Weird-Ass Equinox Ads Do Not Make You Want to Go to the Gym

If you’re not among the denizens of a smattering of major US cities (or Toronto), chances are you’ve been spared the confuzzling weirdness that are ads for Equinox gyms. Last year, they demanded to know if I was “skinny-fat,” which is 100% not a thing, and now, they’re implying that working out there can make you naked and dumb. Huh?

The inscrutable new ads, highlighted by AdWeek, introduce potential gymgoers to a Ryan McGinley/Terry Richardson fever dream wherein attractive youths with very little body fat run naked in the darkness, are sprayed down by a hose, smirk wryly around a shiner. Because why? Because gym. Because fancy gym.

OK Equinox: I’m a fairly avid exerciser. In fact, when I was training for the marathon I ran last fall, I was a member of the Equinox here in SoHo, and I would hit the gym from time to time when I couldn’t do my running outside. And the craziest thing Equinox ever made me do was pay like $8 for a kale/carrot/pineapple ~*jUiCe iNfUsIoN*~ from the absurd smoothie place on the first floor. A good workout can be a bad influence? What? Working out makes me act like a cranky old lady watching her stories with her feet up on the couch and subsisting on Clif Bar Shot Blox. After a “good” workout I don’t have the energy to do anything but sit and quietly get drunk on a single Bloody Mary before falling asleep in the sun like a cat. Never, not a once, in all of my years of sweating profusely on purpose did I feel overcome with the desire to row away from land in an inflatable raft full of vintage luggage.

I did, however, once witness a woman in the SoHo Equinox locker room nonchalantly sidle up to me as I blow dried my hair, remove her panties, remove the other blow dryer from its holster, blow dry the panties right next to me, filling our shared air space with the smell of her crotch blow drying, and then put the panties back on before going about her day. Shortly after that, I stopped working out there.

So maybe Equinox really does make people do crazy, cocaine-level shit. I guess I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.