Book Review: Richard Simmons' Better Body Book

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Richard Simmons' Better Body Book

Author: Richard Simmons

Author's web site: http://www.richardsimmons.com/

Date: 1983

Publisher: Warner

ISBN: none

Length: 354 pages

Illustrations: many black-and-white photos

Quote: "Please do not leave this book on your coffee table to collect dust. It doesn't like coffee OR dust...This Better Body Book belongs with your body so it can make your body better. (Now, repeat this sentence five times in a row. See, you're already getting the hang of exercise!)"

Ah, 1983. To me and the people I knew it was axiomatic: you made time to watch television, or you made time to exercise. If you were an interesting person it was the latter. Alternative scenarios--you were on the road and didn't know where it was safe to take a walk?--didn't interest us. Exercise choices did. Girls and couples walked. Boys could also play team sports, acceptably. (I knew girls who were pretty and popular, who played basketball, but there was still a stereotype--the slang word for kids who were into team sports definitely meant "male" and girls who got into team sports were stereotyped as large and lonely.) Exercise "drill" was part of certain extremely boring high school classes, of which you took the bare minimum required by law while missing as many actual class meetings as possible, or military training, which was what some kids I knew were doing instead of going to school in 1983. I don't think I ever watched Richard Simmons' show. Nor Jane Fonda's, either.

So I had to read this book to learn what Simmons' show was all about. TV already had an exercise program for Real Men and the women who liked looking at them, led by Jack LaLanne. For women there was Lilias Folan's show, which offered mellow stretch-and-bend warm-ups for those preparing to take a real yoga class, and Jane Fonda's, which offered aerobic workouts and the opportunity to identify yourself as a loyal left-winger. All three of those people had Perfect Bodies with classic telegenic faces. So, for those who might have felt intimidated by all that perfection, there was also Richard Simmons, a self-described endomorph (person with a tendency to be fat) with frizzy hair, pulling clown faces (he lists those as exercises, for fans who were interested, in the book) and wisecracking about how he was choosing to reshape his body.

"The inside contour of the thigh is the gracilis, which is taken from the Spanish word gracias, which is what you say to God if you happen to have a trim, tight gracilis that doesn't bulge or sag."

(If you remember having studied that gracilis is from a Latin word for "thin," while gracias is from the same Latin root as "grace" and "gratitude," it's funnier.)

"[T]he size of the stomach has little to do with whether or not you are 'fat' in that area. It's the buildup of fat cells between the intestines and your skin that makes you look fat."

"The secret to good posture is to pretend you are of royal birth."

And so on. The book gives more space to images of stretch-and-bend exercises as done by Simmons, some with his tongue visible and others with his tongue parked more properly in his cheek, enhanced to call attention to which muscles are being stretched and how far in each direction they should go. There's a steady, consistent theme: You're not going to look sillier than Simmons, even if you try, while doing these exercises. I'm sure many people found that message very comforting, and still do.

Fair disclosure: I still, even though my graciles could use some toning, find it extremely difficult to repeat body movements five times in a row. I tend to feel that life's too short. Buying a book won't fix that, although doing stretch-and-tone exercises in time to music that you actually like to hear, first thing in the morning, may help. (Gyms tend to pipe in the kind of music that motivates me to move rhythmically toward the wall and yank plugs out of it, not to do exercises. It is possible to exercise to music that has a subtle rhythm, that is not dominated by a metallic, monotonous, hypertensive back-beat. If you can dance to it, even a waltz or polka, you can exercise to it.) Or you may, like me, just have to look for some sort of job that is not normally done by old ladies, and, if told you look ridiculous weeding gardens or painting walls, show people some of these pictures of Richard Simmons.

If you seek inspiration to work off some of those winter holiday calories by doing indoor exercise "drill" until the weather outdoors gets nicer, here are 200 easy, rhythmic moves to do at any pace and to any music of your choice, with jokes and clown faces. You can buy it here for $5 per book + $5 per package + $1 per online payment (contact information is below the Amazon giftcard widget at the very bottom of the screen); two or three copies of this book, or one copy of Richard Simmons' Better Body Book and two standard-size books, will fit into one $5 package. You may (or may not) find lower prices on Amazon, but if you buy it here we'll send $1 to Simmons or a charity of his choice.