Working Out While “Workin’ It”

I’m always on the prowl for unusual and bizarre information, especially when it has to do with bodies and exercise.

My latest find is an exercise class called “Stiletto Strength,” and it’s taking the gym world by spike heel.

The classes were developed by a gym called Crunch, which offers them in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.

Here’s the stiletto class description from their online site:

Stiletto Strength
B.Y.O.H. – Bring Your Own Heels and strut your stuff runway style in this calf-boosting, posture-building, cat-walking diva class.

Evidently all calves are simply not created equal when it comes to teetering around in tarty heels—some of us require a workout just to learn how to hobble.

I wouldn’t even try. Along with practically every other muscle group, I’m a member of the calf-muscle deprived group. But there’s a reason for this: I grew up as a member of the “Stiletto Gap Generation.” Back in the late 70’s, when I was going through maximum adolescent angst, no one dreamed of wearing high heels, not even the girly-girls in the southern town where I lived. Heels meant you were overdressed. They meant you were trying too hard. They were too obvious. I don’t recall seeing a single pair of high heels in anyone’s closet during college. Later, during the 80’s, most of us switched to power heels—which meant two inches high, max.

Then I clobbered one of my knees and stopped thinking about heels altogether, except for avoiding them whenever possible. If an occasion demanded me to wear heels, I’d go for a cunning little kitten style. And I didn’t feel the least bit out of step—to my way of thinking, stilettos were what my five-foot tall mother had worn, to make herself look taller. They were strictly for the cocktail crowd, which meant O-L-D.

Fast forward twenty or so years, and I must have snapped awake—I think it happened sometime between Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. I realized that torture shoes had made a roaring comeback, even for women my age. (Like all things fashion-related, I probably discovered this bit of news about ten years late).

So, should I take an exercise class to pump up my calves, and learn how to improve my range of motion in my ankle and great toe, which is evidently critical to acquiring a proper stiletto stride?
Hell, no! I’m already doing major damage control on my abs, thighs and triceps. There’s no stamina left over for building up ankles and toes.

So ladies, I give you your Jimmy Choos. Hand me my Easy Spirits. I guess won’t be seeing you in Stiletto Strength.

On the other hand, I won’t be seeing you at the orthopedic surgeon’s office in five years, either.

The many faces—and other reworked body parts—of La La Land

Today I’d like to talk about plastic surgery.

This topic’s on my mind these days because I’m in full-tilt writing mode on the third book in the Fat City Mysteries. It has a brand new working title, MAKEOVERS CAN BE MURDER, and a plot that involves plastic surgery, murder, and mayhem.

Full disclosure: I know something about the subject area, because I’ve had a bit of “work” done along the plastic surgery lines; it’s a topic that simply fascinates me. Living in LaLa land, aka Los Angeles, I can’t turn a newspaper page or walk down a local street without bumping into reminders that my city is the capital of the Land of Plastic. Yesterday, I discovered that there’s a Botox room in my gym. In my gym! (Which is fine, actually. At least I won’t have to drive to Beverly Hills from now on to get rid of my crow’s feet.)

Many, many of my friends (and I) are familiar with some of the following procedures:

Wrinkle fillers, both artificial and natural (The natural one is fat injections. They extract your own fat from your stomach, or from wherever you can spare any, I guess. Then they inject it into your “marionette lines”. You know, that pair of annoying lines that run from your nose to your lips. And from your lips to your chin.).

Wrinkle removers (Botox. Man, that stuff works. But don’t get started on it unless you’re prepared to develop a mondo expensive habit).

Arm “lifts” to remedy underarms that keep waving when you stop (I haven’t had that one. Yet).

Breast implants (That procedure is done in droves here. Or should I say, in pairs).

Breast reductions (The grass is always greener on the other side).

Eye lifts (It’s probably the quickest way to take off five to ten years, especially when combined with Botox and wrinkle fillers).

The Tinseltown pressure to be "perfect" leads women around here to get a tad carried away. Especially when it comes to boob-and-lip plumping. Lipwise, I guess they're trying to look like Angelina Jolie, but they let their dermatologist go way overboard with the collagen needle, and they wind up with the lips of Clara the Clown. There's a special "lip look" that you get used to around LA, especially Malibu and Beverly Hills--these womens' lips seem to have been pumped up with a tire hose. And the lips always seem to come with a matching pair of hyperinflated breasts. Some docs must run a four-for-one special, like tire specials.

I also know a little about the ultimate plastic surgery procedure that’s available for those of us who have lost an extreme amount of weight. Called a “full body lift,” it involves cutting a circle around your body, roughly in the hip area. The surgeon pulls the loose skin from the upper part of your body down, and he pulls the loose skin from the bottom of your body up; then he removes everything between the two ends, and sews you back together. There are only a few surgeons who specialize in full body lifts, for understandable reasons. It’s beyond extreme. (Not that I haven’t considered it. But I’m way too chicken).

I’ll never become a full-blown plastic surgery junkie, because it takes way too long to save up for a procedure. But I kind of understand people who do. You get some work done on one part, which only serves to draw your attention to the other parts that are starting to sag and bag. Then you think, Well, just one more, then I’m done…

Of course, a major disincentive to cosmetic surgery is all the horror stories about surgery-gone-bad. And of course, any surgery has risks, which is why most people (the ones who don’t live around here, anyway) carefully consider the consequences before leaping under the knife.

There will be more than a few horror stories in MAKEOVERS CAN BE MURDER. But I’ll save those for the book…

What about you? How to you feel about plastic surgery? Anyone care to share? Can we let our hair down here?