Channel surfing the other night I came across something that
I hadn't seen for quite awhile. No not Mexican midget wrestling, you can catch
that on LA cable access Fridays at 2AM. I saw a Bowflex ad and I was a little shocked.
This ad was well … I don’t quite no how to say this…straight. This made me more
than a little nostalgic for those good ‘ol man on man soft core commercials
from the 80’s and 90’s. Now those of you
old enough to remember "Frankie Say.." t-shirts surely also remember
these spots . The young fair haired
man-child clad only in a headband, red gym shorts, tennis shoes and baby oil
goes through a series of muscle flexing exercises while an announcer extols the
virtues of the machine in his best Barry White basso. Then after nearly ten
minutes of slow pans across taught glistening man flesh some sweaty girl enters
holding a towel to frighten all the gay away. I’m sure that for 10 or 12 people
this ad was an informative pitch for an expensive piece of exercise equipment
for the rest of us it was in fact gay porn. And for a kid growing up in S.E.
Virginia the closest he would get to the real thing until he got out of
town.
Having made it out of town the Bowflex boy faded from my
memory. That was until 7 or so years ago when the company ran a new
infomercial. We again had a shirtless young man ( much more muscular than his
predecessor) demonstrating the new and improved machine but this time instead on the ultra masculine
voice over we had a hunky authority
figure explaining the benefits or resistance training . Now I’m sure
that the folks at Bowflex and their advertising agency intended these men to be
seen as doctor/patient, coach/athlete or trainer/ client which is no doubt how
some people saw it. Yours truly and many other slightly pervy people knew that
this wasn’t as much coach/athlete as it was daddy/boy. Space doesn’t allow a
full explanation of this dynamic so to those of you who have no idea what I’m
talking about…call a gay friend and ask him.
The new ads caught me off guard not in spite of all the
previous homoeroticism but because of it. This was not your gay uncle’s Bowflex
infomercial. This was straight people, straight, fat white people to be exact. Instead
of eye catching beautiful people of either sex, this was Mr. and Mrs. Strip
Center talking about how much weight they’ve lost as a result thrice weekly
workout. But they saved the best for last (or worst) for last. A fat piggy man
who was now a thin douche bag looking into the camera and saying “My fat
clothes? I give them to my fat friends” It was an amazing transformation, a
physical transformation anyway. I just can’t figure out how he got such a large
piece of apparatus into his trailer home.
Now I’m sure that this new tactic on behalf of Bowflex sells
a great deal more exercise equipment. And in this cyber age, boy-loving-boys in
the hinter lands aren’t looking to infomercials for daydream fodder but the
sentimental part of me misses the good old days when the guys in weight loss
commercials were people who already worked out 5 days a week, hadn’t eaten a
carbohydrate since they were 12 and knew that a thin layer of baby oil expertly
applied was all that stood between a 15 year old boy and ecstasy.
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