:rolleyes: yourself. I’m so tired of this bullshit here, “Oh, you just hate them because they’re fat/old/diabetic/blue eyed, see I found a quote here that if you took completely out of context and added additional words that aren’t there it says that exactly”. Yeah, sometimes people are gross. And sometimes gross people do disgusting things. Descriptors don’t always imply discrimination.
Sweat is not intrinsically gross. That is all.
Check out the book Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA if you want to know why you should clean equipment before using it.
ETA: Article on MRSA at the gym. The risk of catching MRSA is probably fairly low, but it’s not something I want in my life.
But getting freaked out over some sweat on the handle bar?
As an aside.
I play basketball with other sweaty guys and much gets swapped. I shower after.
I agree. Remember, though, this is the SDMB, where the percentage of offenderati and those that are “ample” are higher than in the real world at large, no pun intended. “Why does it matter that the person who [cut you off in traffic/cut ahead of you in line/was screaming on their cell phone in the library/etc] is fat?” is practically an enshrined tradition here .
And, yeah, the overweight do sweat more than the adipose-challenged. (Plenty of cites can be found easily through the search engine of your choice; I’m not going to pour through peer-reviewed journals for that.) Bodily excretions are seen as “gross” by many. (It might not be so from a medical standpoint, as some will point out, but then again, urine is also sterile.) If there’s more excretions, it’s seen as “grosser”.
You CAN make fun of people, if they’re ultra skinny and complain and tell them to “eat a sandwich”, and how they’re not “real women”. :rolleyes:
elmwood, I get your point – but would YOU want to walk on a shower floor that people peed on? :eek: As far as sweat goes, I THINK you can get a rash.
Okay, MRSA is the cootie you are particularly concerned about. I know something about MRSA. Sorry but sweat is not its medium. That 5 to 10% of people who are colonized with (not “infected with” as the article you cite claims; the difference is meaningful) are generally colonized in their noses. The surfaces may get contaminated with MRSA from others nosepicking and then handling the bars etc. Nose to hand to surface to your hand to nose contact. Lots of different people wiping their noses and then grabbing the bar and then wiping their noses again at a gym. Of course the same can be said about handling the doorknobs, your money, and other object others touch. On the surfaces you lay against be worried not about visible sweat but if someone had a draining abscess and left pus on it, an bareskinned and you laid down with your own open sore … and wiping that off with a towel aint going to reduce your risk much. Wear a shirt.
Again, I respect that some find sweat intrinsically disgusting. I just find it … amusing … that our op finds it so unbelievable that others do not share his phobic reaction
I know who doesn’t ever sleep on the wet spot after sex.
Honestly? I wouldn’t give a damn. Same with the sweat issue. I mean, I’ve swam in public pools and bathed in Turkish bathhouses and who the hell knows what kind of microorganisms are floating around there (especially in the warm, wet bathhouse environment–seems like the perfect bacterial breeding ground.)
Still, yeah, at the public gym, wipe your equipment down after using. Just common courtesy, I would think. But I wouldn’t think twice about lying down in somebody else’s sweat, either. For whatever reason, it doesn’t squick me out at all.
Surprised Monk hasn’t posted yet.
I learned my lesson after catching ringworm at the gym from bench. What sucked was the spot was impossible to reach to apply the poison they gave me to kill it off my back.
It was several large itchy red bumps
True, but at least the pool has chlorine.
In a public shower, please wear shower shoes, people. I caught a nasty case of plantar warts once that took me over six months to get rid of.
(But still don’t pee in the shower, it’s uncouth. That’s what toilets/urinals are for)
Hijacking this pit thread to comment on the new fad of every gym getting in the new Vibroplate" machines (http://www.vibrostation.co.uk/vibrostation_training_plate.asp?gclid=CKCak8C696kCFQJO4Qod1hwGYQ)
Just what a gym needs, another machine for useless fat women to stand on for half an hour so that they can pretend that they actually did some exercise. Seriously you lazy bitches, you think that standing on those plates is going to do you any good? Go pick up a skipping rope for half an hour, you might actually lose some flab.
Also, all the giggling silly little bitches flooding the gym because the schools are off for the summer, jumping from machine to machine and doing fuck all squared at each. This isnt a mall, if you just want to kill time without actually doing anything, go loot a church or something. We actually need the stuff in this building.
I hate, hate, hate idiots trying to use the weight machines. People who are just learning - they can be annoying, but hey, they’re trying. It’s those people - girls AND guys, but usually young men - who bump the weight to nearly max, loudly grunt through three reps, then drop the bar/handles/whatever crashing the plates down. Idiots. They then spend five minutes sitting at the machine working up towards their next two or three rep set. Then wander around for awhile. Then pick up a couple of 20 kilo hand weights and stand, staring at themselves in the mirror, motionless, before doing one or two curls.
Seriously, some of us are trying to do circuit weight training, no one is impressed by you, and stop crashing the goddamn plates you fucktard.
There are few consolations to growing old. One of them is that people lower their expectations of you, and make allowances, and stuff. Please don’t take that away from them; you’ll treasure it yourself one day if you live that long.
As far as the rant bringing up the fact that he is disgusted by the “fat, ugly, mutton-faced wobbly rice-arsed old cretins” goes - well “fat” is arguably relevant since fat exercisers do tend to sweat more. But as general rule, unless the person’s girth is *directly pertinent *to the rant, if it is out of bounds to note the color of the skin or the religion as part of your rant then it would be out of bounds to note the thinness or fatness of the person as well.
Try it out:
That’s until I see Black, ugly, old cretins …
That’s until I see Jewish, ugly, old cretins …
That’s until I see skinny, ugly, old cretins …
… another machine for useless Black women to stand on for half an hour …
… another machine for useless Jewish women to stand on for half an hour …
… another machine for useless skinny women to stand on for half an hour …
If it sounds offensive with Black, or Jewish, or skinny, then you can be pretty sure it is not okay to say it with “fat” either.
Ewwwwwww! That is, unless they peed and showered at the same time, in which case all but homeopathic quantities of urine have probably been washed away.
Try it out:
I’ve swam in black bathhouses and who the hell knows what kind of microorganisms are floating around there.
I’ve swam in Jewish bathhouses and who the hell knows what kind of microorganisms are floating around there.
So, you’re implying that Turkish bathhouses are somehow unsanitary because they’re Turkish? Racist.
The two are not incongruous. As I said I’d find it just as repulsive if someone younger didn’t wipe the machines. If gym-goers did wipe the machines, I wouldn’t have any problem at all with them. So, you know, the opposite of bigoted - I’m complaining about something the party can easily fix. So you can take lil’ rollyeyes and kindly jog on.
But the thing is, I didn’t say any of those things, so go beat on your strawman elsewhere. Comparing complaining about disgusting people who, *in my experience *in my gym, tend to rather rotund, to full blown racism is just weak.
To be honest I was just fishing for insulting lines for these slobs. If one of them offends you, stop projecting so much. Unless you’re one of the slobs who does it, in which case, carry on being offended.