The Charles Atlas Way

Greetings All,

    Has anyone ever read the old Charles Atlas Ads?  They always showed a skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face by a muscle bound bully.  After a pathetic verbal confrontation, skinny guy gets his ass whipped.  Mean while skinny guy’s girlfriend makes incredibly helpful remarks like “Don’t let him hit you,” or afterwards “Don’t let it bother you little boy.”  Skinny Guy then buys Charles Atlas’s book and, apparently in the course of like a week (15 minutes a day), transforms into buff guy.  Buff guy returns to the beach and sucker punches muscle bound bully (whom inexplicably does not retaliate) and wins doe eyed coos from his (oh so loyal) girlfriend.

    What messages can we take from this add?

1.        Crowded beaches always have bullies who want to start a fight.

2.       Girls like you for you until a guy with muscles comes to challenge.

3.       The other guy is less motivated to workout than you are.

4.       Putting on muscle is easy and won’t change who you are at all.

5.       Retribution always works out the way you plan.

    Why didn’t skinny guy just learn how to play the guitar?  If he’s into girls that airheaded, it would have been a whole lot easier.  Or he could have just grow his hair out and become a sensitive ponytail man. 

    As campy and ineffective as it was, I suppose Mr. Atlas could have purveyed his business with worse messages aimed at boys and younger men than “Have muscles, will not be f*cked with”.  Survey says?

 Super-Jerry