LOOKING GOOD: EVOLUTION FITNESS AND EVOLUNTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, MARTIAL ARTS AND MANTIC ART

Currently, I am a member of two gyms, EVOLUTION FITNESS DOWNTOWN for strength and conditioning and ASCENDANT MARTIAL ARTS for Muay Thai kickboxing.

FACTOID:  I have been a gym member practically all my adult life.  I started out my weight training at the University of Regina gym, then joined the Regina YMCA gym, then Gold’s, then Evolution.  I began my martial arts training on a high school mat at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School, then joined Ross Wilkinson Karate in Regina, then Siam Kickboxing (Regina), and now Ascendant Martial Arts.

But why!  Why do I go to the gym?  Why does anyone go to the gym?

In survey after survey when gym members are asked why they go to the gym, they answer with the same recurring reasons: to lose weight, to build or tone muscle, and to socialize.  And perhaps to be more precise, losing weight and gaining muscle could really mean striving for peachy behinds and toned arms or big biceps and steel abs, whereas, the socializing could really mean to be looking for love in all the right places, rather than cruising the nightclubs or dating websites. 

Evolutionary psychologists continually seek to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – those functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution.  Staying in this evolutionary mindset, our sole (soul) purpose in life on this planet is simply to seek a mate and continue the species, and when we go to the gym we go only to look good to assist in our pursuit of a mate.

This essay shall focus on this continuing-the-species argument for going to the gym.  And too, without any slight to any member of any sexual community, this essay is about attracting partners for heterosexual couplings, in order to procreate for an evolutionary purpose.   

Okay then.  My reason for going to the gym is based upon LOOKISM.  Yes LOOKISM.  Lots of us suffer from Lookism, that discriminatory practice or prejudice against someone based solely upon looks.  Such judgements are based upon how well or poorly they meet our (imagined) standard of beauty.  Factoid:  Actually, I calculate my daily regimen of going to the gym to be a combination of Lookism (I believe that people are judging me for my look) and Narcissism (my rather obsessive interest in my own physical appearance).

Though most gyms lose 50% of their new members within the first six months of their membership starting, going to the gym to look good is still a BIG industry.  I cannot help but notice the two gyms of which I have a membership are starting to get packed again after the Covid restrictions have been relaxed.  And I cannot help but inductively reason that most of these returning members are returning in their attempt to look good.

From the evolutionary perspective, to continue the species, it is important to attract a mate. And it is not coincidence that human mating is of a special interest to evolutionary psychologists who aim to investigate our evolved mechanisms to attract and secure mates. 

Now back to the gym perspective, the first thing to increase one’s magnetism for such a mate attraction is to look good.  Striving to build muscle, to get ripped, or to become svelte are certainly worthy goals when one wants to look good in a physical sense.

As shallow as I may seem while expressing this from the skinny of an evolutionary perspective, it really is not a stretch to believe that humans judge one another, first, by their appearance (lookism), and therefore project how they judge others by logically thinking this is the way they, too, are judged by others.  Thus, anyone going to the gym with the goal of looking good could be like me in their suffering smacks of self-concept (narcissism).

Whether this be a purely evolutionary genetic trait, or a Jungian archetypical trait, everyone knows that along the attraction and mating continuum for procreation is to express in metonymy fashion, it is face first, then holding hands, then touching toes.  Intellectual (like-minded) and spiritual (kindred soul) connections come second and third, respectively.

Yes, for all the above reasons I go to the gym.  Going to the gym is a retreat to a conclave of familiar strangers to socialize, while at the same time the mantic art to stave off my impending infirmity.  All that I seem to need right now in narcissistic fashion is to lose eight pounds and have my abs of steel and my guns (biceps) registered and ready for a summer of busking in tight white t-shirts.

SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT! 

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week, are my friends, MORGAN, the British Columbian mountain-lover, and JOANNE, owner of BOOMTOWN DRUMS in Regina.