Ricky Berens, Ryan Lochte, and Michael Phelps … Anyone have laundry that needs washing?Photo: Getty Images
At last Guy Trebay notes something about the Olympics that not nearly enough people are talking about: These athletes have ridiculously exquisite bodies. Finally. Someone came out and said it. We knew we weren’t the only ones who enjoy ogling pictures like this one of our relay swim team just as much as we like seeing team USA win gold medals. Trebay writes in the New York Times:
[F]or days and nights in the privacy of one’s living room, and without once resorting to XTube, a viewer is permitted and even encouraged to ogle an ongoing parade of muscled and lithe and rippling and toned and occasionally highly perplexing bodies, wearing little more than the evidence of our mutating cultural ideals.
Trebay goes on to note that like clothes change over time, physical ideals change over time, too. “[I]t seems clear that few events offer a richer opportunity to see how physical beauty is currently constructed than the Beijing Games,” he remarks. Why, we couldn’t agree more. So, shall we take a look at what’s in style for physical beauty these days as seen at these Olympic Games? Perhaps in a gratuitous fashion yearbook?
We’d take Nastia Liukin’s legs and abs.Photo: Getty Images
On the left are USA beach volleyballers Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. If they didn’t wear those bikinis, would the sport be popular enough to fill all those prime-time slots? And on the right is cutie Alexander Artemev with a toe point fierce enough to blind somebody.Photo: Getty Images
On the left is Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal. We never noticed he had guns like that before. On the right we have Nicholas Robinson-Baker and Benjamin Swain from the U.K. reminding us it’s a good thing the little Speedo isn’t dead yet.Photo: Getty Images
On the left is American cyclist Levi Leipheimer. We love how the slight shininess of his navy sleeves make his triceps look like they could carve ice sculptures. And on the right is 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres. When we are her age, we want to be able to kick Madonna’s ass, too.Photo: Getty Images
At first we just found this beached-whale pose endlessly amusing. Then we realized it offers a superb view of Phelps’s posterior. So N.B.Photo: Getty Images
