honey, i’m going to the bar(re)!

Since I’m start­ing off the year with quite a few ex­tra pounds and be­cause my stretch­able pants won’t stretch any­more, I de­cid­ed to move more and eat more less. As I very well know from past ex­pe­ri­ence, this is not the eas­i­est thing to do, es­pe­cial­ly the ‘eat less’ part. How­ev­er, this has be­come an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty be­cause I have no mon­ey to spare on buy­ing new clothes that fit my over­weight body. That mon­ey is re­served for my beach va­ca­tions and “seefood” diet (to eat what I see). The strug­gle is real!

So, af­ter much con­tem­pla­tion and tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion my ha­tred to­wards gyms, I de­cid­ed to dri­ve around the neigh­bor­hood (in­sert: had hub­by dri­ve around neigh­bor­hood) to check out what oth­er work­out op­tions were avail­able close to home. It is then that I dis­cov­ered Barre. I should have been as hap­py like the time I dis­cov­ered the neigh­bor­hood bar and was ex­cit­ed to know I could ac­tu­al­ly drink and walk in­stead of dri­ve home.

A quick on­line re­search ed­u­cat­ed me that Barre is a com­bi­na­tion of bal­let, yoga, pi­lates, and fan­cy words like iso­met­ric strength train­ing. Pho­tos showed beau­ti­ful (skin­ny) women with great pos­ture do­ing things I should be do­ing in­stead of eat­ing bag­ful of pota­to chips be­fore din­ner. Dang, now I’m hun­gry! What was not to love about that? I signed up for a tri­al class im­me­di­ate­ly.

For my first day I found and dust­ed my 8‑year-old yoga pants that were orig­i­nal­ly black but now look gray and got ready to take over the Barre world. As I walked into the dim­ly lit stu­dio with fresh tow­els and es­sen­tial oil dif­fusers and hu­mid­i­fiers, tiny bands and balls, mats and weights, the only thing I could re­al­ly pay at­ten­tion to were the big French doors that opened up to a busy street. Per­fect! En­tire Fol­som dri­ving down that street would now see me squeez­ing those balls (pun in­tend­ed) and do­ing my hap­py baby pose on those mats that in re­al­i­ty look like I am lift­ing my legs and fart­ing, which might be what I’m re­al­ly do­ing. When the in­struc­tor cracks open the door to let the cool air in, she is ac­tu­al­ly let­ting the gas out.

But that was not the worst of all. As I po­si­tioned my­self in class and glanced at the mir­ror I quick­ly ob­served:

•  I was the fat­test per­son in the room
•  I was the most cov­ered in cloth­ing
•  My cloth­ing was high­ly out-of-place as it did not in­clude the word “barre”
•  any­where and had an im­age of an ele­phant in­stead. #bar­refail
•  I was the only woman not wear­ing any make­up
•  And by the end of the class I looked like this …

Com­ing back to the point that every sin­gle per­son in the stu­dio was wear­ing some­thing, in­clud­ing socks, that had “barre” writ­ten all over it was in gen­er­al very help­ful. My mind was at ease at all times know­ing I was in­deed in the right place and not in the cy­cling class ad­ja­cent to it. I think I’m go­ing start ap­pear­ing at ran­dom places, like the movies, wear­ing a shirt that says “movies” to avoid any con­fu­sion.

This class also turned out to be very en­light­en­ing. I found out why most stay-home moms are skin­ny. They are con­stant­ly work­ing out, un­like me sit­ting at a desk all day stuff­ing my mouth with food out of de­pres­sion from sit­ting at said desk. Some of these women take two to three class­es a day – while their kids are at school and af­ter their hus­bands get back from work. Their mo­ti­va­tion, as per a very loud con­ver­sa­tion, is to get biki­ni-ready in time for sum­mer. At what­ev­er an­gle I look at them, they seem to be those women who are ready for biki­nis year-round, which is a smart thing to do with glob­al warm­ing and all. But what do I know? I come from a cul­ture where Lord Kr­ish­na was so tired of all his scant­i­ly clad girl­friends, that in his di­vine speech to Ar­jun made sure our cul­ture would shun women wear­ing un­der­wear in pub­lic and my body would nev­er get into a biki­ni dur­ing the years it re­mote­ly could. I’ve en­joyed swim­ming in the ocean ful­ly clothed. The laser vi­sion of men that pen­e­trat­ed through the heavy wet fab­ric cling­ing to my un­der­wear was the clos­est to a biki­ni my biki­ni-ready body would ever see.

Maybe that is why I am of­ten con­fused why peo­ple feel the need to con­stant­ly look at them­selves in the mir­ror at every an­gle while work­ing out. That is the lev­el of self-love I need to at­tain be­cause right now I just scare my­self if I have to look into the mir­ror at any giv­en time to check my pos­ture. The po­si­tion­ing of my own butt is be­com­ing the root cause to my night­mares along with my feet that are the only pair of non-pedi­cured ones in the class. I need to get me some socks that say “pedi­cure.”

Jokes apart, I am quite en­joy­ing the class­es. Most im­por­tant­ly they are good for me in many ways, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause it keeps me away from the bar and kids at the same time and teach­es me self-re­straint for all those time I don’t end up punch­ing the in­struc­tor to show her ex­act­ly how strong I am when she re­peats, “You can do it. You are SO strong!” I also know I am not the only woman who feels this way (yes, I am ad­mit­ting to my judg­men­tal na­ture) be­cause it pro­vides me the hu­mor to get through this process of try­ing to fit into my stretch­able pants. So for all those of you try­ing out some­thing new to get health­i­er or like me be­ing too cheap to buy new clothes or mad at your­self for throw­ing away years of hard work, know I’m root­ing for you and try­ing to keep it real one Barre at a time.
 
 

—mala paul

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2018 Mala Paul.

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