Hot bods and gym gods

Running innocently on an elliptical machine in Dillon, my attention broke momentarily from a surprisingly engrossing soap opera to find the girl next to me staring at the flashing numbers on my machine. After a quick smirk, she settled into a squat and began to furiously move her arms and legs. It reached a point that everything below her torso became a blur and, though I had to stifle my laughter, I grew seriously concerned for her safety. After discussing the event with some friends, I learned that what I had witnessed was not at all unusual. I had been challenged to a workout duel. I was going 150 strides per minute. Great, she'd go 230. 300 calories? Fabulous, she'd burn 500. She was using the mirror in front of us not to monitor herself, but to flash me "bring it" glares.

Slightly freaked out by my feverish neighbor, I moved downstairs to check out the weight room and found one guy grunting, "sixty-seven!" and the kid next to him retorting through clenched teeth, "seventy-two!" I moved back upstairs to the mat and noticed a girl watching me grab my toes to stretch. She smugly lowered herself into a full split.

Just when we thought the competition was over, freshmen are shocked to find a whole new brand of antagonism in a place where all we want to do is work out. The drive of Princeton students to excel, I've discovered, is apparent not only in the classroom and at the Beirut table, but also in self-maintenance. Kids trained to beat out the opposition seem to be creating rivalry in places devoid of real rivals. The gym and the quest to be the "buffest" serve as prime examples of this behavior.

What first hit me when I came here was not the gorgeous gothic architecture, or the beautiful sunshine, or even the ubiquitous splashes of orange. I was most struck by the student body, or should I say student bodies. I wondered if there was something in the water here that created this apparent race of walking, well mostly running, Athenian sculptures. Sports-bra-clad joggers in the rain, a packed gym late at night, an unofficial uniform of exercise apparel — all have come to characterize the Princeton atmosphere.

I must admit that I, too, have fallen into the trap of the workout addiction. But who wouldn't, with a really nice gym so close, and the freshman fifteen threatening to attach itself to one's ass at any moment? Coming from the cutthroat atmosphere of Westchester, New York, I had hoped to escape some of the body image issues. With one fourth of its female population suffering from an eating disorder, however, Princeton feels just like home. When did getting a higher education become learning how many grams of sugar are in a non-diet Snapple, how much fat is in a bagel, or how many calories one burns in an hour of Pilates?

It seems the infamous "Princeton bubble" doesn't only refer to the students' lack of a connection to the real world in terms of current events. Princeton is a microcosm of beautiful, or at least beautifully toned, people — the ultimate anomaly in our obese nation. Sure, few turn down a late night pizza or fro-yo at Frist, but the majority of the nocturnal noshers can be found working hard to burn off those calories the next day.

Observing this serious drive leads me to ask: Are as many people here out to sculpt their bodies as their minds? Next time you go to the gym, shut off your discman and pull your eyes away from the boob tube to notice just how many people are not focusing on their bike mileage or their shaking biceps, but are watching you.

Laura Berner, a new columnist, is a freshman from Rye, N.Y.