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.
The girl in the sportsbra. On the days I do manage to make it to the Stairmaster (after slipping home to change in the privacy of my own bathroom), I’m reminded by someone I like to simply call “the girl in the sports bra.” The only people who need to wear skin-skimming Lycra are Cat Woman and Lance Armstrong. No one needs to be aerodynamic at the gym. No one. Puzzling then, to see this vixen in a bra that juggles her goods rather than contains them and a pair of leggings so tight she can’t even wear a thong. This woman is not at the gym in order to look good, she’s at the gym because she looks good. Feel sorry for her that she has had to resort to parading in glorified sausage casing for self-affirmation, I tell myself and pump my iPod to George Michael.
Without a doubt, the iPod is the single greatest thing that has happened to the workout since sweatbands. I’m reminded of a commercial for fitness water on television right now. A woman jams to Mary J. Blige as she powerwalks, turning heads down Rodeo Drive. Of course, the woman isn’t on Rodeo Drive, any more than she is eye candy for Taye Diggs—but don’t tell her that. This is much like my own relationship with the iPod: spinning next to the girl in the sportsbra is much more tolerable when I have a personal soundtrack reaffirming the fact that I am, indeed, the hottest woman in the room.
The trainer who gets too personal. I learned the hard way that the babealicious self-confidence imbued by my workout mix can, however, backfire. No joke, I once had a trainer offer to help me firm my butt and ask for my number in nearly the same breath. It was astonishing. He left me sweaty, bewildered, and wondering whether I’d just been horribly insulted or hit on. It was, unfortunately, exactly like my last relationship.
Every gym has him: the yoga instructor who leans in too close, or the trainer who feels the need to stretch your crotch muscles. There are a number of people around whom I allow a necessary vulnerability—my therapist, my bikini waxer, my trainer. Let it be known that the professional privilege of seeing me emotionally or physically prone precludes any kind of personal relationship.
The fire-bomber. Let’s admit it. Sometimes, with all that moving around and squatting and downward-dogging, we work some gas loose. Polite people hold it in or go to the machine in the corner. Some will let it slip. Propriety demands that you ignore it, unless you’re dealing with a repeat offender. In this case, I firmly believe a nasty look, moving to another area, and even waving your hand in front of your nose is perfectly acceptable.
If the problem persists, I like to recruit other gym goers in the public shaming by giving them a disgusted glance and a nod in the offender’s direction. Unless of course it was me, in which case I blame it on someone else or try to recreate the sound with my sneaker.
The normal, hot guy. Some people believe he’s an urban legend, but my cousin’s friend’s sister told me she really did meet her boyfriend at the gym. I realize that, just as I am at the gym to exercise—not be hit on—he may be as well, in which case I want to respect his privacy. But dammit if he doesn’t have a great butt and the glute machine in front of the elliptical trainer has just reminded me that I am not getting any younger!
Of course, I’ve never actually met a guy at the gym, and the ones I do see generally aren’t my type. Nevertheless, a good deal of my workout is spent needlessly worrying over different ways in which the normal, hot guy might appear and approach me and what my appropriately witty and yet mildly stand-offish response would be. I wouldn’t, after all, want him thinking I’m just a girl in a sportsbra.
And yet ... my biggest fitness roadblock seems to be that once I’ve expended the energy to face all these yahoos and maneuver the obstacle course that is supposed to be a simple mind-body exercise to lift my mood and my butt, I feel I’ve earned—no, I deserve—some General Tso’s Chicken. Please pass the egg rolls. And I’ll see you, girl in the sportsbra, at AeroBoxing tomorrow.