Slate Magazine

Slate Magazine: "I read the same article and I didn't get the gym-hating tone you're alluding to. Sure it was prickly, but it was supposed to prick some sort of CW - that gyms are morally virtuous. I guess it worked as you came out swinging in defense.

You're taking it far too seriously. As if your God/ritual/community/symbol had been insultingly drawn in a cartoon. Or made the villain of a popular book/movie starring Tom Hanks. Which proves the author's point, no?

Yes, he did call gym goers preening and narcissistic, but is it that particularly inaccurate? I started a gym regimen a few months ago, and I can definitely attest to looking in the mirror far more often (what can I say, it's a beautiful sight!) - must have done it three times today already. And preening? Well, that's what's it's called when one takes the long way around the pool when the teenage lifeguard and her friend are chatting over on the other side as I did this morning (laughs at self).

I don't think narcissistic and selfless are polar opposites anyway. People are social animals who live under the gaze of others. Abstract away the social context in one way (the agency of the others), and one gets the extreme of just gazing, ie, narcissism. Abstract away the social context in a dfferent way (their physicality), and one gets the extreme of just judging, ie, asceticism and aestheticism.

Self-idolatry and self-immolation are the Scylla and Charbdis of a certain personality type, those that are too viable to abstract social contexts. Mysticism tries to tame the excesses of the first. When it overreaches, it veers into those of second."