Cosmetic surgery ads have invaded my safe space
Everyone needs a safe space. For some, it's the cafe on the corner with the too-small tables. For others, it's the arms of the just-right person. For me, it's a gym with Avicii's greatest hits pumping at 140 decibels through airwaves sodden with vaporised sweat.
Or it was, before my little slice of heaven's 31 (yes, I've counted them) television screens started playing cosmetic surgery ads every 12 minutes. 'Male jawline enhancement', 'intimate area rejuvenation', 'fat dissolving injections', 'skin tightening', 'hair loss treatment' – if you thought body dysmorphia was just for the ladies, get ready fellas!
Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, 'the gym is the temple, and the weights are the altar'. For 10 years, I've studied the lifting liturgies, himbo hymns and calloused psalms, and it's made me a more confident and open person.
Confident because, through hard work, I can do things that would astonish my younger self. Open because, through bulged discs, I am incapable of crossing my arms standoffishly.
At its shredded core, the gym is an innocent place. One where men can wear their insecurities on their sleeves – typically lions, Roman numerals and, for the discerning white guy, Polynesian geometries. It's a place where you can say 'your biceps are incredible, dude' and 'I like it when the numbers go up' and pretend – just for a while – that lifting heavy things is what you were put on God's green earth to do.
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Well, that innocence is under siege. Since time immemorial, my gym's television screens have been reserved for (a) that game show hosted by Andy from Hamish & Andy, and (b) reruns of NRL games from the 80s (when men were men and CTE was just a twinkle in a researcher's eye).
Not any more. The disturbing nature of the ads is made worse by the disturbing nature of the spokesperson, a man I can only describe as the Mayor of Uncanny Valley.
His skin is stretched so tight around his scalp that sympathetic viewers are at risk of compression headaches. His eyes hover with the same peculiar stillness that makes fighter pilots call in UFOs. His high beam veneers do all the smiling for him.
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