In The Style of Vice’s “I Tried…”
I am sick of Pilates. My butt has been boosted, my biceps are Miley Cyrus-toned, and my pelvic floor is strong enough to snap off a partner’s member mid-coitus. I love Pilates, truly, but I need some space from my Pilates princessdom.
I want to get fucked. Like a Roman soldier pre-battle gay orgy, I want to get FUCKED UP. So, I signed up for a Tracy Anderson class.
If you’re not familiar with Ms. Anderson’s oeuvre, her claim to fame is being a trainer to the stars, primarily those tall, thin, and blonde. (Like Miss Piggy, as Anderson’s website claims!) Gwenyth Paltrow, a devout client, is an investor in Ms. Anderson’s studios.
Anderson has cemented her method over decades, her regime a unique blend of yoga, dance, pilates, and krav maga targeting small “accessory,” muscles as a way to shave inches off anyone’s waist! Tracy asserts her “revolutionary method can give anyone–regardless of genetic background–the physical and mental results they desire.” She’s God!
She’s invented multiple confounding fitness apparatus, and she’s pivoted her teachings over the years but what never changes, is the women who come to her studio. When you enter the 59th Street studio, the smell hits you first– a vaguely putrid waft of Chanel No. 5 and sweat. It smells like sex with a 70-year-old sugar mama.
You suddenly feel cheap in your $200 Alo Leggings and Bra set. The vintage Seiko watch your mother gifted you looks like a plastic slap bracelet in comparison to the armfuls of Cartier bracelets Anderson’s clients adorn. They stack Cartier’s like a Hindu bride wears armfuls of bangles.
You are haphazardly checked in by a frazzled front desk clerk. She wears a damp bath towel across her shoulders, as she pants, confirming your name.
“Jet Jameson? First Time? Lockers to the right, bathrooms to the left, the water fountain is broken, and hand weights and HeartStones are in the studio on the right side. I just took class myself, it’s a journey today, gird your loins!” She cackles as you back slowly towards the lockers.
The Heart Stone..journey…gird your loins? Have I stepped into a Tolkien war allegory?
The glass walls leading into the studio drip with sweat, a premonition of what’s to come. Women stumble over one another, some fleeing the scene, others preparing themselves for battle. Your chest collides, hard into another woman, her over-filled silicone breasts knocking the air out of you. You look up to her mascara-stained fast, her peroxide-blonde hair, falling out of her bun.
She blows air out of her mouth, hard, right into your face–her breath a mixture of toothpaste and espresso, and cigarette smoke. “Sorry dawling,” she drawls, petting your shoulder.
You lock your measly possessions, the watch, the Coach Wallet you splurged on for your 21st birthday its zipper now broken off, and your iPhone into the dusty locker. A message lined on its inside door, scrawled in lipstick,
“BEWARE, BABE!” Someone risked her Gucci Goldie Red Velvet lipstick to warn you…of what exactly?
You walk through the hallway toward the studio, Birkins littering the floor. You pass a bulletin board with plastic surgeon’s business cards, cool-sculpting coupons, and gourmet pet embalming flyers tacked chaotically.
You are in class. Taylor Swift is playing. This MUST be the place. A white woman’s mecca :)
You slip in a pool of sweat, but you recover gracefully enough. You take a spot towards the back, hoping to cower enough to be ignored by the teacher. You haven’t been this intimated by a workout since the rope-climbing unit in eighth grade gym. (You were afraid of getting camel toe in front of everyone, a fear realized and held to this day.)
There is a wooden box, a pole, and a bath towel waiting for you. You retrieve a pair of eight-pound weights, and two steel balls labeled “Heart Stones,” that weigh ten pounds total. An Amazonian-like woman approaches you from behind, breathing on your neck.
“Those are going to be too heavy for you.” She breathes in a thick German accent….was that Scharwzaneggar in a wig? She disappears into a sweaty mist. You follow her advice and take lighter options. You spend the entire class looking over your shoulder for her, but she truly has disappeared. Maybe the TA Studio is haunted by fit mid-60s ghosts of former action stars in drag?
The instructor enters, followed by a modest camera crew. It is not Tracy Anderson herself, she teaches member-only classes. You are taking a non-member class. A monthly membership must be applied for. If your application is accepted you then must pay $900/mo. Hmm–maybe that’s how you’ll solve your desire to go to graduate school. If you miss class more than three times, miss your billing date, or breathe wrong, your membership may be revoked at any time.
The instructor pushes her way in, knocking doe-eyed newbies to the floor.
“Clear an aisle, clear an aisle for me to DANCE!” The music changes, (don’t worry, it’s just a different Taylor Swift song,) the instructor and her camera crew march up and down their self-made aisle, throwing punches, and thrashing weights about. The instructor shakes her ass, and you are expected to copycat. Other than the crooning of Taylor, and the labored breaths of your fellow students, the class is silent. No instructions from the teacher, just movements.
About ten minutes into what feels like random movement, she shouts:
“Hup! Hup! Pole, All Fours!”
You drop to your knees like the good girl you are and take the pole into your hands. Oh my God, my mom was right, you move to New York, and next thing you know, you’re a sex worker.
We sway the pole side to side, we kick our legs out rhythmically, and your shoulders and thighs are burning inexplicably. You find yourself dripping sweat, licking your lips, and begging for more. DAMN THIS SHIT IS HORNY!
These women aren’t here to work out…they like me, are trying to fuck! They shouldn’t be playing Taylor Swift, they should be playing Kim Petras’ Slut Pop on LOOP. They aren’t satisfied with traditional exercise or gym floors, they want the burn of good sex and the adrenaline of competing with other women.
Your eyes flash at one another in the mirror, and you realize the women in the class are staring at you. You realize they may have the clothes, the money, and the Hamptons homes, but you have what they don’t and can never have again…YOUTH. You are the youngest person in the classroom by decades! If an eighteen-year-old girl walked into this studio most of these women would commit ritualistic suicide! But you are a hot, tight 24-year-old with decades of unused dance training and the ability to put your feet behind your head. You can roll your hips while maintaining a JLo smolder. You can press weights over your head, unafraid of your underarms flapping in the wind. Sure, you could never get a reservation at Bemmelmen’s Bar, but you could get any of these women’s husbands to make you a reservation at Bemmelmen’s if you batted your eyelashes and pouted your lip! These women can’t even make their husbands be present fathers. You have the power in this room.
You march straight up the aisle yourself. The lights flash.
“What’s happening!?” The front row cries.
Your hair is blown back by a Beyoncé-like wind fan. You assume the all-encompassing knowledge of all the hyper-competitive insecure women who came before you; Ariana Grande, Hillary Rodham, Olivia Wilde.
“What’s up girliana, you are looking so fierce today,” the instructor pleads, tears in her crow’s feet-rimmed eyes.
You punch her in the face. Her two front veneers pop out of her skull, landing into a pool of sweat and blood on the floor.
“That was ah-mazing form.” She passes her heart stone to you and promptly collapses onto the floor. She’s dead! The room falls quiet for a moment. A lull in the battle, what’s to come now? A new song on the playlist, “Von Dutch” by CharliXCX.
You can only describe what happens next as the penultimate fight scene in Mean Girls. When all the girls are killing each other? It’s like that and it’s beautiful. Women bludgeon each other with their heart stones, joust one another with their poles, and throw boxes at their own reflections in the mirror.
They curse time for making them age, their mothers for bringing them into this world, and Tracy Anderson for convincing these smart, educated women that they too could achieve her naturally petite frame while thrashing around in a $900° room.
No one touches you. No one reaches out, as you slowly prowl out of the room. You can only assume you’re now….Queen of the non-member Tracy Anderson class on Tuesdays at Noon? Or maybe you’re Bruce Willis’s character in Fight Club, President of the Fight Club? (Is that what that movie is about? I’ve never seen it.)
You approach the front desk girl, wordlessly pointing toward the chaos in the studio.
“Oh–you started a femme sexually aggressive coup! And on your first time! Good for you. Don’t worry about it, it happens to the best of us.” She slides a Cartier bracelet off her wrist and slides it onto yours, a one percenter’s friendship bracelet.
A woman leaves the studio now, blood pouring from her perfectly microbladed eyebrow. She slams her platinum AMEX down on the counter.
“Monthly Unlimited Membership, please!”
She turns to me, winking–or maybe just trying to blink some blood out of her eye.
“I’m gonna be here so much, if my husband’s name weren’t embossed on the card, I’d forget what it was!”
She cackles as you flee the studio. Enlivened, emboldened, fearful and powerful.
Five Star Review on MindBody. Great Workout, Will Be Going Back.
