BY FLETCHER WORTMANN

In print | September 18, 2008

Calling it “Parrish Beach” is kind of cruel, isn’t it? It’s a nice stretch of lawn, but calling it a beach has certain implications; the smell of fresh ocean salt, the sand and the cigarette butts between one’s toes. And­­­ the beautiful people. Their bodies are lean and muscular, tight red spandex restraining the wobbly parts. Their skin is golden brown and just slightly crispy, like a perfectly roasted marshmallow.
A comparison might be made, incidentally, between the marshmallow and the physique of the average Swarthmore student. Specifically the pasty, globby marshmallows, with charcoal at the corners and the tip of the stick broken off inside, and then maybe a mosquito flies into it and suffocates.

Understand that I don’t intend to complain about the absence of conventionally attractive people at Swarthmore. I think our supposed ugliness is partially exaggerated and partially a self-fulfilling prophecy and that anyways each of us is on the inside a beautiful and compelling snowflake or something and that’s what’s really important. But slowly over the course of a semester a startling metamorphosis takes place, like a butterfly’s wings wilting into its back before it collapses into a caterpillar. Acne and eczema spread like crimson plastic soldiers in a particularly one-sided game of Risk. Our skin takes on cadaverous hues and any muscular residue breaks down. Our hair achieves the texture and consistency of an Alaskan wildlife refugee after eight years of conservative administration. The cumulative effect is not unlike watching a slideshow of human evolution in reverse, with the modern human degenerating back into an unshaven, lice-ridden ape and then into some kind of amphibious squirrel. Swarthmore is the picture of Dorian Gray of American education; we wither and rot away in someone’s attic while the students of other schools thrive, their sins never disrupting their eternal hotness.

Some blame must also be placed, unfortunately, on the college itself. Although the fitness requirements are well-intentioned, 15 minutes of treading water followed by four semesters of Sino-Indian yoga-chorus folk circle-dancing is not enough to ensure perpetual wellness. One must also consider the meal plan, apparently designed to prevent students from ever actually consuming food, encouraging us to hoard every available calorie like a precious gem. However, conscientious students can find healthy alternatives; the famous Phoenix breakfast sandwiches, for example, contain only 45 percent of the daily recommended value for saturated fats and only two percent of the same for flesh-eating bacteria. Ultimately it is the student who fails and neglects exercise and the student who must carry this burden on stringy, poorly-developed deltoids.

The Mullan Tennis Center, presumably named for its controversial policies with regards to cross-dressing and Hun invaders, is the last and best hope in their pursuit of total jacked-ness. Unfortunately it is a bewildering and terrifying place, bristling with Rube Goldbergesque exercise contraptions. They look like the offspring of lawnmowers and hamster aquariums; they are like the sensitive modern versions of medieval torture devices. Entering the gym, one is overwhelmed by the premonition that these infernal machines might at any moment reconfigure their component parts, sprout bladed laser mandibles and attempt to murder Shia Lebouf. Don’t be fooled by the ample red-leather padding and the clear, friendly diagrams of stick figures having their arms broken. These machines exist for one reason and for one reason only; to cause you pain. Pain in the most extraordinary quantities. Pain in a horrible rainbow of flavors and collectible colors, and all of the colors are the color of death.

You will leave the gym in agony, your body contorted and twisted like a one-person Kama Sutra. But over the course of hundreds of hours of meaningless suffering you will achieve something remarkable. You will be healthy, slim, your bodily fluids permanently tainted with strains of granular artificial protein (protein that will nurture and nourish you; protein like mother’s milk, like ambrosia, at only $49.99 a barrel). And, most importantly, you will be totally the new hotness. You will be crowded with Swarthmore admirers of several genders, orientations and species; they will clutch at you with horny fingers, teeth bared like those of a supplicant orangutan, in a fervor so great that they would tear the flesh from your body and lick at your bones with sandpaper tongues.

I am unsure if that last sentence was intended to be erotic or carnivorous. At this point I wonder if there is any meaningful difference between the two.

I conclude that I myself am unworthy of such a program; although those of you who choose to follow that noble path, to achieve excruciating pain and to win the affections of cannibalistic Smeagols, are welcome to do so. As for myself, I will continue my rigorous fitness regimen of Wii tennis, vodka lunches and insomnia. Should I perish as a result of this, felled by muscular atrophy or terminal carpal tunnel syndrome, perhaps that is as God intends.

Fletcher is a senior. You can reach him at fwortma1@swarthmore.edu.

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