Hear hear hear hear hear hear hear. I can’t clap for this enough. As a lifelong bodybuilder, and someone who puts in the time and dime to do the work, I have only ever seen my six pack when I am about 9% body fat, which for a woman close to 70 is not only foolish as shit but very dangerous. I am going to tag this in a future article. I am SO SICK of seeing comments from folks who will never ever ever see their abs about how if only they had such abs, then…NO. Fitness has nothing to do with a six or seven pack. It has to do with what is fit for YOUR body, your age, your activity level. When advertisers place photos of the perfect six on an ad for fitness training it is as much an outright lie as showing a model, whose body is perhaps in the 1% of all the bodies in the world. As the immortal Bill Paxton said in Aliens, “it ain’t happenin’ man!”

I was married to a gymnast who had 1% body fat. His abs were nowhere to be seen. Why? Because he was more than 25% Guamanian, and as a Pacific Islander, his body fat was forever destined to live just under the skin, hiding his striations. It is always and forever an issue of genetics. Yes of COURSE we all have those muscles, and yes of COURSE we can develop them. But given the work required to get there, should you and I not be born extreme mesomorphs, come ON man. Let it go. If you’re so desperate, get silicone implants. The point isn’t so much how we look as how fit we are. Can we kindly let go of this ridiculousness already and simply focus on how fit we are? There are plenty of uber thin folks whose ab packs are very obvious who are horrifically unhealthy. How we look isn’t the point. How well our bodies work is the point.