The Sweating Of Wisdom
The Sun Herald
Sunday February 20, 1994
THE sweating masses at the daily Burn Those Buns class at one of New York's hottest gyms are led by Sandy, a teacher who has curves like Marilyn Monroe.
Sheathed in skin-tight gold lycra, Sandy's buns, as Americans like to call the modern woman's fleshy obsession, look as hard as steel.
"Squeeze, squeeze, lift," she commands. "Ten, nine, eight ... keep squeezin' ... five, four ... one more.
"Doesn't that feel gooood?" Well, no. It hurts actually, like riding in a ute over a country road for 100km or so.
Youth. That's the problem with fitness instructors like Sandy. At 19, they're too young to know pain and too upbeat to care.
What would they know about the perils of yo-yo dieting? As a teenager, even I could disco all night, buoyed by the bubbles of cheap Summer Wine, only to bounce back the next morning with hardly a dark circle to show for it.
Twelve years on, one glass of wine and too many French sauces can leave me sluggish for days.
Give me a granny guru any day. Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Cher and, most recently, Joan Collins.
These are women with credibility. They're beautiful, over 50 (except for Cher and Parton who turn 48 this year) and they make millions from their looks.
Take Jane Fonda. At 44 she revolutionised the fitness industry with her first home video, Jane Fonda's Workout.
Twelve years later, she is still sweating and squeezing her muscles for the masses. Her 18th fitness video, Jane Fonda's Favourite Fat Burners, released in the US a few months ago, has taken the queen of the sweat set's fitness video sales past 10 million.
But she's recently embarked on a gentler course of fitness. Her new yoga program which she calls "user-friendly, non-mystical, non-fat yoga" will be released later this year.
Forget Aladdin and Home Alone, fitness video sales across America totalled$A415 million in 1992 and the biggest sellers featured celebrities.
"It's almost like a formula," said Peg Jordan, a nurse who edits the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America's magazine, American Fitness. "You look good? Make an exercise tape. People are curious about celebrities and always will be."
Reformed fatty Susan Powter and super-model Cindy Crawford are the current queens of fitness videos. Yet, while most fitness programs still target women aged 18 to 34, the over-40s set is becoming increasingly important.
Jill Ross, whose company Collage Video monitors fitness videos for safety, said this group included women who were too busy to go to the gym and fed up with the lycra set.
"If you're over 40, it's no fun hearing Cindy Crawford brag that her bust hasn't dropped yet," Ms Ross said.
"Women want basic advice from celebrities who have done it all and still look good."
It's the same with beauty books. Joan Collins, 60, is sure to rack up sales with her new book, My Secrets (out in Australia next month), in which she shares the fitness and beauty tips that have kept her on magazine covers for decades.
She divides life into three acts - the youthful years from birth to 30, the middle years from 30 to 60, and "the best years" from 60 onward. "In the 1990s we must stop being fitness freaks, health fiends, diet junkies and cosmetic queens, and relax into a simpler way of life," she writes.
Angela Lansbury, 68, offered similarly warm, homely advice, including the long-standing "walk, don't run" philosophy in her popular stretching exercise video.
Raquel Welch, 53, has taken a broader approach using her cellulite-free legs to appeal to the younger set and her curves to attract seniors.
Welch's first video featured a 90-minute workout of yoga, muscle toning, light weights and aerobics. Her second was more popular, containing seven 15-minute routines - one for each day of the week. She has also put out a beauty book, The Raquel Welch Total Fitness And Beauty Program.
CHER released her first video, Cher Fitness: A New Attitude in the 80s which won raves from critics and top sales - running second only to Fonda. She later released Cher Fitness: Body Confidence and will release her third video at the end of this year.
Not surprisingly, Shirley MacLaine, 58, has made her name with more unusual advice. Blaming her fight against flab on a previous life as a fat French woman, she put out an exercise video for the mind.
Just after releasing Shirley MacLaine's Inner Workout, a meditation video which has sold more than 100,000 copies, she revealed her secret to quick weight loss - juice fasts.
If anyone knows diets it's Dolly Parton. From Scarsdale to Pritikin, she has tried them all as the world has watched her waistline measurement go up and down like the Dow Jones index.
Parton's fitness video was not well received but that didn't stop her handing out beauty advice. "I eat everything I want but in small portions, many times a day," she revealed.
But what about the knife? Like Cher and Jane Fonda, who have had breast implants, Parton has been known to resort to cosmetic surgery.
It seems that sometimes fitness routines aren't enough. Just months after her "eat small portions" advice, Parton slipped into a Beverly Hills surgery for 11 hours of "self-improvement".
TROUBLESHOOTING WITH JANE
JANE Fonda is far and away the biggest selling celebrity fitness proponent. Here are some of her troubleshooting exercises from her popular Workout Book.
1 WAIST: Sit with legs open wide but without straining tendons on inner thighs, point toes. Pull your left arm over to the right, your right arm curved in front of you. Bounce gently down for eight counts. Repeat to the left for eight counts. Alternate sides for six counts, then four, then two.
2 ARMS: Bring arms in front of you with elbows bent, fists clenched. Swing them down behind you with hands open, as far as you can without moving your torso. Then pull arms forward to start position. Repeat eight times.
3 LEGS: Bend right knee into your body. Extend right leg straight out again, on a line with left leg. Lift right leg straight up. Repeat this exercise for five counts each leg.
4 ABDOMEN: Extend legs towards ceiling with knees slightly bent, hands behind head, elbows back. Lift head and upper torso using abdominal muscles. Release back slightly but don't let head or shoulders touch the floor. Repeat 20 times. Then lift up further, but this time extend arms past your legs, keep knees slightly bent. Reach and release for 30 counts.
© 1994 The Sun Herald