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.
