I went to Pilates and now I’m a hot sexy bitch

I want a hot body. So sue me!

Yeahyeahyeah, white supremacist patriarchal beauty standards are unfeminist and we’ve been socialized and propagandized since birth and I believe in body positivity, but is it really so bad to want to look and feel good in my own skin? I mean, there’s never not been a time in my life when I didn’t think I could afford to tone up a little, maybe lose a few pounds.

Can you blame me? How can I look at a post-op photoshopped Instagram model without wishing I looked like her? And yes again I know the Instagram model doesn’t even look like the Instagram model, but so what? I still want to look like how the Instagram model doesn’t even look.

I put a drawing or a potentially AI-generated image of a headless woman with anatomically unattainable bodily features and no face on my 2025 vision board. I think this might finally be the year that I really, truly go for it. I figure if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

I saw Adriana, an elementary school friend, for the first time in a decade over the holidays. She’s been the most beautiful person in the room for as long as I’ve known her, and a fanatic believer in the magical, life-changing properties of Pilates.

“Yeah, I’ve heard!” I told her, “I’m signed up for a class on Saturday morning!”

“Oh cool. Real Pilates? Or that fake mat shit?” she asked.

“You mean like…Reformer?” I spluttered.

“Yeah, look,” she said, holding up a picture of herself in a bathroom mirror, waistband low and washboard abs exposed, “this is after my second week of doing it.”

I regretted informing her that it was indeed that fake mat shit.

Friday night was riddled with anxiety dreams. Living in Spain has destroyed the punctuality that I once prided myself on, and so my subconscious plagued me with nightmares that I’d somehow missed my class. I wound up half an hour early, no breakfast in my stomach, nor a coffee to my soul. I stopped in the nearest café for a croissant, figuring I’d sweat it out during the fifty-five minute long burn.

Katia the Instructor greets me at the door. She emphasizes meditation as part of her “practice” (notice how these people are always referring to their torture rituals as a “practice”), and so I’m bombarded with eye-watering incense and high vibrational hertz music upon entrance to the studio. I make a conscious effort to not stare at her body in case she thinks I’m a pervert.

I’m not a pervert. But I can’t help it. She’s perfect! She’s got on one of those super cinching zip up exercise sweaters that shows a perfect figure 8 where her body should be and I can’t tell if she’s wearing the slightest bit of feature-enhancing makeup or if she’s just that naturally beautiful. I try to feel unaffected by the winter-grown leg hair peeking out above my grippy socks while I put myself in Padmasana. How many classes before I’ve got an ass that high?

“Hello girls,” Katia says with a warm smile, “meet me in a seated position on the mat and close your eyes. We are going to begin class today by setting an intention.”

I meet Katia on the mat and, shutting my eyes tight, rack my brain. Intention…intention…EmRata’s torso?...fuck, no, that’s not a good one. Okay, okay, think of something better. Okay, okay I’ve got it. My intention is to feel good. I’m satisfied, and so I repeat for emphasis. My intention is to feel good. That’s a good intention, I think.

We’re meeting each other in cat/cow, then in downward dog, and then in a low squat when I notice that Dua Lipa has replaced the positive energy frequencies and is now blasting through the speakers.

“Up, and down, and up, and down!” Katia instructs in time with the song. “Lower! Go as low as you can go,” she smiles directly at me.

This skinny bitch wants to kill me, I think, but I’m encouraged to go lower.

Katia starts counting our remaining repetitions down from ten, and I suspect she’s added in numbers I’ve never heard of before.

The music drowns out my strangled cries and I grit my teeth before Katia tells us to “hold…” with a mischievous smile, and then to “pulse, pulse, pulse!”

There’s something truly devotional in the rhythmic crouching of me and the fifteen other women in the room, the hint of laughter behind our synchronized panting, the same look of determined pain on our faces. We pulse together until the song ends. The girl in front of me strips off her sweatshirt and I look down at my 9th grade gym shirt and laundry day leggings. I wonder if I should invest in a lululemon set or two.

“Now we stretch,” Katia says, gracefully twisting herself into a position that shouldn’t be possible.

By the top of the hour, we’ve returned to the meditative music and ended the practice with our hands clasped in a prayer position. Katia has the thinnest sheen of perspiration over her brow which gives her face a healthy, rosy glow. Red splotches bloom on mine. The room gives a round of applause, and in spite of myself, I clap along too.

Katia announces that there won’t be any class next week (she’ll be on a yogalates retreat in the Canary Islands) and I think about killing myself before remembering that I can probably just find another one.

On my walk home I notice I actually do feel better. I feel good. Intention achieved. Endorphins in effect. I feel an overwhelming need to laugh with my roommate Angela.

She’s waiting for me at home. We have plans to shop around the New Year’s sales today. I tell her I just need to shower and eat a proper breakfast and then I’ll be ready to go.

“I need to prepare myself for the Urban Outfitters dressing room to call me fat in every language,” I joke.

“Ha,” she says drily.

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror while waiting for the water to warm up. By instinct I stick out my right arm and pinch the extra fat around it with my left fingers. I jiggle it back and forth and watch the flabby skin shake in that gross way that it does. I peel the rest of my clothing off. I’m sticky with sweat and naked. I’m pale. I’ve got cellulite on my stomach. I swallow a gag. I wonder how many classes it’ll take before I look like Katia. Fucking fatass I say to myself before I can stop.

I wait for the steam to fog up the mirror until I can’t see myself anymore.