Adventures in Gym Class: Part II

I. Last Wednesday Boot Scoot was canceled, so I had to try something new. Grind. I took a fitness class called Grind. I know about Grind because sometimes when the song is changing in BS, I can hear "Candy Shop" through the gym walls.

Grind is a "hip-hop" "dance" class that makes you "feel like you're at the club." I have never shaken my butt more in an hour period, that is true. But my butt also isn't really built to shake, or shimmy, or anything, so I mostly stiffly rotated it around kind of and was grateful not to be wearing glasses so I could only half-way see the embarrassing mess I had become.

Three things:

1. It was a 20 person class. I am pretty sure only 2 of the people present would actually make a night of being at a club. The other 18 were mainly doofy looking women of all sizes in various hodgepodge workout tees trying their best not to look completely idiodic "getting low." There's something about moving like you're in a club with a body and demeanor that say, "Club as in the cracker, or?"
2. There was a dance where we did a push-up after twerking. I'd like to see someone do that in a club sometime. Maybe that should be me. Maybe I should just start doing push-ups in the club.
3. The tunes were, obvs, club beats. Having to focus on the music to get rhythms down made me hyper aware of the lyrics. Wow. Did these songs all objectify women. My Chick Bad. The Luda bit in "Yeah." And I'd prefer to not hear "Damn, that white girl got some ass" any time in my day, let alone several dozen times repeated over and over, LET ALONE while I was jumping around attempting to jiggle my butt.

"What are we doing here?" I kept thinking. Like, what. Is. Happening? Why? It's usually assumed that when people are working out, they're trying to look better. And it's usually assumed that when women are trying to look better, it's for men. This isn't always true, obviously. I love to work-out. Sometimes it makes me look better and sometimes it just feels good. If I do look better, I'm kinda happy to be more physically appealing to men, but more immediately, I feel better. Still, society blah blah blah there was a little part of us in there for that purpose.

And there were no men with us. Besides the ones yelling over the loudspeaker to bend over and lemme see you work. And we did. We did.

II. Alternatively, I completed one of my grad school goals by closing out an all-female workshop production today.

Lady director, lady playwright, five lady actors.

Shots

ACTF 2011--Huntie plays a man with one arm. I am his partner.

Today I took a Zumba class. I've taken Zumba before at the Y in the Midwest. There it was very salsa-y with a bit of hip hop. Here at the biggest party school in the country? Zumba involves a lot of butt-shaking and shimmies and the salsa beats are few and far between. More raunchtastic rap including a fully choreographed exploration of the song "Shots." You know the one? The chorus is "SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!"

Anyway, based on the aforementioned facts, men rarely visit Zumba. But, today, we had a special guest. A 40something retarded man. This man really enjoyed Zumba, but he had no idea what he was doing. He kept approaching girls in class and starting to ask what to do, but the moves go so fast, even if we WANTED to help the man, we could not. He aimlessly bopped around and eventually picked up some weights and made everyone really nervous.

A room of young women shaking their booties plus one confused retarded dude pumping weights randomly. SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!

Eventually, he tried to dance in front with the instructor, and she pointed him back to the masses.

In the locker room I saw the tube-top wearing, rap mouthing, instructor. "Hey," I said. "Way to navigate through an awkward class."

She blinked at me and put on a tiny pout. "You thought it was awkward?" She was bummed.

"Oh! No! Just...the company..."

She cocked her head to the side, bewildered, then decided to smile it off, and said, "It was really hot in there!" Then she skipped off.

I am a horrible person apparently.