Toned bodies sweating through skin-tight outfits. Men and women laughing and flirting with each other. Students gazing at themselves in full-length mirrors, flexing multiple muscle groups in harmony.
This is the daily scene at ASU’s Student Recreation Center.
Mary Erin and her friend Sherrie Meltvedt, both 19, aren’t surprised by their surroundings.
“Sometimes girls walk around here looking for their future husbands,” Meltvedt says.
But this idea doesn’t seem outrageous to the two women. They admit that, among other reasons, they are working out to look good.
Erin, a sophomore, blames the media for creating the idea that everyone must achieve a perfect physical image.
“You have to obtain the ideal, the standard,” she says.
It’s the pursuit of this so-called perfect image that seems to have students working out in great numbers. The thousands of trim and muscular students gliding across campus attest to this.
But so do the raw numbers. SRC records show that, over the last two years, the rec center has admitted an average of 2,500 people a day.
Other factors, such as the wide availability of health information and the desire to be fit, are driving people to the gym, as well. But the key factor for Erin, and for the droves of active students like her, she believes, is vanity.
Is image everything?
Jennifer Thorsteinsson, 22, an exercise science senior, has been a facility manager at the SRC for more than two years. She also works out — with both weights and cardio exercises — three to four times a week.
From her position at the front desk, Thorsteinsson has seen great masses of students darting through the turnstiles. She believes that a large majority of these students work out, “for looks (and) appearance.”
“I see girls come in here with full make-up on in coordinated outfits,” she says.
Thorsteinsson says the men seem to care less, but “sometimes they’ll roll their sleeves up” to show off their arms, she says. The weight room disallows tank tops for hygiene and machine-maintenance reasons, but Thorsteinsson says she believes a lot more men would wear revealing tank tops in the gym if they could.
Michelle Jung, 22, a former competitive bodybuilder working on a master’s degree in Kinesiology, agrees: “I think [for] young people it is much more vanity. In the weight room [especially], there are more people who try to look a certain way in terms of their body and how they are dressed — guys and girls.”
Jung says, however, she sees nothing wrong with wanting to look good.
“I’m proud of [my body]. I’ve worked a lot on it,” she says.
Jung, however, says she draws the line at people who obsess over their appearance, who drive themselves in an unhealthy way. She says she sees students come into the gym three or four times every day or take three or four aerobics classes in a row. She says she also watches both men and women obsess over their weight and sees how it all comes back to appearance.
“I know that a lot of people base how they feel that day on how big their arms look. People determine if their day is going to be good or bad when they get on the scale that morning,” she says.
The SRC is not the only place where students working out seem primarily interested in their appearance.
Students at off-campus gyms are running and pumping up for looks as well, says P. J. Corona, manager of The World Gym in Tempe. Corona says that about 50 percent of his customers are students, and he says their vanity is obvious.
“I’ve got mirrors everywhere and half of these people are in love with themselves. Hopefully they don’t fall into the pond and drown themselves because they look at themselves too hard in the mirror,” he says.
Corona calls ASU a “party school” where looking good is an ambition of the students. He says The World Gym gears its marketing around image to attract students.
Pick-up artists
Both Jung and Thorsteinsson say that men and women are often interested in more than just looking good at the gym. Some students, they say, are as equally interested in how others look.
“People do come in here to try to meet other people,” Jung says.
Thorsteinsson says that the swimming pool in particular is a “meat market.” She says that, on a Friday afternoon for example, the pool is packed — but there’s no one in the water. She also says that, while she doesn’t try to pick up guys in the SRC, men often hit on her there.
Jung says she doesn’t actively try to pick up guys at the gym either, but like Thorsteinsson, she is approached often.
“I think that’s all [men] ever do sometimes,” she says.
Jung says that women also are looking to meet men at the SRC, though not as obviously.
“Girls are more subtle. They don’t go up to guys and start talking to them. It’s more the way they dress. I’m sure that there are girls that come when certain guys are working out. They’re definitely trying to get attention,” Jung says.
But Jung adds that she does not believe that trying to meet someone at the gym is necessarily a bad thing.
“You would want to meet somebody who shares the same kind of values as you would. I would want to be with somebody who worked out and who kept fit.”
In the flesh
Many students who work out also concede that there is a lot of pressure to stay fit and maintain a certain image.
Both Jung and Thor- steinsson say that young people feel pressured not only by their peers but also by the media, by the perfect bodies of models they see portrayed on television and in magazines.
Jung sees current fashions as much more revealing then they were even a few years ago.
“[These days] people just show a lot more skin,” she says.
Thorsteinsson says that she feels some pressure to look good, though she ultimately doesn’t need to work out to be attractive.
Other aspects of her life, she says, such as her job and her former sorority presidency, make her feel just as confident. She says that having a boyfriend isn’t necessary for her self-confidence and that she went through most of college single.
Thorsteinsson adds that she recognizes the importance of having self-esteem predicated on aspects of her life and person other than her body and people’s reaction to it.
Thorsteinsson, a former figure skater, started working out when she was 16. She says that although her appearance is a factor when working out, she does it mainly for health and fitness reasons. She says, even if she were married with six kids, she would still keep up her current workout levels.
“I want to maintain my fitness level. I like to be able to run a certain distance without getting tired,” Thorsteinsson says.
Her desire to stay fit and healthy, to develop and retain strength and endurance, is echoed by many students who work out, even those who cite vanity as a primary motivator.
Mind over media
Colby Swartz, 20, an exercise science junior who works out four times a week, says that he thinks his generation might reverse the trend of physical un-fitness among American adults.
“[Young] people want to be physically fit and in general not overweight,” Swartz says.
Swartz attributes this attitude partially to the increased amount of health and fitness information available in the media. The popular magazine Men’s Health, for example, almost entirely devotes its content to fitness. Its current edition features headlines such as “The Better-sex Diet plan” and “Fight Fat and Win.”
But alongside the health articles, the magazine runs underwear-clad models and fashion spreads advertising men’s clothing.
Thorsteinsson agrees that more education exists now than even a few years ago but warns that a lot of this information, especially the information found in popular magazines, can be misleading and sometimes erroneous. She also decries the diet pills and weight loss techniques that men and women seek in pursuit of perfect bodies.
“The information is not always accurate. There’s a lot of stuff people use for the quick fix that is not a quick fix,” she says.
Many who consistently work out have also learned that if they experience a minor period of inactivity — even a few days — they start to feel sluggish and unmotivated, says Terrain Foust, an emergency medical technician who has worked in the mental health field.
Consistently working out causes the body to become accustomed to amplified levels of certain chemicals, he says. Even a short period of physical inactivity causes a drop-off in these chemicals and usually results in feelings of fatigue and lethargy. These feelings are almost immediately noticeable, says Foust, and drive many people to consistently work out to avoid them.
Swartz attests to this feeling.
“There are days when you don’t want to come do it, but I know for me it just makes me feel that much better, ” he says.
Foust mentions that people affected by these chemical drops often imagine that their appearance is affected as well as their body chemistry.
“People often feel like they look fat or imagine their muscles shrinking, which is not the case,” he says. “It drives them back into the gym.”
Health over vanity
The SRC’S wellness program recognizes that many students focus primarily on their appearance as a goal of working out.
Because of this, the wellness program makes it a mission to educate students about all the aspects of health and fitness, says Joana Ziuraitis, the SRC’s Fitness and Wellness program coordinator. She says that a complete picture of health and fitness includes what she and the SRC describe as “mind, body, spirit and community.”
“Wellness is trying to find a balance between those different areas,” says Ziuraitis, 28.
Ziuraitis, who is a doctoral student in exercise and wellness, describes the concept of wellness as an ideal of overall health that the SRC tries to include in every program.
“The weight room is the body aspect of [wellness]. We do offer programs that are geared towards learning how to become in better [physical] shape,” she adds.
But she emphasizes that mind, spirit and community are just as important. For mind and spirit, the SRC offers a variety of programs throughout the semester including yoga, relaxation and stress management.
Part of the community aspect of the wellness program is to involve students in community activities such as the AIDS Walk and Race for the Cure. The social atmosphere of the SRC itself — students interacting in a safe and comfortable environment — is another community aspect of the wellness program.
Ziuraitis suggests that for students preoccupied solely with their physical appearance, getting educated about overall wellness can relieve stress, bolster self-esteem, and help the student feel happier and healthier.
“[The SRC] tries to develop an atmosphere where [students] feel more comfortable, so there aren’t just people looking at themselves in the mirror,” Ziuraitis says.
Truth of the matter
One of the wellness program’s main objectives is to make students aware of the wellness resources on campus. The SRC, Student Health and Wellness, Child and Family Services and Counseling and Consultation are among the many campus resources organized to help students with concerns such as alcohol use, depression and loneliness, fitness, nutrition and many others.
In particular, Counseling and Consultation helps students with body image issues and eating disorders. Dr. Jennifer Boyce, of Counseling and Consultation, defines body image issues as a person’s distorted view of their own body. Very slim people might consider themselves fat, for example. This attitude sometimes leads to unhealthy behavior such as purging or over-exercising, Boyce says.
Boyce blames the media in part for negative body images.
“[Many] media images are totally unrealistic to obtain,” she says.
Boyce says that in counseling students look at the issues that might contribute to negative self-image.
She adds that a goal of counseling is to try and help students become happier with the bodies they have.
Prabidhi Adhikari, 19, a biology junior, stresses that simple enjoyment is also a prime factor when she works out.
“I work out for pleasure. Lifting and music takes my mind off everything. It’s recreational,” Adhikari says.
Many physically active students share Adhikari’s enjoyment, including Jung and Thorsteinsson. But Jung and Thorsteinsson maintain that the prime motivator for most people is still appearance.
“[In this society] you’re either a Victoria Secrets model or you're nothing," Erin says.
Based on his experiences at The World Gym, Corona agrees.
"Everyone wants to be good looking, and whoever says they don't is lying," he says.
Reach the reporter at michael.b.green@asu.edu.
