Lycra Shaped People

I started working out a bit more this summer, adding some biking trips (rule: get bike to a path, ride in a single direction as hard as possible into the wind for 1 hour, then return) to my regimen. And I also started running 1 to 2 times a week, no more than 1 hour at a time. And I lost some weight (15-20 pounds depending how you account for it).

I decided that, because of my propensity for profuse sweat, I needed to start layering my workout uniform. Thus began the search for those spandex/lycra/nylon-lyra-spandex-mix shirts that those runners/cyclists wear. Folks wearing those clothes never look like sweaty pigs. Sweaty pigs like me.

I found and purchased a particular shirt that appeared to be my size. I didn't try it on in the store for a number of uninteresting reasons, but when I got home I threw it on just before dinner (and a later workout that night).

It's a tight shirt. It's tight enough that it cannot be removed without reversing it. It's not ridiculously tight - it doesn't leave marks on my skin or anything.

My appearance at the dinner table drew double-takes from both my wife and teenaged daughter. "Wow," my daughter gasped, "it's kinda wrong when your dad is chiseled." My wife scanned me like a construction worker scans a pretty office blond and added, "Wow, you are looking good."

Bolstered by this unsolicited praise, I checked myself in the mirror after my workout that night. With the shirt on - yeah, I'm kinda chiseled. Not quite ready for the Body Armour ad, but there's definitely a muscular, manly shape there.

Then I removed the shirt. "Hey, where'd it go?" Suddenly all the flabby parts covering my six-pack abs re-appeared. My chiseled-ness had vanished.

"Oh my God, I'm an idiot. It's the shirt." The shirt shapes my body, tightening in the right spots, nudging the malleable flesh into areas that then appear muscular. It's like a push-up bra for men!

Then I began noticing just how common this phenomenon is. Because of my wife I know that there are about 72 kinds of underwear for women that "shape" their bodies. Now there are for men too. And when I began to really look for the lycra-shaped people, there they were, all around me. I'd never noticed before.

We have become a society of lycra-shaped people, well on our way to becoming the morbidly obese, amorphous blobs featured in the Pixar film Wall-E.