If someone asked me to name my favorite music video, I would have to choose Eric Prydz's classic piece of American pop art "Call on me." If you've never seen it, it's full of hilarious, lampooning images of a stereotypical aerobics instructor.
But if you haven't noticed, the days of spandex tights and LYCRA thong-bottomed leotards have thankfully fallen to the wayside. The Jazzercise classes, which rocked the '80s, and the Tae Bo craze, which swept the '90s, have been replaced by innovative workouts such as "Hydroriding" and Brikam Yoga--underwater stationary cycling and yoga performed at 35 degrees Celsius, respectively.

As a sign of the change in times, and choice of physical expenditure, today's fitness gear market is swamped with the latest in comfortable, thermal, cooling, cotton terry loop, sweat-resistant, ergonomic seamed everything.

Nike has, for example, a line of workout clothing designed with Dri-FIT--a fabric which by its very fiber construction pulls sweat away from the body and onto the surface of the garment. This allows for quick evaporation of sweat and a drier, more comfortable and ideologically more productive exerciser.

It doesn't end there. Dri-FIT UV is a stretchy, chemical-free fabric has similar sweat squelching powers, but also boasts a higher UV protection rate than Coppertone. It fights off cancer-causing rays with a rate of UV 30; compare that to your traditional cotton tank, which only provides protection of about UV 9. And you call yourself the fabric of our lives. I wish you weren't such a liar, cotton.

Dri-FIT clothes and other emerging products like it come in every article from cycling pants to sweatbands. I can only hope that next they will invent clothes that work out for you. Scarily, with each progression in fitness technology, it sounds eerily possible.

Although at times the abundance is overpowering and you find yourself asking, "Do I really need these maximum ventilation, 'elasto-magic,' $15 DeFeet brand running socks?" I think we're still better off. All of this innovation is a time apart from the terribly uncomfortable, motion-restricting neon, body-odor-inviting workout gear of yesteryear.

Think of how far we've come from the patented Richard Simmons sweatband--a bandana rolled up long-ways and tied behind the head to keep most of the sweat out of your eyes. Not to mention the fact that thongs have always belonged in strip clubs and Nelly music videos but never on fitness enthusiasts. Especially when connected to a leotard and worn overtop footless, spandex tights or pants.

Not that there's anything wrong with footless tights, or leg warmers--I frequently brave the gawking of Ugg-clad, pearl-wearing college co-eds and don both of them simultaneously to the bars on Thursdays with my off-the-shoulders shirts and bangle bracelets. That, however, does not mean that they ever had any place in a gym.

So what's the explanation for the seeming lack of fashion and fitness judgment by our friends from the beloved decade which brought us L.A. Lights and Michael Jackson?

In order to understand the evolution of fitness gear and equipment, one must first come to know the path on which fitness, as we know it today, ran, or cycled, or "hydrorode."

Wherever it came from and wherever it's going, I'm glad we can all finally get fit in style and comfort.

Take those trendy leg warmers out of your gym bag and save them for Thursday night at the bars.