There is along lasting myth that the French are healthier and live longer than Anglo-Saxons thanks to their rather attractive diet of lots of red wine, foie gras and occasional bouts of passionate love making.
Is this possible? Can simply hanging out sipping Pomerol and scoring frequently really be better for you than, let’s say the Californian lifestyle and a diet of vitamines and DHEA, radical workouts and lots of sunbathing?
The French option lifestyle is quickly becoming pan-western world, as always the minority has become the norm. Underground always becomes mainstream.
Now the French way is being taken a step further towards organized ultra-idleness. There’s a new condition to acquiring a perfect chic-slacker-existential lifestyle (life as a work of art):
And it’s freely translated in a typical ungrammatically correct way as an attitude called “NO SPORT”. The rule is to rule out sport, all organized sport, all casual sport.
For example: football, baseball, or any activity requiring a special facility, court, field, lake, green mountain, beach. The “NO SPORT” idea is that physical exercise is present enough in any normal person’s everyday life, just by romping with a female or male friend.
For “NO SPORT” followers to add to this list of everyday physical exploits and to partake in other complicated, time and money consuming ways of flexing one’s muscles or building up a sweat, seems like pure insanity.
The “NO SPORT” attitude is not only ignoring and avoiding all forms of Sport in the real world, but also in the media. This includes not taking part in any of the rituals linked in our post-modern life, celebrating what the “NO SPORT” followers believe is a new dangerous and useless religion – crossed with the simple point-of-view that sport can be painful – is of no use for the planet and not necessary if you have a life.
Paradoxically, there is now a new line of “NO SPORT” sport’s equipment, specially designed for those who don’t do sport. Odd? No, just another mercantile contemporary oxymoron.
Sport stuff for those who JUST DON’T DO IT. A last question could be raised about the authenticity of the initiators of this “NO SPORT” movement? Could it just be another rather crude ploy to make the general public feel OK about enjoying being lazy without any guilt?
Perhaps “NO SPORT” is the answer to our crazed yearning for eternal health and beauty.
More than 50 years ago, the great British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was once asked by a journalist “What is the secret of your longevity, Sir?” to which he answered simply: “NO SPORT ”
BY FRANCIS VAN LITSENBORG
