Another Curves Flattens

 My local Curves is closing. The women I meet there or elsewhere in town greet each other with, "Did you get the letter?" We shake heads and shrug.

The letter came from Kathryn, who's had this location for 13 years, absorbing orphans from closing branches for miles around.  It was beautifully written; a real heart tugger.  Seems that Curves Corporate has gone and bought Jennie Craig or maybe vice versa, and now insists that Kathryn sells Jenny Craig food alongside the workout memberships.  That's not something Kathryn, who's always recommending particular fish oils, moisturizers and green cleaning products, wants to do.  Even if she did, she'd have to move: Curves/Jenny Craig cannot be located next door to a Weight Watchers, and that's where this Curves is, sharing the same entryway. Some of us just go out one door and in the other. She's got to be out by the end of the month; lock, stock and stations.

The franchise fees were squeezing her anyway.  Corporate was also giving her flack for the posters she put up, the suction-cup dartboard, the little personalizations she chose.  Moe, her little Pekinese, probably wasn't Curves-approved, either. He ran right through the circuit, or sat on his little throne by the front desk, and nobody complained.

I bet Jillian Michaels, the skinny video bitch with the low-rise spandex capris,  was another corporate directive.  That started this year, with a big Jillian Michaels Curves poster on the wall in the entryway.  For an hour several times a week, instead of the faceless but caring "change stations now" lady who reminded us to switch every half a minute and periodically counted out ten seconds for us to check our pulse, we got Jillian, who told us how she knew we wanted high, sculpted booties, because that's what she wanted.

I hear she got paid nine million to make those monthly videos,  most of them something out of professional cheerleader practice. And no pulse checks, since Jillian didn't actually give a crap if you stroked out and died on the mat. I think she actually made the attending employees nervous; they didn't really want to have to break out the defibrillator.

I didn't even do Jillian's "modified" versions for elderly slackers. My feeling was, If I wanted to do exercise videos I could go home and dust off Jane Fonda; my VHS player still works.  Jillian drew in a few fresh faces, some under-50s, but I tried to avoid her times of the week. I got used to the Zumba sessions -- especially the low-impact one -- but I drew the limit there.

We now have at least six different fitness chains to choose from around here, but none of them are women-only. None have all their machines face into a circle, none have lilac walls, or local crafts or sparkly baseball caps to buy, and none exhibit much of any personality.  Most of all, none of them have the familiar faces and relaxed, among-friends conversation of the women I've been stepping and pumping and bending among for five years -- women whose names I may not remember, but whose stories I do. 

And everyone knows it.  "It's the camaraderie," Sandy says, she of the "3400 " pasted over her head shot on the wall, for 3400 visits. With the faint British accent, Sandy is our most prominent personality, comes up with the bawdiest comments and jokes, gets the most laughs and gives the most hugs.  There's Angela, who's daughter is getting married next month; I know that the catering hall she picked lets you bring your own meatballs.  And Ellie, who's traveled everywhere and volunteers at a help desk in the airport, at international arrivals.  And Sheila, the snow bird, who happens to be a close friend of the mother of a guy I knew all through high school, college and after. Retired and not-yet-retired nurses, teachers, librarians.  And me, the work-at-home, happy for face-to-face interaction at the start of the day.

We Curves customers are not taking this lying down, though.  Annie, one of the long-time employees properly lauded in the farewell letter, has already gotten proposals from several other gyms that would like our collective business.  She's organized a meeting with the local Planet Fitness a week from Monday to see what they'll do for us; many of us have said we'll be there.  But they're a huge ugly warehouse with TVs, no improvement over the corny country music, Beatles medleys and neighborhood news and opinion I've been hearing at Curves for five years. LA Fitness might be nice... with a pool.  I sure would like to see us move en masse.  Maybe they'd line the machines up in a circle?  Then something has to make a noise every thirty seconds. Then we paint the walls a pastel, something less macho...

Renegade Curves

I joined my local Curves for the typical goals of weight loss and fitness; getting back into clothes that had hung patiently for years, while I failed to return to the size I had bought them in.

They're still hanging. I'm still doing the machines on the circuit,  three days a week on a good week, two good weeks a month, two not as good. Andrea, or Susan, or Pat say hello from behind the desk. I scan in my bar code, and if it's anywhere near the 24th of the month the computer reminds me to get weighed and measured. 

None of us regulars are ever seen being weighed or measured.  I haven't done that since month three, about four and a half years ago.  The numerical results are not encouraging. We rather measure our success by the assumed number of pounds we haven't gained. 

More tangible is wind.  If I've been a good about doing the 14 machines on the circuit, 30 seconds each, two times around with aerobic moving in between and three pulse checks, I can run up the stairs at home without breathing hard.  I can pedal up small hills.  If I've let a week go without, I breathe hard, sweat, and walk the bike uphill. 

That alone would be good enough reason to go to Curves, but if cardio exercise

was all I cared about, I could pay far less to go to Planet Fitness.  I could push and pull against fancier machines for longer periods, hear better music and stare at TV screens with close-captioned scrolling on the bottom.

Don't want to do that.  Don't want to see strangers, or men, or start staring at screens half an hour earlier in the day than I do already.  I want to see the familiar faces of the same women I've been facing across the circuit for years.  If we get to talking about something, I barely notice that I've finished all my least-favorite machines and the 30 minutes flashes by in what feels like 10. That sociability is the not-so-secret sauce of Curves.

A lot of the women at Curves are retired teachers; I envy them their pensions and their frequent, teacher-discounted cruises. They’re very big on cruises at Curves. Seems everyone’s been to the Caribbean and Italy.  Some are up to Thailand and Viet Nam.

Of the women who come my time of week, maybe two and a half are black, two Asian, one Indian.  Most are over 60, some surprisingly into their 80’s. Some stay for Zumba, led by a supremely toned woman whose sexy moves are very roughly approximated, wearing pants with ribbons on the back pockets that fly as she bumps and lunges. Some of the women wear belly dancer coin sashes. 

The Spanish music for Zumba is a big improvement over the disco-fied Beatles medleys and other annoying recordings we often move to, in between the every-30-second "change stations now" lady. I imagine silence is very beautiful after a day of this.

I learn good neighborhood things at Curves; good stores, sales, specialists, restaurants, movies. I start a mainly solitary working day by checking in with people. I also learn about things that go on outside my mainly Jewish bubble: the women from Italian families talk about how they'll make the seven fishes for Christmas dinner, and how nobody makes the food their grandmothers made anymore.  Well of course, I can relate.

But of course I also bring the bubble with me; that film of outsiderly self-consciousness, tinged with cynicism. Curves is a pretty goyish place; its founders forbade opening on Sunday and they’re still closed then. Not bad in itself, but their politics smack of Sarah Palin's. The music they play is often corny or country. The owner installed a vibrating machine called a Theravibe and right next to it, on the wall, is a list of conditions that are supposed to be alleviated by standing on this thing in your stocking feet and being shaken at various speeds; it's got everything written there but cancer.  Some women pay an extra $50 a month to use it. I haven't taken the free trial. Yet.

We seem to voluntarily avoid talking politics and religion. But, this being New Jersey, it turns out that quite a few of my fellow exercisers and even a Zumbanik or two are Jewish. And Jewish and non, most are no slouches; some are or have been in the arts, some musicians, some business, some academe, in addition to the great preponderance of retired teachers. One of the women who works behind the desk organizes trips into New York to see Broadway plays. (Some of which aren't even musicals.) They also organized a group lunch in the struggling new Indian restaurant two doors down, whose food is excellent. I'm beginning to suspect that many of them voted for Obama, in a county that always goes Republican.

Because this Curves is even showing small signs of rebellion. You can't find this branch listed on the corporate website. Why? Because the owner of this Curves doesn't comply with the official regulations that say you can't put your own posters and decorations on the walls. You can't invite urologists in to come in and give talks on prolapsed bladders. You can't offer field trips or have a suction-cup dartboard or, well… a Theravibe. I’ve also heard -- although I can’t confirm -- that corporate wants to drop the circuit idea and be a more regular gym. The site nowadays certainly deemphasizes the circuit.

Curves corporate hasn't gone so far as to pull its machines and strip the owner of her franchise; too many others have gone under and this one absorbs the displaced members. They've just dropped her from the website. And nobody, behind the desk or on the circuit, seems to care about that or about corporate in general. So after four years, I’m no thinner but I’m not fatter either, and I've adjusted my attitude if not my body mass index. This place is beginning to feel more like home.