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Archives from 2002-2006

A few weeks ago I was pointing something out to the kids and I noticed that although I was no longer moving, my outstretched arm was. Part of my arm, anyway. Specifically, the triceps area. It was sort of … wobbling, briefly, before coming to a rest.

I immediately thrust my arm out again while peering at the underneath, and damned if it didn’t perform the same gelatinous trick. Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle—J-E-L-L-O! What the fuck.

I’d like to tell you I didn’t spend the next 20 minutes and at least once per day ever since staring with fascinated horror at myself in a mirror while waving my arms in order to gauge exactly how long it takes for the flappy part to stop flapping, but, well, let’s keep it real, shall we? REAL FLAPPY.

This is a new thing, the armflap. I have (had?) nice arms, too. Dammit, I’ve worked hard for these arms. I can do pushups and burpees and I can lift children who have the superpower of suddenly assuming the density of Osmium. I have visible definition in my arms and my once-impenetrable veins now happily accept doctor’s blood-draw needles on the first stab and there are honest-to-god dents in my shoulders.

And yet, the armflap. I know I’m supposed to be all, I love and honor every part of my imperfect and beautiful body, but you know what, I do not love and honor the armflap. Right now I feel that the armflap is a bunch of bullshit, a similar physical injustice as my waistline which has taken on a sort of canary-in-a-gold-mine role where it rapidly expands by one full pants size for every half-pound I gain.

Gripped by the conviction that my body is newly succumbing to all sorts of depressing age-related and gravitational damages, I fled to Amazon and purchased a Tracy Anderson DVD.

Tracy Anderson, for those not intimately familiar with ridiculous celebrity fads, is a sort of trainer to the stars. Her main claim to fame is being the sculptress behind Gwyneth Paltrow’s tight quarter-bouncing Iron Man ass and Madonna’s terrifyingly ropey physique. She’s got a whole diet and fitness METHOD which purports to redesign anyone’s body, as long as you’re willing to do her workouts (2 hours a day, minimum) and follow her diet (eating fuck-all).

It’s totally the kind of thing you buy at 11:30 PM after you’ve just wedged a sleeve of graham crackers in your food-hole while staring at your armflap.

The DVD I bought is her mat routine, and at first I was kind of laughing at it. Stick my arms out and wave them around while trying vainly to copy Tracy’s pornlike facial expressions? This is a WORKOUT? Oh, how my CrossFit coaches would be laughing at me now.

But goddamn if that stupid arm-waving business isn’t about the most painful thing I’ve ever done. It’s not that one of the moves is challenging, it’s the fact that everything is repeated for like twelve years. Seriously: extend your arms, and rotate your hands up and hands down. Do that for twelve years. When you’re done with that, it’s time for legs!

It isn’t exactly thrilling and Tracy really kind of seems like an anorexia-promoting douche, especially when she harps on how her workout is designed to make you SOOO TINY and how it’s mission-critical not to use too much weight or you’ll BULK, but the repetition and music are oddly soothing after a while, and I swear I see new lines in my arms. My shoulders look more defined and I feel like my posture is a little better. I can raise my left arm without hearing my collarbone pop out of joint (this was a phenomenon that appeared after a few months of trying, badly, to do kipping pullups), and my legs seem more flexible.

I can go on and on about what exercise does for my confidence, my energy, my patience, and my overall outlook on life, and it’s all true. It’s also true, however, that most of the workouts I’ve tried have been for utterly vain reasons. I almost always discover the surface results aren’t what I think they will be (running: it won’t necessarily give you an athlete’s body if you don’t eat like an athlete!), but there are often other payoffs (running: it can make you feel like you can handle any challenge, including holding off the desire to shit one’s pants!).

So, Tracy Anderson’s mat routine: silly, girly, probably scientifically fucked, but somehow rewarding. Maybe it’s all those bizarre rotations strengthening up the supporting muscles. Maybe it’s the Power of Gwyneth.

The armflaps, however, are still fully present and accounted for. I think the best solution is to make very, very slow gestures from now on.

Do you ever read something in a book that makes you pause, back up, read it again, and eventually fold the edge of the paper down so you can revisit it over and over? I can’t count how many times I’ve done that while reading Elizabeth Berg.

I thought, how can it be that two strangers are exchanging such intimate things? Well, most women are full to the brim, that’s all. That’s what I think. I think we are most of us ready to explode, especially when our children are small and we are so weary with the demands for love and attention and the kind of service that makes you feel you should be wearing a uniform with “Mommy” embroidered over the left breast, over the heart. I (used to sit) half watching Ruthie and half dreaming—trying, I think, to recall my former self. If a stranger had come up to me and said, “Do you want to talk about it? I have time to listen,” I think I might have burst into tears at the relief of it. It wasn’t that I was really unhappy. It was the constancy of my load and the awesome importance of it; and it was my isolation.

—Elizabeth Berg, The Pull of the Moon

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