Upper Body Gym Quotes

At the gym that his father built on the second-floor porch, young Roosevelt proceeded to work out feverishly every day for the next five years, slowly building muscle and strengthening his upper body against his weak lungs and for the future. By his early twenties the battle against asthma was essentially over, he’d worked—almost literally—that weakness out of his body.

On a recent HBO special, Roseanne Arnold, who, incidentally, collects Barbies, excoriated what she considered to be Barbie's middle-class-ness. Why didn't Mattel make, say, "trailer-park Barbie"? But to many upper-middle-class women, all post-1977 Barbies are Trailer Park Barbie. Ironically, given the knee-jerk antagonism to Barbie's body, it is one of her few attributes that doesn't scream "prole." Her thinness—indicative of an expensive gym membership and possibly a personal trainer—definitely codes her as middle- or upper-middle-class. In Distinction, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu notes that "working class women . . . are less aware of the 'market' value of beauty and less inclined to invest . . . sacrifices and money in cultivating their bodies." Likewise, Barbie's swanlike neck elevates her status. A stumpy neck is a lower-class attribute, Fussell says.

A bonobo is physically as different from a chimpanzee as a Concorde is from a Boeing 747. Even chimps would have to admit that the bonobo has more style. A bonobo’s body is graceful and elegant, with piano-player hands and a relatively small head. The bonobo has a flatter, more open face with a higher forehead than the chimpanzee. A bonobo’s face is black, its lips are pink, its ears small, and its nostrils wide. Females have breasts; they are not as prominent as in our species, but definitely A-cup compared to the flat-chested other apes. Topping it all off is the bonobo’s trademark hairstyle: long black hair neatly parted in the middle. The biggest difference between the two apes is body proportion. Chimps have large heads, thick necks, and broad shoulders, they look as if they work out in the gym every day. Bonobos have a more intellectual appearance, with slim upper bodies, narrow shoulders, and thin necks. A lot of their weight is in their legs, which are longer than a chimp’s. The result is that when knuckle-walking on all fours, the chimp’s back slopes down from powerful shoulders, whereas the bonobo’s remains fairly horizontal because of its elevated hips. When standing or walking upright, a bonobo seems to straighten its back better than a chimp, giving the bonobo an eerily humanlike posture. For this reason, bonobos have been compared to Lucy, our Australopithecus ancestor.

I stared at him, trying to see what a stranger would see. He did have great hair; it was thick and dark brown and fell slightly over his forehead. But his eyes were the nicest part of him, they were this neat hazel color and they crinkled up when he joked around. He had a nice smile, but I could still remember when he wore braces. Body-wise, I already knew he was built because I went to the gym with him and he could bench 250. But usually when I looked at his body, I was more envious of his upper body strength than thinking anything, well, sexual.