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I've watched a video of Trevor Noah (Obama Calls For People To Vote Early In The Wake Of Postal Delays | The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, ~3:56), and get confused this sentence: "but then all the beach bodies were sold out".

Noah explains that some people believe Trump is slowing down the US Postal Service in order to discourage voting by mail. A clip plays in which Obama encourages citizens to vote early to avoid problems. Then Noah says

America really is an upside down place. The Black president is telling everyone to vote early, and the white president is trying to make sure everyone's late.

And Obama's right—waiting until the last minute never works out. Like that one year I waited until July to get my beach body, (crying) but then all the beach bodies were sold out."

As I understand, "beach bodies" means hot man/women in the beach, how can he say "all the beach bodies were sold out"? The bodies cannot be goods to be sold, can anyone please help me with explanation? thanks a lot.

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    It's simply a joke. "Get" my beach body would usually mean "achieve" a beach body. (IE, go to the gym until you have muscles.) But "Get" can also mean "purchase, buy". It's just a "nonsense joke".
    – Fattie
    Aug 20, 2020 at 13:02
  • Well, technically you can buy a "beach body", by purchasing a gym membership and going regularly to build up muscle, definition, etc - or, maybe you can pay a ton of money to have someone kidnapped from Muscle Beach, taken to the laboratory of Dr. Evill (two L's - no one will figure it out!), have your brain put into the body of Mr. Beach Dude, who then gets your body...so, yeah, maybe I've still got a chance... :-)
    – Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні
    Aug 21, 2020 at 17:35
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    @Fattie I encourage you to turn that into an answer.
    – Em. ♦
    Aug 22, 2020 at 0:32
  • lol fine @Em. you can give my answer a vote :)
    – Fattie
    Aug 22, 2020 at 23:47

3 Answers 3

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It's just a joke (not meant to be taken literally).

I wouldn't really say a beach body is a "hot person on the beach". It's more like a "hot body worthy of showing off at the beach", or a "fit body you would see on the beach".

Anyway, Noah's joke has a bit of misdirection. He's likening Obama's message to the process of obtaining a beach body. In order to get a beach body, people start working out months before summer, often as a New Year's resolution. However, if you start in July, you're already in summer (in the Northern Hemisphere). In other words, you're already too late.

This is the process you expect: work out for months and get a beach body. So you expect him to say something like, "Like that one year I waited until July to get my beach body, but I ran out of time/didn't get abs 'til December/[some other joke]."

However, the punch line is that he's actually treating a beach body like a product you could purchase— let's say an iPhone. He was going to go to the store to buy a beach body (like going to buy the latest iPhone) after summer had already begun (the day after the iPhone comes out), but they were already sold out (he was too late/he couldn't get one).

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He's using an idiom by comparing beach bodies to a purchasable good. In that sense, he's saying he was unable to obtain a beach body -- he couldn't "purchase one" or exercise well enough.

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  • "I waited.... to get my beach body" The joke, in my opinion is that one doesn't 'get' a beachbody the way one would say, 'get' a pair of sneakers. +1, but a bit more clarification?
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica
    Aug 20, 2020 at 1:33
  • The technical term for a related figure of speech is paraprosdokian.
    – JdeBP
    Aug 21, 2020 at 11:52
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Great question.

It's simply a joke.

• "Get" my beach body would usually mean "achieve" a beach body. (So: go to the gym until you "get" muscles.)

• But "Get" can also mean "purchase, buy".

It's just a simple "nonsense joke".

It is a somewhat common joke or pun...

You might say for example "I was going to get some wisdom, but they were all sold out!"

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