If there's a lingering doubt in the mind of anybody regarding a woman's ability to fight on the battlefield alongside men, I suggest those doubters head over to my gym and try to get into my aerobics class on the half hour, when Stretch Those Sinews lets out and the Shrink-Your-Big-Butt Step Class attempts to enter using the same doorway.
Getting into the classroom and claiming your spot on the studio floor is like a Knicks-Bulls game in overtime. The slamming you see on the rugby field? The full-force body-checking you watch at professional ice hockey games? Nothing, compared to the elbow jabbing, hip-checking, Capezio bag battering mayhem that erupts as we attempt to squeeze through the single door into the workout studio. Watch out, that Evian bottle is loaded and the safety catch is off; you're going to be sloshed! Duck! She's got a backpack and I think it's loaded -- with leg weights! It's like merging on a particularly vicious LA freeway where your fellow travelers are dressed in tights, thongs and Avia cross trainers. At the heart of the struggle is -- what else in New York? -- real estate. In this case, a prime spot on the studio floor.
At my aerobics studio and at most others across the city, country and the world, we women know the drill. Those just finished with their class know better than to try to exit while we're on our way in; rather than be flattened by stampeding hordes of Lululemon-clad Amazons, they stand aside, backs pressed against the studio wall and watch, eyes wide, as we pour through the doorjamb, a multi-colored mob running in a panicked frenzy as if it were an Entemann's give-away; charging toward the "best" spots (the ones in the very front with the full-length mirror view), or just a spot claimed out of some neurotic habit.
Once inside, personal workout space is claimed, staked out and protected as strictly as territory delineated in the Treaty of Versailles. Water bottles and aerobic shoes are dropped into little white piles all over the room as boundaries are marked. Women stand stiffly, hands on hips, legs wide, defying anyone to enter their tiny exercise realms. Any negotiations for additional space are purely symbolic: no one's budging. Latecomers plead for an extra inch or two, attempting to nab even the tiniest view of themselves in the mirrors from their spots in the back of the room, next to the dreaded radiators. (Next to the radiators is no man's land, where you spend the whole class trying not to jump your jack onto a hot metal picket.) They'll get an inch if they're lucky -- if the leotard-wearer blocking them shifts to the side that much -- granting maybe a view of a shoulder or a hip. But once all the invisible lines on the hardwood floor are drawn, and the exercise music starts, the battle really begins.
You just don't know how frightening exercise can be until you've experienced an aerobics class in almost any exercise studio in America. This is a world where women's thighs run the show, don't let anybody kid you, and there's no better place to experience that truth than in a mirror-lined room with 25 women who are not completely happy with their figures. You can read their minds: "Why do I have to have hips at all? I'm obviously never going to have children!" they're thinking, as they rip off their jackets and throw backpacks helter skelter under the coat rack. "I love this class!" one woman lies to another. You can tell she's lying because she's earlier made reference to the fact that this teacher is the hardest. "You get a really good workout with Don!" she assures a newcomer. Translated, she's really saying, "I made it through the class without actually crying and I want the world to know!"
We'd all rather be home watching Oprah, let's be honest. And yet, we women do love an event where we get to see what everyone else is wearing. It's like a party, only with fewer clothes. There's the American Beauty, whose socks and shoes always match her jogbra. I don't know how she does it, but somehow she manages to pull it off three times a week. Then there's The Dancer, wearing leg warmers and what look like sauna shorts. This woman is the picture of grace. She knows what they're talking about when they order an arabesque, while the rest of us are just throwing our legs out in back, trying not to look like a dog burying something behind him. There are even a few punkettes looking for that sculpted look cigarettes and coffee alone just can't accomplish. They sport black Converse high tops, stitched bustiers and fishnet support-hose. And then there are the usual types that populate every exercise studio: the ones who are carved and chiseled into shapes that defy any intake of nourishment; the ones in full make-up who reapply their lipstick just before class; and those new to exercise, who look like they never saw a tennis shoe prior to 2000 and always thought the weights in the weight room were car parts.
Once the instructor starts the warm-up, the ones up front had better be good, or at least have sharp outfits, because if they don't, the ones behind will creep into their territory and do homicidal arm lunges within inches of their backs. Interlopers try to sneak, floorboard by floorboard into each other's space during the "grapevine" (step, cross, step, KICK!). Some women protect their fiefdoms by jumping wildly, flailing their bodies in such a way there's a chance of suffering grave bodily harm if you inadvertently leg-lift yourself onto their property. We've all learned to stay far back from the one in a skimpy black outfit who fends off encroachments by flinging her dreadlocks in a mad whirlpool of aerobic enthusiasm. Think "Ben Hur" and lethal, protruding spokes on chariot wheels...
Then there are the ones who attempt figure intimidation; flaunting their iron hard bodies in thongs and modified G-strings; in short, one-piece unitards; in screaming paisley-patterned Pranas whose design defies all warnings that loud patterns make the wearer look fat. "What are YOU doing here!" the rest of us scream silently. Since they're always in the front row, we have to stand behind them, fuming. We're forced to dodge their butt as it swings its way toward us during the squats; obliged to stagger our kicks so we don't boot them into the next row. Every once in a while though, I let a high kick fly and I fan 'em, like a pitcher fans back the batter, just to let them know I'm back there. It's every woman for herself, truly survival of the fittest, and also of those whose outfits fit best.
But we all have our strategies and this is mine. I go to class three times a week. I wear the baggiest t-shirt I can scrounge up, a pair of my ex-boyfriend's boxer shorts, one long sock and one short sock, and Keds. Plaid Keds. I limp into the back row right before the class starts, dragging my Step platform behind me (the idea is I'm too weak to lift it). I position it upside down like a blue canoe and then I stand there pretending to ponder the mystery of where the risers go until the instructor, with a thinly veiled look of contempt, suggests I come up front since I'm obviously an exercise moron.
It's been 6 weeks now and he still hasn't caught on. I've managed to get to the front row every time and, although I never look as cool as the women who surround me, I'm happy. Like finding a cheap one bedroom apartment three times a week, it's my little real estate victory. The front row, across from the mirror; the best piece of property in the whole studio!
Let it be a lesson to outsiders: aerobics are not to be taken lightly. As we improve our bodies, we hone other skills. Strategy, negotiation and finally, compromise come into play within these mirrored walls. And once we get up to speed, we're a force to be reckoned with: we women (and men) who, for forty minutes, move with the music, in step, as one, together! (Somewhat together.) We become a team, a unit, a unified wedge of cardio-active machinery! Give us a task and we'll complete it, as one!!
Just don't stand in front of us.
