On the habits of the gym-crawling-mate-shopper

copyright 2005 Dale Hansen - no reproduction without permission

Yesterday was cleavage day at the gym. This festival is not restricted to a particular body type. Or gender. Men and women of all ages, shapes, sizes and chest hair content come to participate.

To enter, you only need a low cut top that shows off your … current pectoral development progress. In some cases, the entries are more appealing than appalling; however, these instances are in the severe minority. It’s not a matter of how much extra weight you carry - after all, even attractive cleavage is nothing more than a a pound or so of fat, what really matters seems to be in the way it’s presented.

For instance, if you have a chest full of hair, it’s really better if you’re male. This is not a forgone conclusion, nor is it a restriction from participation in the cleavage day festival.

If your breasts are bigger than Dolly Parton’s, it’s probably better to be female. This too is not a forgone conclusion, nor is it a restriction from participation.

There are some for whom cleavage day is a daily occurrence. These people generally go to the gym for other reasons than exercise. They still workout, but only to the point were they have an attractive sheen of mist about them. The gym is the natural place for them to find a physically fit someone of the opposite sex.

Attracting these potential mates requires showing to the sort of person they seek that one is a worthy conquest. In this regard, tight, revealing clothing acts much like the plumage of a peacock to their quarry.

This is not a special occasion like cleavage day; rather it is a twist on the most ancient ritual, the mating dance. Where birds may puff and twitter, they bounce on treadmills. Where a coyote may bray at the moon to call his mate, they may grunt and groan under the weight of lead barbells. These actions are quite analogous.

The ones who arrive to mate-shop stand out sharply. In women, they wear very little and exercise like they actually need to. If they did, they wouldn’t be caught dead in anything that revealing. The mate-shopping woman will normally gravitate to the treadmill or the stair stepper, as these machines induce the particular style of mating dance common to the gym-crawling-mate-shopper. Most of this dance takes place at the chest level. This is commonly called the “cleavage flounce”.

Gym-crawling-mate-shopping males are only slightly harder to spot. These cannot be defined as the ones who try to steal glimpses at the “cleavage flounce” females. Every male in the gym is engaged in this activity. Neither can they be categorized as the ones who stare openly. Anyone who acknowledges the flounce is removed or insulted/rejected/avoided by the female.

This selection process insures a line of polite humans who are more and more capable of looking without appearing to look. This implies a sort of natural selection.

I have no idea how that might be a survival trait.

Gym-crawling-mate-shopping males are typically those who wear “muscle shirts”. Also called armpit shirts, they are the ones that look like a grocery store bag, and have no function other than to cover the abdomen.

These shirts enhance the chest and upper arms, thus expressing to the potential female “Hey, check me, I’m buff”.

“Muscle shirts” are not limited to the gym-crawling-mate-shopping males, however. This is one of reasons they are harder to spot in the general herd. These shirts are also worn by men whose message could only be “Hey, check me out; I’m wearing an undershirt”.

There are also those who signal the “hey, check me out; I have a lot of hair in my arm pits.” Strangely, this last group seems to be convinced that excessive pit hair is a “babe magnet”.

Another indicator of the gym-crawling-mate-shopping male is the waiting period. When a gym-crawling-mate-shopping male sits at one of the weight machines, he will wait until a gym-crawling-mate-shopping female sits in a position where she can plainly see the vast amount of weights go up and down.

The gym-crawling-mate-shopping male believes that if you lift a thousand pounds, and no gym-crawling-mate-shopping females see it, you’ve only wasted sweat. The gym-crawling-mate-shopping male should not be confused with the gym-crawling-ego-massager who waits for another male to notice how much he can lift. This last is not (usually) for mating purposes, but rather an alpha-male challenge.

A quick note: when in the locker room, there is no alpha-male challenge. In the locker room, all males fixedly stare at walls, lockers, the floor and other inanimate objects to avoid even the remote possibility of being thought to be looking at the sweaty, hairy, out of shape, pale white guy stripping next to you. This social fear is probably left over from the common trauma known as “high school gym class”.

There aren’t any real cases of alpha-female. Certainly there are instances of female gym-crawling-ego-massagers, but when the females compete, it’s usually for a reason: getting on the treadmill or bicycle in front of the one television that isn’t showing the sports channel or competing over the cute guy in the muscle shirt (no, the one without the armpit hair). The gym-crawling-ego-massager male will compete in the alpha-male contest out of pure instinct.

There are many different types of people who converge at the gym. Not all are looking to mate, nor are all of them looking to attract someone else at the gym. Often there will be those who are there to attract the attention of someone who isn’t at the gym. Sometimes, they seek to attract the mate they already have at home.

There are those who arrive for medical reasons, for example - having been informed by a doctor that they need to exercise. This subgroup may be hard to identify, but identification is not required. Typically no one in this subgroup ever comes back.

There are those who simply defy rational explanation. For example, the woman who started up a treadmill and ran it at 10 mile per hour for 15 minutes straight - without ever once getting on it. She spent the entire time next to the treadmill, on the floor, stretching. When she was finished, she turned off the treadmill and left the building. It was the machine and the machine alone that got all the exercise.

There is a gentleman who gets on the treadmill everyday and walks at a good, brisk pace, though he doesn’t run. This may not seem unusual at the surface, but in this instance he walks backwards on the tread. This could be indicative of attracting a mate, or it could be a bizarre alpha-male challenge. A sort of “look what I can do” that may go all the way back to that most primitive time – junior high.

The machines in the gym have begun adapting to the environment into which they have been consigned. The other day a gym-crawling-mate-shopping male was physically thrown off of a treadmill. The machine ejected him, possibly for excessive armpit hairs, and he was thrust into a Stairmaster which, in turn, pitched him into the nearest wall.

The weight machines are a little more forgiving than the treadmills, Stairmasters, bicycles, etc. Weight machines seem to prefer to cause damage that won’t be felt until the next day.

The area of the gym that seems to get the most action is the little corner at the side, where for a mere $4.50, anyone – regardless of their reasoning for being there – can get a drink with enough sugar to give Al Gore ADD.