Fitness Magazines

I can’t seem to get enough of them. The recipe posted below is taken from Oxygen, a magazine I picked up for the first time last week on a recommendation from my new favorite Web site, Put Down the Donut, which you should go read right now. Go ahead, I’ll still be here when you’re done. Assuming you ever want to leave it.

Unfortunately, apart from that recipe and a few other tidbits, Oxygen really didn’t do a thing for me. The advertising content of the magazine was really off-putting (six page spreads from Meso-tech with “articles” masquerading as editorial content). Some of the features were okay but one thing that really hit me about the magazine was it’s focus on the fitness models who are accomplished athletes.

I expected to really enjoy this spin on the typical waifish covergirls who grace the pages of most “women’s” magazines. Unfortunately, while I respect the hard work of these women, I cannot relate to them anymore than I can to their fashion counterparts.

Most of these models participate in something called the “Women’s Tri-Fitness” tournament. Now, I don’t know a thing about professional body building so I figured this would be interesting so I started reading an article about one woman’s training in preparation for such an event. What I discovered is that in addition to weight lifting and strength, the women also are judged on dance/gymnastics routines (talent) and the perfection of their physiques, as judged during a swimsuit competition.

So essentially, these are highly trained, physically fit athletes competing in a beauty pageant. Now, I’m not going to dismiss the tournament out of hand as being frivolous or sexist or any of those things, anymore than I would a regular pageant. It’s not my place and it’s not my thing. But that’s exactly why I was disappointed by the magazine and why I was unable to relate to the models. It’s just not my thing.

Finding my thing in any of these magazines is tough. First of all, my thing is gay. HA! And while women’s health and fitness mags have usually got lots of good information targeted towards all kinds of women, the overall target audience for these magazines is heterosexual women, between the ages of 20 and 40, either already raising children, being pregnant or trying to get pregnant. So yeah, the advice about pleasing my man in bed and breast feeding is pretty much lost on me:

“You can breast feed and still lose the baby fat! All while wearing this lovely shade of lavender!”

While I don’t expect to find a magazine on health and fitness strictly for lesbians, one that focuses on the unique health and emotional needs of my particular ilk, I try to look for ones that tone down the hetero- social/personal/emotional stuff and play up the news, research, food and exercise programs.

This is one reason I love the Internet fitness and diet community so much. I’ve been able to find other folks, gay and not gay, talking honestly about their success and failure in a no-bullshit kind of way. No fluff, just buff. I’d like to find a few more lesbian/bi fitness bloggers out there but so far they seem to be few and far between.

Role models and compatriots you can relate to on lots of levels are really important in this effort. At least to me. If you’re out there slaving away, come out of the closet and e-mail me. I’d like to compare notes.