(tw: body image)

If you have seen me in person recently, you may have noticed a difference. No, I still haven’t cut my hair. No, I haven’t invested in that face tattoo I’ve been considering. The change you should notice is my receding hunchback. My hunchback and I have been close for years, pretty much since August 2011 when I started law school. It developed from a combination of crunching forward to type on a laptop, hanging my head down to read books, and carrying an enormous backpack on my back (before I switched to a rolly bag like a fricken DORK).

It got slightly better after graduation, but then took a turn in March 2020. That’s when I started working from random areas of my home instead of my work office, where I had my ergonomic standing desk and yoga ball chair. Working from home the past year, I spent time on the couch, in a fluffy chair, on the bed, in the dining room, behind our living room wet bar, and at the breakfast nook.

I eventually fell into a rhythm after turning the guest room into my home office, but still, I slouched. Even on my ball chair, I hunkered. I crumpled. I drew my shoulders up like Richard Nixon while I banged away on my keyboard.

But, due to some recent life changes, I have begun walking up right. If we’re going off the old March of Progress chart, I started as a solid Oreopithecus (which sounds way more delicious than it is) and have progressed to at least a Cro-Magnon. This is the result of going to Pure Barre. I started going last week to the Preston Hollow location and already I feel taller as a result.

For those unfamiliar with Dallas, Preston Hollow is an extremely wealthy area where the median home prices hover around $3.2 million. It’s where important people like Dirk Nowitzki, former President George W. Bush, and future president Mark Cuban all live. In fact, W is known to frequent a restaurant called Royal China whose door opens adjacent to my new Pure Barre home. I am tourist in this neighborhood, driving nearly a half-hour each way, give or take, to get to each work out.

Up until last week, I had only visited bars without the extra R or E on the end. I stayed away from barre studios, mostly because of the marketing materials. Their websites and billboards feature lithe, dancer-bodied women with more abs than I’ve ever seen in my life. Some of them are doing the splits. Others hold their hands aloft, airy and light. I look nothing like these women.

This isn’t a knock on Pure Barre, or any barre studio for that matter. It’s basic marketing. You are supposed to see the models in the photos and think, “If I do barre, I, too, will be able to do the splits” or gain abs or hold my hand above my head for that long. The feeling it should engender is, “That could be me, too.” Instead, all I thought was “That looks nothing like me. Therefore, it is not for me.”

I stayed away from group exercise classes, preferring instead to run alone where I can grunt and groan and vomit in solitude. Not only that, group exercise classes tend to clash with my huge ego. It is not enough for me to do a thing. Nike’s slogan is meaningless to me. Just do it? No, I have to do it AND do it better than anyone else. This is, of course, ridiculous and operates as a great excuse to keep me from trying new things.

Ridiculous or not, that’s what I thought. Why would I sign up for a contest I was destined to lose? Stack me up against any one of those frozen faces in the advertisement and I’m toast. Actually, I’m probably eating toast. You ever tried toast with a thin layer of almond butter and a dollop of blackberry preserves right in the middle? Game changer.

Anyway, the point is I told myself I was out before I even walked through the door. Nobody had banned me from class (yet). No one told me not to come. There was no red circle with a slash over my photo up at the register. The only bouncer stopping me was me.

A second reason I stayed away, aside from my irrational competitiveness, was my obsessive need to please authority figures, particularly teachers. How could I come to class and disappoint a spunky gal in a headset mic, counting down from ten and telling me to hang in there on a move I could not possibly hold? “You can do it,” she would tell me when I could do no such thing.

I was sure that my failure to stick it out in the face of an instructor’s enthusiasm would ruin their day and make them feel like failures, too. What did I tell you? I have quite an ego. I actually thought that somehow my lack of fitness would make a complete stranger feel inadequate.

I also felt pre-guilty about not being able to do the moves. I like mastering new skills quickly so I seem smart. Neither body control nor the ability to micro-move muscles are easily acquired skills. Not to mention planking. Did I tell you they make you plank? Honestly I didn’t know this going in or I may not have signed up. I’m locked into a contract now, so I guess I’ll stick with it, but they really should put that on the door or something. Or maybe not. If they did, people may egg the building.

At the moment, I am an awful planker. I say “at the moment” because I believe if I keep doing it, maybe I will be able to plank someday. But for now? I cannot plank for the life of me. I could walk the plank, sure, and honestly when I’m down there, that’s what I am wishing for. The sweet release of death. The depths of the ocean. A ship of pirates sailing off in the distance. Instead, I open my eyes and it’s my sweaty face, balled up into knot, staring back at me from the full walls of mirrors.

That’s another thing. There are mirrors all up and down that place. If you ever think, “Hey, this tank top isn’t bad on me at all,” go stand in front of some barre mirrors. Within seconds, you’ll toss it in a barrel with some lighter fluid along with nearly every other piece of clothing you own.

I figure if I keep going, I will get stronger. I’m already able to do a few more things now than I could at first. Tiny progress. But please know, I didn’t kick all this off because I am brave. I did not look up the best Pure Barre location in the nicest, fanciest neighborhood on my own and smash that sign-up button. I went because my friend, Suzy, just bought the place. Then after I signed up for the newbie class, I learned another friend from the comedy world, Tori, would be my teacher.

These are two of the most welcoming women I’ve ever met. You know when you talk to someone, and they instantly feel like home? That’s them. So I wasn’t all that brave. I cheated. I went where I knew people, figuring if the frozen-faced models from the ads were there, they would have to be nice given they rolled with these two.

Before that first class, I had done some due diligence on barre workouts in general. Didn’t seem too culty off the bat, so put a check in that column. No need for shoes during the workout – double check there. I am down to wear socks-only because I don’t particularly like shoes. Required clothes are yoga pants and a tank top or t-shirt? This is what I wear every day of my life already. Check, check, and check. What really sealed the deal – the moves are based in dance.

Y’all may not know this about me, but I am a repressed ballerina. When I was little, around eight years old, I announced to my mom that I wanted to be a ballerina. I wanted to dance like the characters in Grease and Singin’ In the Rain and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

“Sure,” she said. “Be anything you want to be.”

The only thing stopping me from being a ballerina was hard work, passion, dedication, drive, and talent. Also weight. I was a chubby little kid and drew parallels between myself and that Disney hippo in the tutu. I Googled it, and apparently her name is Hyacinth Hippo. She is in Fantasia and some other Disney shorts.

I am not here to body-shame Hyacinth. She is a great dancer. She holds some poses that I still dream of trying to hold. I had just experienced too many kids crack too many jokes about my weight to tee them up for such an easy comparison. To add to my paranoia about being too big to dance, one time I kicked a hole in my parents’ garage wall trying to do that run-up-the-wall move that Donald O’Connor does in Singin’ In the Rain. So after that, I shelved my dancing career, though I never stopped wanting to dance.

I still dance a little here and there. I’ll dance in the kitchen while doing dishes or in front of the bathroom mirror while getting ready. I dance at concerts and wedding receptions. Nothing noteworthy, but I have a little bit of rhythm in me.

I was reminded how much I loved dance recently when I saw an interview with Dick Van Dyke. He has been in the news recently for being recognized at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors. He’s 95, and on a recent interview with CBS This Morning did more crunches in 2 minutes than I have in the last five years, at least until this last week in class.

He said he’s just five years shy of his goal of making it to 100 years old like George Burns. His secret, according to his 2015 book Keep Moving, is dance. In the book, he writes, “If I am out shopping and hear music playing in a store, I start to dance…If I want to sing, I sing. I read books and get excited about new ideas. I enjoy myself. I don’t think about the way I am supposed to act at my age — or at any age.” He also asked, “Why sit on the sidelines at any age?”

Great question.

So, in the face of being scared, of worrying about competition and disappointment, and of planning what I would say if I ran into George W. Bush, I went. I took the class. I followed the moves when I could. I took a break when I had to. I modified. I stopped to shake it out. But also, I pushed myself. I tucked. I pulsed. I pumped to the beat.

My muscles seared, burned, were on fire – all the euphemisms. Before I went, one blog post I read outlined “Things to Know Before Your First Class.” One of those things was, “It’s fine to make plans after barre class because you won’t get too sweaty.” FALSE. After I finished my first class, I looked like I’d been hosed down twice. I ended up sopping wet. But also – I walked out proud.

I went. I did the thing. Then, I went again. And again. I’ll keep going, too.

As for my fears, it turns out I had been fearing the wrong things. When you’re working that hard, the only person to beat is yourself. Wow, with a pearl of wisdom like that, I should be the coach to a rag-tag peewee football team in a feel-good movie.

There was also no judgment. I couldn’t even judge anyone if I had wanted to. My eyes were so full of sweat, I couldn’t look around to see any other people. I don’t know why I was even worried in the first place. Everyone is the star of their own show. I’m just an extra, sweating out of focus or out of frame in the movies of their lives. Irrelevant, only there to fill the scene.

As for the instructors, they’re there to instruct. If I did every move perfectly, their jobs would be obsolete. My imperfect moves are their job security. You’re welcome, y’all. I am also sure that as soon as I master a move, they’ll be there to help me kick it up a notch.

What I really should have been worried about was chugging frozen margaritas the night before class and feeling a little hung over during that first class. I should have worried about the rug burns I would get on my knees from all the modified planking and push-ups. I should have worried about my sore muscles and all the extra laundry I now have to do. Most of all, I should have worried about all the time I had wasted thinking something wasn’t for me.

In 2017, when he was 92 years old, Dick Van Dyke appeared dancing and singing in Mary Poppins Returns. He hops up on a table, flanked by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Emily Blunt, and sings:

So when they tell you that you’re finished
And your chance to dance is done
That’s the time to stand
To strike up the band
And tell ’em that you just begun

Sometimes the “em” we’ve gotta tell is ourselves. I had to stop telling myself I was too old, too out of shape, too fat. I had to stop thinking it was too late to do anything I wanted to do. Turns out, it wasn’t the models on the Pure Barre website, or the other people in class, or society, or anyone else telling me I couldn’t do it. It was just me. So now, instead, I’m telling myself to shut up and dance.

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This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.