I hadn’t gone to the gym seeking answers to life’s existential dilemmas; I’d gone to work off the Pad Thai I’d scarfed down for lunch. So the questions that blipped in glowing red dots across the screen of the elliptical trainer seemed harmless, even helpful, at first: Weight? 128 (okay, 130). Age? Twenty-six yesterday, thanks for asking. Cardio, manual, or fat-burning mode? That was when the creeping panic set in.
I don’t know! Am I a heart-conscious cardio girl, here to increase my energy and add years to my life, or a superficial fat-burner concerned only with the size of my thighs? Am I a woman in charge of my own destiny, or a slave to the programmers of the Precor? Suddenly the questions seemed less innocent. Wait a second! This exercise machine didn’t want me to work out harder; it wanted me to reevaluate my life!
There are few everyday experiences that evoke the same psychological cocktail of dread, guilt, and a sense of accomplishment in me as a trip to the gym. The elliptical machine that seems to be channeling my mother is only one of the hazards that haunts me when I really, really want to work out, when I really, really mean to work out, but I just can’t handle …
The dimpled ass in the face. Locker rooms are scary. There are limited places to avert your eyes, and many definitions of “modesty.” I applaud women of all shapes, ages, and sizes who are comfortable in their bodies. I aspire to be one of them. And yet it boggles my mind that it will invariably be the most … shall we say, “unlikely” woman in the bathroom who unabashedly lounges in her birthday suit. It is an unwritten cosmic law, and I have had multiple confirmations from reliable sources that this also holds true for the men’s room.
The ass in the face leaves me with two choices. I can 1) applaud this woman’s bravery and check it out to see what my ass may look like in fifty years, or 2) shield my eyes. The first makes me feel like a voyeur and the second a sissy. I’d like to think I’m beyond the grammar school days of dislocating my shoulder in order to change my bra under my T-shirt, but I was raised in a household where “private parts” were called that for a reason.
