When you look back at how short men's shorts were in the 1970s and '80s, you have to ask why they didn't feel so self-conscious. Partly because people were more fit back then, including the legs -- not just man boobs and arm bulges from repetitive bench-pressing and curls. And their legs weren't over-developed from repetitive squats.
There was not a very big gym or "workout" culture back then, and yet the guys look non-freakishly fit. I've seen family pictures of my dad hanging out around age 30, and he had that look. So does Chevy Chase when they finally get to Wally World in Vacation, and so does Nick Nolte when scuba-diving in The Deep. If not the gym, how were they staying in shape?
There was a jogging craze around that time, but endurance runners don't get much muscle in the upper leg. In fact, they look pretty haggard. I remember my dad bike-riding a lot back then, although again if you've seen the typical schlub on a bike these days, you know that's not very plausible either. Not casual bike-riding anyway, another endurance sport.
You need some kind of explosive, intensive activity to develop decent leg muscle, and the average guy in the '80s wasn't training to be a football player or wrestler. Rather, what comes to mind is the mania back then for racquet sports that you just don't see anymore. In those sports, you aren't locomoting very much, kind of bouncing or staying prepared to sprint, but when you do move, it's in an intense burst. Every now and then, you're sprinting almost non-stop. And unlike joggers, sprinters develop larger legs. Plus it's not just running at a steady height, you're lunging down and springing back up.
Aside from stressing the upper leg muscles, all that burst-like movement gets your heart going a lot faster, above the threshold where your body recognizes that it's in a world where it's expected to really perform, and so it had better trim off the fat and toughen up the rest. If your activity level stays below that threshold, your body gets the signal that the world it has to interact with isn't so challenging -- just monotonous and never-ending. You improve your endurance, but not much else.
Unlike other sports, the equipment and clothing is pretty cheap for those played with rackets, and you don't need to get together a dozen others just to play a single game. And unlike working out at the gym, playing sports is social and fun. Both for overall psychological and physical fitness, it seems like racquet sports were just what the country was looking for.
OT but may be interesting to you:
ReplyDeleteEconomic analysis finds penicillin, not 'the pill', may have launched the sexual revolution -
For his study, Francis chose three measures of sexual behavior: The illegitimate birth ratio; the teen birth share; and the incidence of gonorrhea, a highly contagious sexually transmitted disease that tends to spread quickly.
"As soon as syphilis bottoms out, in the mid- to late-1950s, you start to see dramatic increases in all three measures of risky sexual behavior," Francis says. While many factors likely continued to fuel the sexual revolution during the 1960s and 1970s, Francis says the 1950s and the role of penicillin have been largely overlooked.
"The 1950s are associated with prudish, more traditional sexual behaviors," he notes. "That may have been true for many adults, but not necessarily for young adults. It's important to recognize how reducing the fear of syphilis affected sexual behaviors."
Tennis was huge in the 80s, with anyone having any pretense of upward mobility taking up the racquet. All through the late 70s and the 80s the tennis courts in Central Park were booked up weeks in advance. Nobody felt self-conscious in short shorts because the boomers (just entering their heyday) felt incredibly physical and sexy -- as they had a right too (you don't quite realize how odd and excessive these long shorts basketball players and other athletes now wear look to someone from that era. They look effeminate like flowing, knee-length skirts.) People exercised in the gym when they weren't playing tennis, but they weren't lifting weights, they were in aerobics classes, or trotting on treadmills (jogging in the park, too). Weight-lifting was still considered declasse into the late 80s, when it was taken up with non-ironic gusto by the oldest post-boomers.
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