Word: gyms
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...ways, though not entirely extinct, are fast fading. “Lifestyles have changed,” says Robert Minturn ’61, a member of the Somerset Club. “Young people work-they have a sandwich at their desk and then go to the gym for 40 minutes. They won’t spend an hour and a half at the Somerset in the middle of the day.” Even the older crowd is more likely to power-lunch at Radius and later cap the day by working it off on the squash courts...
Consider what they're spending. Last year American men forked over $2 billion for gym memberships--and another $2 billion for home exercise equipment. Men's Health ("Rock-hard abs in six weeks!" it screams every other issue) had 250,000 subscribers in 1990; now it has 1.6 million. In 1996 alone, men underwent some 700,000 cosmetic procedures...
...winners, which he called up on the Internet in his office last week. "Look at this guy," Pope exclaims when he clicks on the 1943 winner, Jules Bacon. "He couldn't even win a county body-building contest today." Indeed, there are 16-year-olds working out at your gym who are as big as Bacon. Does that necessarily mean that today's body builders--including those 16-year-olds--are 'roided? Pope is careful. "The possibility exists that rare or exceptional people, those with an unusual genetic makeup or a hormonal imbalance," could achieve the muscularity and leanness...
Patrick says many of his teen customers, because they're short on cash, won't pay for a gym membership "until they've saved up for a cycle [of steroids]. They don't see the point without them." The saddest customers, he says, are the little boys, 12 and 13, brought in by young fathers. "The dad will say, 'How do we put some weight on this kid?' with the boy just staring at the floor. Dad is going to turn him into Hulk Hogan, even if it's against his will...
...TIME he had always been a short kid who got picked on. He started working out at about 14, and he bought muscle magazines for advice. The pictures taunted him: he sweated, but he wasn't getting as big as the men in the pictures. Other men in his gym also made him feel bad. When he found out they were on steroids, he did two cycles himself, even though he knew they could be dangerous...