Muscle, Curves and Market Fears
Exposing the Primal, Profit-Driven Engine Behind Our Obsession with Physical Perfection
Fitness and beauty markets treat the body as capital. Metrics, visual standards and algorithmic visibility convert muscularity and curvature into tradable ideals. Insecurity becomes demand, discipline becomes compliance and comparison sustains the market.
Good day, fleshy apes!
You strut around like peacocks on amphetamines, only your feathers are made of silicone and overpriced leggings.
Today we examine the largest Ponzi scheme that exists in the form of human body.
Long time ago human beings simply existed in their skin. Our body structures today are treated like financial market indices of the NASDAQ.
Join the Fitness-Beauty Cult which transforms your flesh into a valuable asset through "optimization" processes that destroy your self-worth at a rate faster than inflation.
Fact check: The global fitness and beauty complex is worth roughly $828 billion. The industry exceeds the GDP of Finland yet it creates emotional deprivation for most participants who feel poorer inside and out.
We spend money on supplements, waist trainers, "booty builder" pills and 12-week "transformation" programs.
Our inner qualities such as compassion, creativity and wisdom remain untouched while collecting metaphorical dust.
The Anatomy of Optimization Mania
Consider yourself a fund manager.
Your daily routine consists of rebalancing between selling carbs, buying kale, shorting sugar and investing in collagen.
Every morning begins with an audit:
- Body-mass index serves as your opening bell when checking your scale report.
- Daily briefing about your waist-to-hip ratio which stands as your key performance metric.
Your confidence levels drop when your "portfolio" dips (a stray donut or a missed gym session) which leads you to buy anxiety.
There is no margin for error. Real markets reach equilibrium but perfection exists as a mirage which moves away as you move closer to it.
Fitspiration: The Trojan Horse of Dissatisfaction
The Instagram posts with 72 million #fitspo tags showcase sculpted torsos along with cinched waists that promise complete fulfillment.
Yet scientific studies reveal that people who view these idealized images become more dissatisfied with their bodies and experience negative emotions instead of getting motivated.
In other words, the greater "motivation" you experience leads directly to increased emotional suffering. This approach is perfect for business yet causes severe psychological damage to most of us.
The Algorithmic Yield Curve
Platforms are negative-yield bonds: you pour in attention, they pay out empty dopamine coupons.
Your self-esteem steadily depreciates while ad revenue soars.
Male Muscularity
In today's Alpha Commodity market, your biceps are currency and missing a rep is a bankruptcy event.
Forget emotional depth. Social media now determines alpha males through their muscular size measurements.
The Marvel-hero body requires both a six-pack and striated deltoids with visible veins that resemble map routes.
A person without a physique that suggests they could bench-press a small car gets tagged "weak" by social media standards.
Men suffering from muscle dysmorphia ("bigorexia") view their bodies as underdeveloped despite having athletic physiques according to objective standards.
It's a pharmaceutical freak show where your wallet gets shredded faster than your muscle fibers.
You play a day trader role by pursuing muscle mass while risking everything with each rep and macro counting.
And the house always wins.
The Hourglass Hustle
For women, the mandate is equally absurd.
They are expected to possess thin bodies with perfectly defined curves in specific areas.
The result? A body type that naturally occurs in roughly 0.0001% of the population yet companies market it as reachable through:
- Waist trainers that compress your rib cage and harm your internal organs (but hey, "snatched waist!").
- "Booty builder" supplements advertise that their pills will provide you with rounder glutes since regular squats are apparently insufficient.
- Brazilian Butt Lift procedures increased by 90% from 2015–2019, transformed surgical operating rooms into modern beauty clinics.
We consider the hourglass figure to represent evolutionary fertility but spend large sums to exaggerate its proportions.
Capitalism uses the following motto: "Invest in your curves!"
The philosophical retort: "You're auctioning off your autonomy".
The Social Return on Curves
Every posted "belfie" (butt selfie) creates social benefits: follows, saves, DMs saying "😍".
These are the metrics of desirability traded like crypto. But unlike crypto, your returns disappear as the next scroll renders yesterday's curves obsolete.
Regression to Primal Spectacle
High-tech appearance conceals something decidedly low-tech: animalistic display.
Males display their muscular chest with protein shake in hand while females display their fertility through the belfie ritual.
Science whispers: low waist-hip ratios scream "fertile!"
Natural mating signals show themselves briefly during mating periods in nature.
In 2025, they repeat endlessly on TikTok, amplified by ring lights and filters.
We've turned the subtle dance of attraction into a perpetual digital display of pomp monetized by algorithms.
The Mating Dance Goes Digital
The traditional human process of courtship now functions as a digital auction: swipe right, double-tap, slide into DMs. Your body is the lot while the algo which drives user engagement serves as the highest bidder.
The Cost of Commodifying the Self
What do you sacrifice on the altar of optimization?
- Time: Hours dedicated to gym that could be hours in conversation, creation or rest.
- Money: Hundreds per month on gym memberships, supplements, shapewear and cosmetic tweaks.
- Mental health: Anxiety, shame, disordered eating, dysmorphia.
- Inner life: Neglected curiosity, empathy, critical thinking.
The success of consumer capitalism depends on your insecurity: a contented customer does not spend much, a dissatisfied one buys constantly.
The system produces flaws, then sells the fixes. Rinse and repeat. You are both the market and the product.
The Invisible Fees
Any financial plan includes hidden fees: lost joy, fractured relationships, constant fatigue. The expenses you cannot see in your billing statement continue to increase your mental costs every day.
Philosophical Interlude
"To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character".
— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
"Happiness resides neither in power nor in pleasure nor in riches, but in virtue and in contentment".
— Thomas Aquinas (adaptation)
The Dr. Evil De-Optimization Arsenal™
A cheeky lineup of tools designed to disrupt the fitness-beauty machine from the inside out.
- MirrorMute™ Glasses. Blurs reflections which helps the process of overcoming self-criticism. (Side effect: accidental amusement at your own face.)
- AlgorithmArmistice™ Extension. Eliminates envy‑trigger hashtags as #fitspo, #hourglass, #gains. (Side effect: rediscovered attention span.)
- MetricMute™ Wearable. Makes your step count, calorie burn and heart-rate zone displays invisible. (Side effect: movement for joy, not for numbers.)
- CompassionCurrency™ Prompt. Daily reminder: perform one unmonitored act of kindness. (Side effect: genuine warmth, zero transaction fees.)
- StillnessBeacon™ Ritual. A chime after five minutes of doing absolutely nothing. (Side effect: surprising serenity, rebellious calm.)
Toward an Inner-Worth Renaissance
We possess the power to reclaim our bodies without corporate puppeteers.
Steps:
- Audit desires. Separate natural health goals from marketing‑manufactured impulses.
- Detox your feed. Unfollow anyone who uses your self-doubts for financial gain.
- Cultivate virtues (courage, empathy, curiosity) as diligently as you did with your macro tracking.
- Embrace imperfection. Celebrate your wrinkles, rest days, raw unfiltered moments.
- Prioritize function. Dance, play, create. Value what your body can do, not just how it looks.
In this shift, beauty emerges naturally from living well instead of existing as a consumer product.
Your soul portfolio, rich in relationships, wisdom and creativity will increase in value as time passes unlike ephemeral muscle pumps.
Rebel with Stillness
Here's the ultimate paradox:
Body obsession finds its ultimate cure in complete inaction.
Sit. Breathe. Observe life beyond your reflection. Use silence as an alternative when optimization urges strike.
Remember: a life measured by laughter, love and insight outperforms any metric based on the reflection in the mirror.
Portfolios belong in banks, not in our bones.
Let them optimize. You? You exist.
Dr. Evil, Ph.D.
Anti-Optimization Heretic | Skeptic of the Marketed Body | Unmeasured by Design