To be honest I hadn’t heard the term “revenge body” since dinosaurs roamed the earth, so it was nice that we were all reminded of it in 2023 with THAT Pip Edwards headline. The ensuing commentary has rightly been around the outrage surrounding this incredibly successful woman’s accolades being headlined with a hot body. Sigh. Juxtaposed with the Australian of the year on body image, it’s one confusing time to be alive.
As a fitness professional who’s mission is to get people moving for every reason under the sun EXCEPT aesthetics, it sets my little agenda back 37 decades. I’m not saying the aesthetic outcome of exercise is a bad motivator, it’s simply in my sleep-deprived head, it shouldn’t be the FIRST thing.
Hear me out
But here we are and after my nearly 2-decades in the fitness industry I CANNOT deny that 99% of the reasons people start in fitness is for aesthetic reasons and if that is the motivation to get started to the exclusion of anything else, then that’s amazing – getting started is half the battle. The beautiful thing is before you know it and well before the aesthetic transformations kick in, you’re hooked on fitness for other more sustainable reasons.
A revenge body can actually teach us something
…because honestly we need to find the silver lining or we’d go mad. Any kind of body transformation takes incredible discipline – because you know – frozen margs, so go you. It proves that you can do hard things when you put your mind to it and you can apply that energy to any area of your life.
And you know maybe
The transformation makes you feel more confident, gives you more energy, introduces you to a new community of people. I’m not saying everyone with a ‘hot’ body (at this conjecture I must ask the question on everyone’s lips: whatever the f*ck THAT means) all of a sudden experiences these things, but the pursuit of said body can unlock some other super-powers.
Humans are weird
This is a PSA to say that a body, simply put, is a skin sack of blood and offal and to link this jelly sack to anything other than a vessel to carry around our awesome selves just seems plain weird when you think about it like that. There is zero causation between a ‘hot’ body (or hot jelly sack…see? Weird) and the following: health, success, happiness or anything you wish you had. Honestly, you’ll probs just be hangry all the time.
Some BETTER revenge
Go forth and get the body of your dreams, there’s nothing wrong with that. If your ex’s interest is peaked by said transformation, then that is confirmation they ain’t your person. So anyway byeeeeeee. May I offer you some BETTER revenge that doesn’t include a diet of rice cakes and sadness:
- Revenge I’m putting my health first
- Revenge confidence
- Revenge discipline
- Revenge zest for life
- Revenge my focus is anywhere but YOU
So other than prawn shells in an air-vent duct, there are some OTHER wicked revenges that work for good not evil.
Since we’re talking about it
Along with the term ‘revenge’ body, may we also hereby burn the following ‘bods’ at the stake: beach bod, mum bod, hot bod (and cold bod, presumably ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), divorce bod, killer bod. Because at the end of the day no one actually knows what the f*ck these look like. One persons killer bod is another’s cringe so we are in a perpetual loop of pleasing no-one.
Most importantly, ourselves.
Wretched 