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Natural foods are also popular because they reputedly make folks look better. In the fitness game, appearances are deceivingly important. Looking good, whether for love or money, is a national aim. "We're just madly brushing our teeth, shampooing, and holding our stomachs when we make love," complains California Psychologist Michael Evans. "We've made the ideal physical type one that is really difficult to achieve."
That may be so, but few Americans are willing to admit it, especially the huddled and teeming masses trying to reduce. "Thighs, thighs, go away! Give them all to Doris Day!" Puffing, giggling matrons in lumpy leotards attempt toe touches while being taped in a Hollywood studio. The electric-haired, slender cheerleader who puts the women through their paces (and chants) for an installment of his syndicated talk show is Richard Simmons, 33, the leading media star of fitness.
Simmons' weekday show is a chattery potpourri of exercise ("Tuck in those tushies, girls!"), diet tips ("Peanuts will make you full!") and cheery behavior-mod patter. His Never-Say-Diet Book is No. 1 on the New York Times's bestseller list, where it has been lodged for 38 weeks. At 5 ft. 7 in., 138 Ibs., Simmons seems a model of svelte fitness, but he knows whereof he sweats. As a boy in New Orleans, he sampled so many crêpes suzette at the family's restaurant that by his 18th birthday he weighed 268 Ibs. Then he found a note under his windshield wiper: "Fat people die young. Please don't die." Simmons lost 112 Ibs. in 80 days. His fasting was so extreme that his hair fell out, and he was eventually hospitalized.
Simmons represents a new breed of health instructor. Though his delivery is breezy, he exudes the compelling energy of a passionate convert. He has also grasped a central fact about new-wave fitness. America likes to think of itself as a young nation, yet its average age is already 30. Anxiety over that point, Simmons notes, is not confined to leisured matrons. The folks on food stamps and blue-collar men and women live with an unspoken fear of Wrinkle City. Says he: "People are scared of getting old. They believe they won't have a sex life, they believe they won't work, they believe they won't get any respect, they believe they'll be hard of hearing, and their teeth will fall out, and nobody will want them." The aging are into fitness all right, but anyone who wants to feel really old has only to confront another statistic. The huge baby-boom generation, which statistically has already helped bulge out of shape various U.S. institutions, including schools and colleges, is now age 27 to 35. Most of the 76 million boomers are finished with the drug culture and alternative therapies. Instead, many of them have seized on fitness—ergo, older Americans jog in an attempt not to be pushed aside by an army of fresh, unlined faces running in their wake. For the '70s generation, leisure consisted of getting its head together. The reading list: Creative Divorce; Your Erroneous Zones; The Baby Trap; Looking Out for No. One; How I Found