Bodies Everywhere

One of my roommates, Aubree, is a body builder. My four other roommates and I recently went to see her compete in a Fitness and Figure competition.

I was nervous. I had almost had a nervous break-down when Aubree taped a tiny photograph of a bikini-clad body-builder onto our fridge. I eventually came to realize that she (the half naked woman on my fridge) was more athletic than pornographic, and that she was also an important motivation for Aubree. However, I feared some sort of personal and/or feminist meltdown upon seeing hundreds of life-size versions of her up on a stage.

For months, the roommates and I had watched Aubree diligently weigh her portions of chicken, spinach and raw oatmeal on the same kitchen counter with our half-eaten cookies, cakes and brownies. She did not drink water for the three days leading up to the competition.

The morning of event, I got to spray glue onto Aubree's butt so that her bikini bottom would not shift around. I am not being sarcastic when I say that it was a personal highlight. I also got to touch-up some of the tan on her back with a real paint brush.

At the competition itself - held in the Snoqualmie Casino - I felt like a foreign tourist on an anthropological study. My observations, however, were neither objective nor scientific. For example, the roommates and I quickly became expert fake tan critics ("Too orange, honey. Too orange!") and expert fake boob spotters ("That is so disproportional."). We also became pretty adept at spotting trembling women who looked like they were about to pass out on stage ("Up! Stay up!").

Some of the more inspiring moments during the competition included shout-outs to Jesus, and New Testament quotes in the program. One woman - who still had visible cellulite - won an inspiration award for losing 150 pounds. There were also a handful of women in the 50 and over age category who were extremely impressive. The man featured above appeared during intermission and testified that body-building had kept him out of jail and off drugs. He now does body-building outreach in prisons.

The women in the competition were empowered in the sense that they had made their bodies into works of art - art that is both alive and ephemeral. I was impressed by their work, sacrifice and diligence. Yet I also found it ironic that in order to be that "fit," they had to go to unhealthy extremes.

Aubree competed towards the end of the evening. She did not win a tiara for being in the top five, but she had a very loud cheering section, she looked great, and she was pleased with her first ever performance.

At roommate check-in in the car on the way home, we all still seemed to be feeling comfortable with our curves and soft spots. No meltdown necessary.

What Precedes Us

I attended a Mormon singles conference last weekend in Huntington Beach, California. One night, I was sitting in a hot tub with a bunch of people I didn't know. (Let me just take this opportunity to say that no matter how comfortable you are with your body, it is always awkward having "getting to know you" conversations with strangers in swimsuits. I don't really want to be acquainted with a man's chest before I know his name.)

Anyway, one guy was asking me questions about my life, and as he pieced together my biography, he said, "Wait a second. I think I've seen you before on youtube!" I silently panicked while trying to remember what he possibly could have seen. Suddenly, being half naked with this guy felt significantly less awkward than the conversation we were having.

It turns out that a few months ago, my parents had collaborated with some family friends to set me up with this guy's roommate. Like all good 21st-century stalkers, they had googled me and found this year-and-a-half-old footage of me and my brother Jeffrey lip-syncing. Although my new friend claimed that both he and his roommate thought that I was very "entertaining," his roommate never called me.

Exactly two days after that conversation in the hot tub, I received a voicemail from the film's intimidatingly cool co-star, Jeffrey. He has just moved to Washington, D.C. for a summer internship, and in his own words:

On the first day of my internship, when an old family friend, Rachel, was introducing me to people, this middle-aged man told me that he recognized me from somewhere. He started saying that he recognized me from TV or something, and I thought he was just trying to be funny. But he insisted, and finally claimed that he had remembered where he had seen me: on youtube. And then it clicked. He had seen the youtube video of us dancing to "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." It turns out that Rachel had looked it up and shown it to everyone in the office, and it became a joke in the office even before I had gotten there.

After these back-to-back revelations, we took down a family holiday video we had made for our other brother, Ryan - ridiculous family behavior that should not be in the public domain. We also changed the name of the lip-syncing video from "Jen and Jeff Nuckols singing" to something a little more discreet. Little did we know that when we covered the TV with a green sheet and drew posters with Sharpies, we were preparing for one of the most important performances of our lives.