During a holiday in New York in the summer of 2015, my ex- partner and I stumbled upon a very particular ad at the 14th Street-Union Square Metro station. It was a horizontal billboard with a model wearing a bikini against a bright yellow background. The woman, who stood out for the almost supernatural perfection of her waist-to-hip ratio, was surrounded by the following message in bold caps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ARE YOU BEACH BODY READY?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The syntax of the sentence struck us both as strange and it took us a few minutes to decode it.1<\/a><\/sup> The trick is that the expression beach body<\/em> does not refer directly to the subject of the sentence (you<\/em>) but to a subject\/object to whom the question is addressed. I explain myself further: instead of asking, is your body<\/em> ready for the beach? or, even simpler, are you<\/em> ready for the beach?, beach body<\/em> renounces to assign the body to the individual it belongs to and instead assigns it to an amalgamation of the subject (body<\/em>) and an object (beach<\/em>), of an interior and an exterior. This tagline, syntactically speaking, represents the zone of indistinction between the inside and the outside of the world<\/em> (4.5<\/a>), that characterizes modern celebrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Image taken from: https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/KotakuInAction\/comments\/3bozvh\/beach_body_ready_protein_worlds_controversial\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The expression beach body ready<\/em> belongs in the same category as Beau Brummell\u2019s \u201cfavourite leg\u201d (2.8<\/a>), as it alienates the individual from its own body and treats it as something external to itself. Its operation is typified by Max Headroom whose externalized mind manifests itself as a space (5.2<\/a>), for only a body that has been emptied could be perceived as external and alien. Nowadays the office worker is office body ready<\/em> the spectator is ted-talk body ready<\/em>, when you upload a picture or a video you are YouTube body ready<\/em> or Instagram body ready<\/em> and on weekends maybe family body ready<\/em>. More than a person, the contemporary human behaves like an artifact to be activated (get ready<\/em>) for this or that activity. An animal (zoe\u0304<\/em>) trapped in the functional aspects of its relation with the world (5.3<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A couple of days later, when we passed through Times Square we saw the same ad, which had now swallowed the entire fa\u00e7ade of a building. I could only think of Ballard\u2019s \u201cgargantuan woman.\u201d Here\u2019s a concrete expression of the third body of the King (1.14<\/a>, 4.8<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/locusterribilis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/beach-body-ready-protein-worlds-controversial-poster-v0-p5SlQT-JNCAl40ldbidCmVCPo4B9OQSbGeXgpdPXjEU.webp?resize=1024%2C538&ssl=1\")
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