Fitness, not religion, opiate of 90s masses

Thursday, January 22, 1998

Fitness, not religion, opiate of 90s masses

BELIEF: New Year’s resolutions actualized in American Mecca of
health clubs, trendy new-age vitamin stores

By Amy Turner

As the biological by-product of millions of years, we only
amount to a quivering skyline, each breaking off like filament and
getting in and out of sports utility vehicles after grabbing some
purified water en route to the nearest health food store. There, we
stalk the aisles in search of a hermetically sealed savior.

Yes, it is January, there is no parking at the gym, resolutions
hang in the air, garish and annoying like party streamers after a
party. Only a few recalcitrant Angelenos continue to eat burgers
and stay prone. Besides attempting to get the heart rate up and
tone the glutes, a lot of us will redouble our efforts and find
salvation in the dark and mysterious vitamin aisle; a desultory
insurance plan designed to soothe the conscience with milligrams.
Some vitamin C here, a little St. John’s wort there … toss in a
vitamin B complex and skin clears up, energy levels rise, hair has
a snappy sheen and depression miraculously lifts (and if it
doesn’t, keep taking the other supplements to repair yourself when
you succumb to a six- martini-lunch and a pack of Winston’s). The
patchouli-scented employees preach with an evangelist’s zeal about
acidophilus. Considering how crowded the place is, something is
working. This is a phenomenon begging to be further exploited, and
I’m positive that someone will realize this soon and new products
will be born.

Imagine marketing the son of God as the Mister Clean for the
echinaciea goldenseal generation. Jesus’ comforting pink-cheeked
and blue-eyed image adorning bottles of health supplements, uniting
our generation’s love of religious regalia with their love of
preventative health care. Little bottles of life. It’s all about
healing, right?

Our generation has exhibited a mild obsession with religious
paraphernalia, mainly of the Catholic variety, give or take a Shiva
or a Vishnu. The reasons for this could be a thesis for any social
sciences or psychology major. (Yah, yah, yah, we’re the generation
who grew up without Sunday school, or maybe we went to Sunday
school but we got pissed off and trashed it all when our parents
got divorced, and weekends were spent with the new step-parent who
played racquetball on Sundays. Or maybe we never went, and
organized religion has a truly mystical foreign taste that is
considered both novel and aesthetically divine, whatever.) For some
reason, we just can’t get enough of the pastel images of Mary
Milagrosa. They are a noncommittal (give or take $1.95) symbol of
this generation’s need to mock the hard-and-fast laws of morality,
adore classic kitsch art, and possibly have faith in something we
can’t define.

The reasons people collect the images and the popularity are
equally boundless. Anyhow, imagine using these saintly images on
the vitamins and herbal supplements we look to in times of
insecurity. We’ll love it, it’ll come off as kitsch, and the same
way we purchase the candles bearing images we find approximately
humorous, we will buy our herbs with the decal’s of St. Francis,
St. Christopher and every other Saint besides Yves Saint
Laurent.

Already, we run to these stores. I see the masses every time I
go. We are all stuck in the aisles together, aphasic, looking for
cures, looking for … well, I don’t really know because it’s
dangerous to talk to strangers. We stand there like ninnies,
picking up this cayenne supplement, furtively reading the label of
the pyruvate with calcium. Occasionally, somebody breaks down and
winds up in confession with a clerk about what to take for
strengthening the sex drive, or soothing symptoms of PMS. The
health food store is a holy place in Los Angeles with disciples
from every socioeconomic, age, race and gender bracket. The one
contradictory element is that unlike any good, old-fashioned
church, the patrons don’t talk to each other.

I go to one establishment every few weeks, and I usually cross
my heart and put a few bottles of something I’ve just read about
down on the counter and leave with a credit card bill uglier than
when I entered, but it’s my tithe. This is health; it’s okay, damn
it. We’re buying tomorrow. We’re buying hope and we can all sleep
well at night because we’re not on drugs, because these bottles fit
well in our nylon knapsacks, because we are believing in something.
Here in the spiritual black hole of Southern California we live in
our own special purgatory, a self-worshipping paradox that sustains
itself on dreams of dewy skin, nine percent body fat, and oh, yeah,
artistic integrity.

We are always buying the next tonic, moisturizing our callused
souls with something that includes cucumber and lanolin. I follow,
laughing all the way, knowing there is something great and absurd
about all of this effort. I waffle between the school of, "what a
superficial waste of time and money," and the school of body and
mind as a monistic force. If I ignore one element, then I am
limiting myself.

Confused, I go where I am told I will find solace. Yes, I have
been instructed by a friend to go to the gym. I never get sick of
the blatant irony of the valet when there is parking less than two
blocks away. As usual, I accept the challenge and walk. Inside, I
make a mental note that I am a sucker for looking for redemption in
a sea of lycra and laugh while lacing up my
"Jesus-did-you-ever-think-you’d-love-an-advertising-campaign-so-much"
Nikes and I sweat it out. We all run around going nowhere, insular
and climbing to the next level. I watch the others sweating, and
everybody looks wet and lonely.

I definitely get the exercise buzz, the thing that makes me come
back, and I’m happy for a bit, but I can’t stop the questions. What
do we believe in? What do I believe in? Why is there a gym open
twenty-four hours a day? I watch the masses file in and out of
24-hour Fitness on Pico (I suppose when the spirit moves you…) I
realize that this is one of the few places I go where I am greeted
with a smile by the deacon/personal-trainer/employee person.

I make a vow to get out more, to watch people and feel their
heartbeats echo up and down some real streets, people off the
treadmill. I make a vow to connect with other human beings. And I
hate that vow, because I make it monthly, and when I hold up my end
of the bargain I usually just find myself repulsed by the mating
rituals of the male species or in a quandary as to how to naturally
strike up a jovial conversation and make friends with another woman
without coming off like a complete weirdo. No matter. I will just
start researching the benefits of a new vitamin and we will all
design our own scriptures here in L.A.