The meat of the issue
Vegetarians will be the first to tell you: Their numbers are
growing.
The evidence is pretty compelling at first glance. The
market for vegetarian foods in recent years has boomed - and
with no end in sight. Everywhere you look: Soy this, rice
that, tofu the other thing, and veggie-burgers at the drive-
thru! It's enough to make a hard-core carnivore cringe...
But wait a minute here. Is there REALLY such an avalanche of
support migrating to the vegetarian fringe? Is everyone
really going all green and leafy on me? Have the animal-
rights wackos finally won? As it turns out, the answer is NO.
According to the latest estimates, only about 3% of the U.S.
adult population is strictly vegetarian - hardly a
significant body of, well, bodies. So who's buying all that
vegetable-based fodder that seems like it's stacked to the
ceiling at every corner grocery store?
The FLEXITARIANS.
In case you haven't heard it yet, the term flexitarian
(voted 2003's most useful word by the American Dialect
Society) is the modern-day word for self-
classified "vegetarians" who eat meat (?), or carnivores
who've begun consuming more vegetable-based foods. It seems
that the PC vegetable-lovers have found a way to rename the
vast middle-ground of American eaters with a term that
inserts enough of their politically charged rhetoric to
boost their cause's visibility. It's diabolically brilliant,
really: Normal eaters of both meats and vegetables are
now "flexitarians." Pretty slick, huh? The proper term
is "omnivore," but who cares?
Look, there are millions of people out there who think of
themselves as vegetarians (or tell all their chic, PC
friends they are), but secretly chow down on burgers and
sausage when no one's looking. And conversely, there are
plenty of regular meat eaters out there who have begun
buying and eating large quantities of meatless foods because
of the aggressive marketing and increased exposure of these
products.
But the bottom line is the same either way: No matter what
name you call them by, vegetarians who are closet carnivores
are better off for every burger they smuggle down their
throats (as long as it is rare or medium rare).
And we meat-eaters are compromising our health every time we
consume more than the occasional ration of animal protein-
less fodder.
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An exercise trend worth another look... or two, or three
Boy, the exercise wackos have really outdone themselves this
time.
In just the latest in what seems like an endless parade of
ridiculous (not to mention unhealthy) trends in iron-
pumping, aerobics, and all the other such lunacy we've had
pumped into our collective health consciousness in the last
thirty years, you can now murder your joints and stress out
your hearts learning that age-old and sacred ritual of...
Pole dancing.
That's right: The latest craze in fitness (for women, of
course) that's sweeping through gyms in certain cities
across the country is the act of dancing lasciviously while
peeling off their clothing to seductive music. Stripping, in
other words.
Once seen as unfit (and I use that term loosely) for
anywhere but behind the closed doors of dark,
smoky "gentlemen's clubs," the art of the pole-assisted
striptease has hit the mainstream in a big way - and some
people are paying big bucks to get in shape doing it. This
trend doesn't end at the gym, either. There are home
exercise videos and pole-installation kits out there now,
and orders are pouring in from nearly all of the 50 states,
according to a recent New York Times article.
While this trend is all well and good for those watching it
(especially for us men, I'm sure), health-wise, it's surely
just as much quackery as Jazzercise, step aerobics, speed-
walking, kick-boxing, and every other fitness fad of the
last 3 decades. But here's what I want to know: Isn't this
blatant sexual objectification (albeit in the name of
fitness)? Where does the women's movement stand on all this?
Besides half-naked around a pole, that is.
Stripping things down to the naked truth,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
