These four celebrities were quite influential for me during my journey to fitness in the Age of BINT. They almost achieved a quasi divine status for me in that I followed their teachings like a true devotee -- without question and with wholehearted zeal. And, for its time, it worked. I shrugged off the monkey on my back that is now called by the name of Ol' Georgie, I ate better than ever and took up an active and regimented physical exercise lifestyle inspired by these gods o' mine. It was a magical and glorious time in their glow.
First up is Richard Simmons simply because this picture of him so fit the theme of this post -- maybe that's a ship's porthole from one of his Fitness Cruises he did but with his pose it's converted into a halo.
Richard's fame by BINT was pretty much at its peak, I guess. And though I liked and used his video tapes for its exercise routines, it was his Deal-A-Meal Plan that most interested me. I liked the mindless simplicity of just letting cards dictate what and when I should eat. When I first started out "dieting," I was extremely severe, allowing myself only one meal a day of a single frozen dinner, usually in the 600 to 900 calorie range. Of course, this is starvation. I knew it couldn't be maintained in the long term so I adopted Richard's plan to help me re-learn a healthy daily diet. Richard's energy and Never Give Up attitude, along with his seemingly-genuine care and love for his adherents, was another tenet of his message that I consumed with eyes closed and whispered "Amen" as if it were all encapsulated in a small, thin wafer and placed gently on my tongue.
As everyone knows, our Dear Mr. Simmons has of course passed, but these next gods in my BINT pantheon, though much faded from their '90s glory, are still very much alive.
Now, to remark on what I said in my previous paragraph, to say Jane Fonda has "faded" may be a bit inglorious a statement since her fame, of all these gods, is arguably the most indelible and she has remained quite active over these decades.
Those Jane Fonda Low Impact workout video tapes that were part of the Gaskill House library for some reason, discovered by me one night and once watched, were the turn-on point, that's right, the "turn-on" point, to "actually enjoying" working out. Up 'till then, working out, or any physical activity really, was always a dreary chore. The Step Aerobic video with her crew in their neon-colored leggings, hopping happily up and down on their bright turquoise and hot pink plastic steps (which, of course, I soon bought for myself to use) got me into the groove with a big ol' grin on my face.
She made quite a few tapes in the day and I watched many of them, some from the Gaskill collection, others I bought myself. This is the main Step Aerobic video I watched and used religiously pretty much every day BINT.
Who's this goofy-looking dude you may be wondering. Do not mock my god! This is Covert Bailey. He wrote Fit or Fat for the '90s and conducted a televised lecture on PBS. Ho Hum, you may say. But he was very engaging. He had a way of speaking that made you mesmerized by his message and, like a prophet, he "preached" that one had to take a holistic approach to getting fit. Just "looking" thin may not be healthy as, he said, there was such a thing as "fat thin." That is, a person whose body fat percentage was too high despite their appearance. He too, like the other gods here in this Mount Olympus of mine, saw fat as the ultimate evil. His lecture eased the public into an understanding of how the body treats fat and how aerobic exercise burns it. I think he even spoke about the Krebs Cycle and made it more amenable to my ears --- soothing to me since I still had PTSD from my time dealing with that shit so many years before in "Joe's" Honors Biology class.
Here's his video forever enshrined for all devotees and future converts to the Way of the '90s...
So finally, here's the inspiration for this post this morning. I saw in my YouTube feed a video clip from yesterday's TODAY show featuring a plug interview with Susan Powter. She's got a new documentary out and it gets into the post-'90s "downfall" of her fame and fortune, supposedly due to bad actors around her, bad business decisions and such. (No mention that about ten, fifteen years ago she looked like she was in the throughs of some meth addiction -- I'm just sayin'.)
Anyway, BINT, she was a god. As she's pictured above, she certainly stood out. Her energy and excitable patter was captivating. You couldn't help but stare -- and listen.
Though I admit, I watched a little of the video pasted below and though it brought back fond memories of me getting fired up by her, I now think of her as maybe a bit "commercial." I mean, for the '90s, well, we were used to that infomercial-style of message. But for me now, a person who has Ad Blockers on his browsers and ad-free streaming platforms for TV shows and movies, when I do see a commercial, it seems so weird and off-putting, I wonder how I ever put up with it in the days of regular broadcast television. And maybe that's what faith is. Being sold a bill of goods, as it were.
BINT was an epoch I basked in the scintillating effervescent glow of my gods, but even gods need new ad campaigns over time.