Spring is nearly here, and for many people that means digging out their workout gear and hitting the gym or trail to get in shape for summer. For me, the thought of extra people working out around me means self-conscious dread. The reason being, I don’t look pretty working out.
I have friends who look exactly like the fitness models on the inspirational posters in the gym. And when they work out, they have perfect form, excellent mental attitude, and sexy little beads of sweat highlighting all the right places. I am the Big Bad Wolf of the gym: I grunt and sigh, huff and puff and sweat in all the wrong places in my oversized T-shirt and dirty running shoes. Once I even forgot to use my inside voice and grunted out loud in an aggressive man-voice, “Just one more rep,” before burying my face in the leg curl bench in an exhausted heap.
Unless you’re already in shape, it takes so much unsexiness, so much drippy-sweat-funny-face-making-embarrassing-position-holding effort to become sexy. But why? I’m exaggerating here—I believe sexiness comes in all shapes and sizes—but follow me on this. Isn’t it kind of funny to put yourself through so much dorkiness in the hope of losing weight, building muscle, and looking good?
Then there are the questionable inventions that seem designed specifically to get you into shape while making you look dorky. I mean, seriously, grip a weight and shake furiously to lose weight, kneel on all fours and rock your booty back and forth to whittle your waist—not only do I doubt the efficacy, but I also wonder if it’s actually intended as a big joke. Actually, that’s what I once thought. Then I found an overzealously springy little man named Leandro with a Portuguese accent who promised me my “body is going to change.” I discovered the Brazil Butt Lift.
There’s no doubt that anything Brazil is sexy. You can tack the word Brazil onto the word Bank and I’d move my money there. Put it on the label of a can of chickpeas, and I’d buy that brand. Combine it with the thing all girls want—a better butt—and I’ll buy the DVDs. I don’t care how much they cost. But Leandro isn’t just selling a better butt, he’s selling the idea that any woman can become that tanned-skinned girl with the spectacular badonkadonk gliding across the sand on the beach, her flowing hair flicking sand into your buggy eyes as she drifts past.
Small or athletic, voluptuous or tha-pow, no matter what shape or size, no girl would mind having a fantastic backside any more than a guy would mind having pecs of steel or incredible abs. So without guilt, I proceeded to work at firming up my asset.
I faithfully followed the series of workouts that includes specially targeted moves that not surprisingly have names like the Ipanema Walk, High Heels, and the Clam Shell and are performed in a way that put the Shake Weight and ab slide exercises to shame for being so prudish.
My butt was sore and tender as if the entire LA Galaxy soccer team had run over me during their running drills. Because the pain of being run over with soccer cleats can last for a surprising number of days, I could only walk like I had a soccer cleat wedged—well you get the picture. Very unsexy. Very un-Brazil.
The other thing that is very unsexy about earning a whistle-worthy posterior is trying to get through the videos in a house with so many kids running in and out. There’s just no room for sexy when you’re lying on your side on the ground sweating, a yellow rubber band around your knees, mid-Clam Shell when your son and five of his closest friends walk in asking if they can eat those cans of chili in the cabinet.
Fortunately, the girls on the video are way hotter, way less sweaty, and way less flabby-American than me, so most of the boys quickly saved their eyesight by fixating on the hot chicks clamshelling onscreen.
I tried to save face by yelling at everyone to get out. Somehow I suspected that jumping up and screaming at everyone like a psychotic hyena didn’t make the situation any better. After they left, I continued on with the video, this time on all fours, performing mule kickbacks only to get the feeling of being watched. That time it was my other son and another three friends.
My son hopped on the computer while his friends asked him what his mom was doing. Really? It’s a best-selling workout series. I can’t be the only mom who straps weights to her ankles, sprawls out on the carpet, and takes orders from a Brazilian guy demanding “Squeeze your bum bum harder! Squeeze it!! Don’t settle for less!”
I shooed them out, got up, and paused the DVD and tried to catch my breath. Sebastian, my 4-year-old, walked in and hugged my thigh.
“Mom, I told you you are too old to do those exercises,” he said, taking note of my breathlessness.
This set of events or something similar happens whenever I try to work out with the DVDs, so they’re shelved for now and maybe this year I’ll abide by my other friends—the ones whose philosophy is “It’s always sexier to eat a muffin than to go to the gym and whittle it off your middle.”
On second thought, Shelly Cone says she’ll likely dig out her oversized T-shirts and ragged workout clothes, but she’ll store a muffin nearby for good measure.
This article appears in Jan 24-31, 2013.