Happily, the Hollywood body has come full circle. Today’s Hollywood body for men and women are muscular but lean. It stresses tone over bulk, a six-pack over big pecs and biceps. It’s Brad Pitt. It’s Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity and its sequels. It’s Daniel Craig as James Bond. And, for maybe the first time in a couple of generations, it’s an achievable look. Yes, we’re trying to look like humans again. Lifting weights will improve your metabolism so you’ll burn more calories throughout the day. If you’re a woman, it will give you sexy looking tone and definition. If you’re a man, it will add some size to that tone and definition. It will help you to avoid osteoporosis or will lessen the effects of the disease if you already have it. Now, it’s time to lift the darn things.

In the mid-eighties, that started to change. In the 1985 movie Perfect, John Travolta played a reporter who ends up investigating the seamy underbelly of the red-hot Los Angeles fitness scene. The movie was to the aerobics world what Saturday Night Fever had been to the disco world eight years earlier. The message, which was not lost on men, was that aerobics were on fire and that not only would you end up with the perfect body, but it would greatly increase your odds of meeting women with perfect bodies. In 1985,Travolta was the anti-Arnold. Where Arnold and his cantaloupelike pecs represented one end of the extreme fitness spectrum, the frail Travolta represented the other. People were doing their cardio, but they were doing too much of it. As a result, they weren’t just burning fat; they were burning muscle. And they weren’t looking
all that healthy.

In 1968, Dr. Kenneth Cooper wrote his groundbreaking book Aerobics. Cooper coined the word aerobics. In his book, Cooper stressed the importance of exercises like walking, running, biking, and swimming. His case was that anything that improved your overall cardiovascular system—your heart and your lungs—would lead to a greater quality of life and a longer life expectancy. Did he, in his wildest dreams, imagine that this belief would someday lead to a magazine cover showing a scrawny Travolta? Probably not.