. I hung pictures of the Soloflex model, Scott Madsen, in my apartment as motivation. Scott had the muscles I wanted, and he also perfectly fit the cultural standards of beauty for gay men in the 1980's -- smooth, lean muscles, and white.
It turns out that the Soloflex wasn't the game changer I envisioned at 15 years old. Even though I worked out religiously in my apartment gym, I never looked like Scott Madsen. But it did begin my life-long journey with fitness, which has lasted 30 years. The confidence I built using my Soloflex led me to the gym by my early thirties. At 35 years old, I became a certified personal trainer and achieved my peak level of fitness, even doing shirtless photo shoots and earning money off my body. I got distracted and left fitness for several years in my forties to focus on relationship and career. Then, at 50 years old, I found myself back in the gym, determined to reclaim the body I once had. At 55, I am lifting as heavy as I did at 35. My metabolism has slowed, though, and my eating habits need a makeover. And so my fitness quest continues, coupled with my journey toward body acceptance and confidence.
Looking back on the Soloflex with my "critically vigilant" lenses, I recognize how the models used to promote the product had body types that are not possible for many people. Women and men of color were added as models for Soloflex, but the lean muscled body type isn't one that we are all blessed with, or that we can even achieve. I also recognize, however, that advertising is a consumer-driven creator of fantasies, whether or not those fantasies are realistic.
I still struggle with body image, but I have the resources and knowledge to make the changes I want to see. And while the Soloflex is long gone, a corner of my apartment remains dedicated to fitness equipment and pictures of fitness models with impossible-to-achieve bodies.
