I complimented a woman at the gym on her hair. “Thank you!” She tittered. “It takes time, but so does my body. I have to come here EVERY DAY if I want to maintain. I mean, that’s all it is now, at our age.” Wait, was I her age? “It’s constant. The second you stop, the fat just sticks to you, I mean,….” suddenly she was going on about life and “…how God protects those who are good and how California is nicer but the wrinkles come on like anything, but if you eat lots of beets then…” I was now really sorry I said anything to her. I backed away slowly, with the daunting realization that she could be on to something. I have to exercise every day? Really?
I’m pretty sure lifting a chip to your face is not exercise, so I look into other options. A friend suggests we try the dancing class: you use a bar to prop yourself up while you attempt to do all the things limber, lithe people do. This sounded good; it had music and direction, two things I need. We signed up for the two-week trial, not knowing what to expect except pain. We found a mat, both noting that there was a side for blonds, and a “not blond” side. The blonds were sticking together, and I couldn’t help but notice they must come everyday, or were dancers, or had reconstructed frontages, or had knowledge of face products that I don’t have. We were on the droopy brunette/redhead side. Suddenly, I knew what it felt like to be in the red swimsuit.
Forgive my offshoot here…When I was thirteen, our class had swimming at the new school. We were thrilled at the prospect of a pool, right up until we were informed of the swimsuit protocol. You lined up, shivering in a tiny towel, and plucked the appropriate size swimsuit from a bin. Green for skinny girls, blue for middling, and red if you were hefty, so you resembled a fire truck floating in the water. You donned your protective polyester, styled after 1950’s swimming models, and waited in the pool, as your suit expanded just enough to almost slip off. This was really bad for the boys. They were trying to avoid the green, when all the girls were frantically trying to jam themselves into it. But by avoiding the green they just exposed their backsides to us, making their acne-filled lives even more horrible. I was a lucky one, a blue. The look on the two “reds” faces held the truth: this was the most embarrassing show of inequality that they had ever been subjected to.
I felt like a red: a floating fire truck in a sea of greens. But if it got me looking like these Nordic super-humans, I was going to try. Besides, I’m forty now, I can handle embarrassment. We lifted and tucked and stretched as I became more aware of subtle differences (holycrap, is that is a chunk of deodorant stuck in my armpit?) and we stretched our limbs (the teacher is laughing at me, is she actually laughing at me?) and then we did something akin to Jane Fonda’s famous butt-clenching, hip thrusting air hump. ” I feel closer to you now, “ I told my friend, in a huff. “No one has ever seen me air-hump before,” at which point we were giggling and guffawing and generally the only two tomato faced red-heads in the room. And then it hit me. I have always been red. We all are. Who hasn’t been a red at some point or other, sticking out like a sore thumb, shining like a beacon of nerdiness in a pack of cool, etc. I was even “Erin the Red Baron” at grade school, being one of a handful of kids with red hair. I embraced my redness and forgot all about my two month old toenail varnish, my propensity to sweat buckets, and my inability to gracefully do anything with a bar. I had a great time. I hoisted the muffin top about with intention. I was a dancer, a fushia-faced, lumpy-assed dancer.
Then I broke my toe. Not there, at home, where I like to ram it into things, like a curb feeler. So, there you have it. I will have to stay home for a few weeks, clenching the lumps and lifting my good leg while at the kitchen counter. I’m going back, though. Might even get myself a red outfit.