I am unabashedly proud of the fact that I was born and raised in Santa Monica California. We have the top grossing Prius Dealership in the Nation. We have a nice Pier and lots of Palm trees. The City boasts that are fewer than 50 gang members in the entirety of Santa Monica (although I question the accuracy of this statistic, as I personally was never surveyed). But, above all, my personal favorite cultural attribute of Santa Monica is the fervent love of exercise and physical fitness its resident’s posses.
I believe that the combination of Santa Monica’s proximity to Hollywood coupled with its 3.5 miles of pacific coastline breeds a unique culture; a culture that hybridizes the onus that Hollywood places on person image with the fitness and muscle-building culture that was born out of Venice Beach. In fact, many multi-national fitness companies, for example Beachbody LLC (creator of the P90x and INSANITY workout series) are headquartered right in Santa Monica.
Given Santa Monica’s mild climate and average of 300 days of sunshine per-year, many residents choose to workout outside rather than in a gym; my personal favorite outdoor workout spot is a long set of stairs that start at Adelaide Drive and have a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean and the cliffs that flank it. I’ve been coming to The Stairs to workout for a few years now, and I like to divide the people that come to the stairs: There are the regulars and locals who walk to The Stairs to get their normal workout (such as myself, and Owen, there are the transient type that come with a friend or because they saw The Stairs’ respectably high rating on Yelp, and lastly there those who workout at the stairs solely to be seen by others (Matthew McConaughey).
For your edification:
This summer, I became friends with Vysal, who I met at The Stairs in late June. Vysal is in very good shape. We got to talking about fitness, as many Stair regulars often do, and he invited me to come down and try a free Beach Boot Camp Clinic that happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:15 at the beach.
I began to attend these group morning workouts and absolutely loved them. The people were energized, it was a fantastic way to start the day, and the workouts themselves were great. Although the entire Beach Boot Camp is completely free, it is sponsored by Herbalife – which really had no effect to me other than the fact that a lot of the people who attended the workouts would drink Herbalife drinks before and after working out.
I continued to come to these workouts quite regularly and began to become friends with a lot of the attendees. At around 9:00 AM two weeks ago, as I was walking back to my car after a particularly tough workout, one of the organizers of the Boot Camp approached me, thanked me for the hard work I had been putting in, and asked me if I would be interested in “joining their team” to become one of their boot camp coaches.
I was thrilled. I was elated. I said yes. It was one of those moments were I felt the all of the discipline and hard work that I had put in was finally noticed by someone else. I had put in a lot of hard training this Summer, and having someone else validate my physical fitness made me even prouder of what I had personally set out to achieve. But, as the saying goes, pride comes before the fall.
To join the team, I would first be required to come to an “Intro to Coaching” seminar the following Saturday. I was requested to wear business casual to this training and show up promptly at 9:00 AM Saturday morning. I drove to the location, rummaging through mind what I knew about fitness – glycogen storage, aerobic versus anaerobic execercise, type II versus type I muscle fiber – stuff I had accumulated from years of competitive sports, and I was excited to prove to the coaching staff that I knew a bunch of stuff already but was eager to learn more. Unfortunately, no sooner did I arrive than did my confusion begin.
First, the room was full of 80 people, about 10 of whom I recognized from the Beach Boot Camp – the other 70 or so I had never seen before. “That’s odd…” I mused. “Have they asked all these people to be fitness coaches too? Some of them aren’t even that fit…” Nevertheless, I started talking to one of these ‘other 70’ people, a boy named Jake who seemed about my age. I asked him if he had been coming to the beach workouts earlier in the summer, because I didn’t recognize him. He gave me a quizzical look, and replied: “I’m here because of the Craigslist add about making money fast. What beach workouts are you talking about?
Something was up. But I had had no time to delve into the matter further. The presentation was about to start, and I needed to grab a seat before they were all taken. The presentation began.
First, we heard testimonials from people who had lost significant amount of weight by sticking to Herbalife’s nutrition plan. Then, we learned about the founding of Herbalife and its CEO and the wonderful philosophy that the company has about fitness and well-being. Next, we took a ten minute break to sample the Herbalife products.
“This shake is actually really good, and most of the people here seem pretty nice, but when are we going to actually talk about fitne –“ My thoughts were interrupted. There was an announcement through the PA informing us of how the day would progress: first, we would learn how to start changing lives by getting our first two clients on Herbalife. Then we would delve into how to keep expanding our client base. Lastly, we would be shown how easy it is to climb up the Herbalife corporate ladder with diligence and hard work.
That’s when it hit me: There would be no fitness training. This was not a fitness-training seminar. This was a seminar on how to make money by selling Herbalife products. So many people at the beach workouts had been drinking Herbalife because they were on a training program given to them by one of the fitness coaches.
I was angry. I had sincerely thought that the coaches who invited me had wanted me to join their team because I was enthusiastic and dedicated to fitness. They had wanted me to join their team because they wanted me to buy a bunch of Herbalife products so that I could sell them to my friends (they get a profit when I do that)
I realized this at about 9:45 AM. The seminar lasted until 2:00 PM. I wasted 5 hours on a beautiful July Saturday learning about how to sell Herbalife. Five hours watching videos like this:
Five hours which I will never, ever, ever get back. I should have left after 45 minutes.
Thus ends my saga. Now, to delve into all this from a juicy, Cultural Studies perspective:
The first question that comes to mind, for me, is exactly what type of type of person has the time to delve into the copious and time consuming exercise routines that most of these fitness couches pursue. In her work "'Material Girl:' The Effacements of Postmodern Culture," Susan Bordo argues that those who have the time and financial means to pursue their ideal body often come from a more privileged financial class: "The precision technology of body-sculpting, once the secret of the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Rachel McLishes of the professional body-building world, has now become available to anyone who can afford the price of membership in a gym" (Bordo, 1100). A gym membership is certianily not a commodity that every American can afford, and in this case, the commodity of time is just is valuable. Whether working out at The Stairs, or running the various beach workout sessions, being a Fitness Coach takes a very large time commitment - one that would be impossible to hold down while working a full-time job. Thus, it has become clear to me that a majority of these Fitness Coaches are financially well off to begin with, or, in some cases, selling Fitness (and their body image), has become their full-time occupation.
Bordo Continues, noting "the breezy analogies comparing cosmetic surgery" (or in this case having the money to buy Herbalife products) "to fashion accessorizing are deeply mystifying. They efface, not only the inequalities of privilege, money, and time that prohibit most people from indulging in these practices, but the desperation that characterizes the lives of those who do" (1100). Bordo later inserts a rather pogniant testimony: "I will do anything, anything, to make myself look and feel better" (Tina Lizardi, 1101). Herbalife has positioned itself to profit handsomely on the desires of people like Ms. Lizardi. It promises to be the missing puzzle piece on the journey to achieving that ever elusive body - only assuming that you have copious amounts of time to excercise and hundreds of dollars a month to spend of Herbalife products.
In closing, I would be remiss to exclude my belief that Herbalife system seems to mirror a Marxian Capatalist Dynamic: "Those who own the means of production" (Herbalife-Pushing Fitness Coaches) profit handsomely from "those who must sell their labor to survive" (Average, working class American who attmept to get in shape by using Herbalife products) (Baker, 13). Most people will not be able to afford the time and money that Herbalife demands to sculpt that perfect body. But those who do have the time and money to achieve the perfect figure will profit handsomely by selling Herbalife to those who don't.
Herein ends my Herbalife bashing. Now for a bit of anti-essetialism:
As much as I resent Herbalife for wasting five hours of my Saturday and for emptying the pockets of well meaning Americans, their products are fantastic - really. I decided to give their product line a try this Summer as a supplement to my normal workout routine. I have seen very mesurable results, the most notable being cutting 12 minutes of of my half-marathon time and dropping my body fat by almost 3 percentage points.
Works Cited:
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008. Print.
Bordo, Susan. 'Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture, Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell, 1998
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