Protein shake

Remember when Bruce Springsteen, who had been known primarily for his incandescent concerts and for songs that positioned him as a poet on the margins of a disappointing post-industrial America, reinvented himself as a beefcake, during the Reagan years? Wearing tight tee-shirts ad sporting guns, he carried his guitar like a small tool, and posed against massive flags: a musical Rambo, of sorts. Or, as Fred Pfeil has written, "a swaggering, solidly muscled working-class rocker." And the image, of course, both suited, and influenced our opinion of, his music. 'Born in the U.S.A.' was often discussed in physical terms, and the critic and music historian Rob Kirkpatrick once argued that 'Brothers Under the Bridge' is "a strong-muscled anthem." In the mid-1980s, as Detroit was being overrun by terrifyingly efficient Japanese micro-cars and we still worried, in television dramas, about the possibility of Soviet nuclear attacks, it was good to feel strong, and Springsteen rode that wave.

But I'm here to tell you that it's still good to be strong. At least, according to Cleo, who dropped milk, eggs, and tofu into her age-appropriate shopping cart at Whole Foods, and then, amazed that she could still push the groaning vehicle, paused to flex (above), and ask, rhetorically, "Isn't I strong?"

Yes, you are, girl. And always getting stronger.