FROM THE ARCHIVES:Shades of
Mad Mencan be detected in this editorial from 1964 which extolled the merits of floating along on alcohol and nicotine (in moderation, of course) and derided the coming future of "rigorous and joyless exercise". –
JOE JOYCE
THE PASSION of the middle-aged man for planned exercise, for diet, for cutting down on smoking and drinking is explained in terms of the desire to keep fit and bring down weight.
Fit for what? It does not require great agility or muscularity to steer a desk, and neither the bloom of health on the cheek nor the slim trim figure cut any particular ice with trade unions or business rivals when the chips are down on the board table.
There are many who will argue that one’s mental powers are at their best when the body is quietly pottering along, mildly charged with alcohol and soothed by a steady stream of nicotine into the system.
This will not have many supporters to-day, for the truth is that we live far too much for what the neighbours say. And the neighbours are now saying that fitness and slimness are next to godliness.
Still, a man to-day cannot walk to work just because he likes it. People would not believe him if he said it. He would be thought eccentric, bucolic or mean. If he should cycle to work, the outcry about exhibitionism would be hard to hold down.
There is, indeed, a marked trend to rigorous and joyless exercise. The home-exercisers are the most blatant examples of this tyranny of modern times.
It would be very hard to convince us that 10 minutes panting on the carpet in the morning added a day to one’s life or contributed one extra ray of sunshine to the entourage of the martyr.
Yet such is the power of suggestion, of the effect of admass attributes in our lives to-day, that at about 8 a.m. there arises all over Dublin – they’re too sensible in Cork – groan upon groan as middle-aged joints and muscles are dragged through exercises recommended by – of all people, the Canadian Air Force.
Wives, of course, are behind much of this. Female vanity does not stop short when the wife can restrain herself within a 32-inch hipline.
Her husband must still be able to boast that he can actually get into the dinner jacket he bought at college – of course, it’s not the one hes wearing: he has had two since then.
We await liberation from the doctors. We believe that medicine is an art, and fashions in art change. We have had Dr Paul Dudley White and his cycling; we have had the rage to slimness with diets of all fat, no fat; a lot of food occasionally, at long intervals, and, a few days ago, the advice that to keep slim one should eat a little often.
Some day soon a new star will arise and we will be told: eat what you like, drink what you like, a little of what you fancy does you good, a quiet mind and a happy outlook are the best medicine.
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