Our obsessiveness about exercise and health seems supremely anti-gnostic.
But the opposite is the case. Consider the imagery: "Buns of steel" and "Abs of iron" and "Cable-like biceps."
The bodybuilder aims to exercise himself to robothood. His goal to exercise until he's elevated to a state beyond human. He wants to escape his inevitably soft and pliable, penetrable and vulnerable, fleshliness.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 01:06 PM
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