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Legions of non-sweaters have also grown richer. Nutri/System Inc. of Melrose Park, Pa., earned $44,000 in 1976. By this year earnings had jumped to $9 million on the 408 company-owned or franchised weight-loss centers in 45 states. Says Investment Banker Michael Taylor, who watches Nutri/System carefully: "It's a sybarite's delight, the Me generation personified."
When it comes to ways of fattening their bankrolls, the new fitness entrepreneurs have left few shoelaces untied. In a cinder-block building in Van Nuys, Calif., infants get put through exercise routines: 16-month-olds pretend to look like pretzels, swing from rings and run a kiddie obstacle course of bars and tunnels that looks like a miniature golf course, while older children learn what Junior Gym Founder Judy Braun calls "directionality" and have "rhythmic experiences." Eight lessons cost $55. The gym, begun in 1973, had revenues last year of $250,000 and profits before taxes of $100,000, a pulse-quickening return of 40%. Thirty-five million pairs of designer jeans, at prices ranging from $42.50 to $110, will be molded to newly trimmed bodies this year. Beyond labels, the rush to jeans reflects the American penchant for conforming to the image of the body demanded by such clothing. In the mirror, Calvin Klein and Fiorucci simply present what has become America's only authorized posterior.
The athletic outfitters were caught with their shorts down, however, by the phenomenon of women runners. Astonishingly, even five years ago there were no running shorts cut to fit the female form. Women had to run in men's shorts, which bound at the crotch and were too tight in the rear. Among the first to remedy the situation were New Yorkers Marni Weil and her husband Bernard Bouchardy. They came up with pairs of red, white and blue briefs cut especially for women, tested them on fellow runners and started marketing Panteras. Sales are projected at $1 million this year, and, burbles Weil, "some stores reorder every week."
Now appropriately attired women are dashing toward fitness as never before. As recently as 1967, though, an irate official tried to rip the cardboard number from the sweatshirt of a runner labeled K. SWITZER near the start of the Boston Marathon. He had discovered that the K stood for Kathrine. Kathy Switzer, then 20, managed to elude the man and went on to finish, the first woman with a number in the marathon's history to do so. Today there are 15 million women runners in America, and Switzer, 34, is the head of Avon Cosmetics' $5 million sports department. She believes women's entry into the fitness and health boom is the single most striking fact of her generation. Says she: "I have seen overweight, unhappy, insecure women develop a confidence through running that helps them take risks and experience joy in their lives. It is a testimony to what the human body can do."
Whatever sports and fitness have done for women in the U.S., women in sports have certainly helped increase the number of men pursuing fitness. A New Jersey housewife notes: "I started playing tennis while my husband still sat around with a beer can in his hand watching Monday Night Football. By I the time I was running, he was finally playing tennis. By the