Permit me to take the premises of an advertisement seriously, for a moment.
Something about the classic Charles Atlas ad has bothered me. Partly it is the notion that a woman who dumps her boyfriend for someone who goes around kicking sand at people could possibly be a decent catch -- one might say the 97-pound weakling dodged a bullet, there, and he ought to thank the sand-kicker for saving him a lot of trouble.
But the other issue is the concept of a "97-pound weakling" itself. For, if you think about it, that seems impossibly thin. As a reference, I am five-foot-three and currently hovering around 128 pounds, much of which is muscle; if we go by the standards of the Body Mass Index, I am perfectly healthy. Were I 97 pounds, the BMI would put me as getting close to dangerously underweight.
So then, imagine a man, of the world's average height for men, which is five-foot-seven, and 97 pounds -- good heavens, the BMI has him in the most extreme category of underweightness! Think about what he would look like in reality, all skin and bones, like he'd just come out of a concentration camp. Absolutely wretched! Why, that frivolous lady with him at the beach must have been humoring him! He needs medical attention immediately anyway, and especially, a healthy diet.
Then of course once that was taken care of, with a bit of boxing training, he might be able to challenge the Beach Bully, never mind what particular bodybuilding course Mr. Atlas was selling him.
Bear this in mind when anyone brings up the concept of the 97-pound weakling. It's patently absurd.