TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071089/07108900.059

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.4 KB | 144 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN SCENE, Page 12

Pennington, New Jersey


Sweating And Sharing For some women, aerobics provides more than
a workout

By J.D. Reed


    Amid a tang of perspiration and perfume, 60 women in shiny
tights and baggy T-shirts strut to the strains of Jailhouse
Rock. In the large, carpeted room, the instructor, sleek as a
seal in a chocolate-colored unitard, takes the Elvis song from
the record player when it finishes and puts on George Michael's
Kissing a Fool. She cocks a hip and asks the women: "Will anyone
else be kissing a fool today?" She is answered by a breathless
chorus: "Yeah!" "I know I will!" "You got it!"

    Husbands, it's 10 a.m. Do you know where your wives are?
Selling real estate? Processing words? Marauding the malls?
Forget it. Every weekday morning in Pennington, N.J., an upscale
village of 2,200 about halfway between New York City and
Philadelphia, a number of busy wives and a sprinkling of single
women put aside all thoughts of jobs, husbands and children to
gather for what has become a new style women's club. In the
aerobic dance classes at the local Jazzercise center, women are
talking about who's hot on the silver screen, trading bargain
tips and supporting new mothers and divorcees. The workout
classes have become a combination gossip fence, networking
center, self-help group, junior high locker room and place to
affirm grownup community values. "There's no place like it,"
says JoAnn Mattia, 32, a physical-education teacher who gets to
four or five hour-long classes each week. "Everybody talks about
what videos to rent and which stores have the best sales. I've
made new friends here."

    Women in the speedy suburbs need a guilt-free place to
gather. Old-fashioned women's clubs no longer seem to fill the
bill. The country-club lunch -- a large helping of chitchat
served with a garnish of innuendo -- is too fattening and
"unsupportive." Self-employed or with part-time jobs, with homes
to run and volunteer work to do, what woman can spare three
hours for the afternoon bridge club? "Even though there's been
a revolution," says instructor Anne Grossman, a part owner of
the Pennington Jazzercise Center, "we women have been taught
that you don't waste time. You have to tell yourself that you're
going to do something productive like exercise. A lot of women
come because they want to look better. They stay to socialize."

    On a weekday morning out on Route 31, between Pets of
Pennington and Party Things!, the Jazzercise center is alive
and humming. Driving everything from BMWs to Toyota pickups,
women arrive for class with coffee mugs in hand. The class is
a mix of violin teachers, novelists, horse breeders and
substitute teachers who range in age from 20 to 60. Some drop
off preschool children at the center's nursery; others gather
in small groups to discuss someone's vacation tan and the pros
and cons of buying a car for a 17-year-old.

    During the pulse-raising half-hours aerobic section of the
class, there is only time for a quick "How's everything going
with your (new baby, surgery, divorce, job, novel, college
student)?" When the women settle to the floor to stretch tired
muscles and rest racing hearts, however, the informal club comes
to order.

    Husbands are a favorite topic. A fiftyish front-row regular
complains that her husband does the grocery shopping (the most
hated activity) every Saturday morning but says that he buys
all the wrong stuff. She has to go back to the market all week
long. The women agree: husbands don't know how to shop.

    Physical fitness and finesse crop up on the daily agenda.
In one of the last places that women regularly gather without
men around, there is much discussion of quads, glutes and pecs.
Many of these women know their cholesterol count, optimum
training heart rate and body-fat percentage. Says instructor and
center co-owner Karen Shaffer, 43, who bears a striking
resemblance to Carol Burnett}: "We talk about boobs a lot."
Jazzercise is also an hour of dancing, something that women seem
to like a good deal more than men do. Says writer and editor
Phyllis Kluger, 51, a six-year Jazzercise veteran: "I enjoy
dancing, and, if I come here, I don't have to think, `Oh, my
husband never takes me out dancing.'"

    Family matters and suburban survival techniques get regular
attention. They are the cement that holds the classes together.
Says Grossman: "There's a sense of shared community here about
the fact that there's not enough time, the kids won't do the
dishes, and father paces the floor when daughter is out on the
first date. You need to hear that everybody else is going
through it too."

    For some, the sharing has fostered deeper relationships.
The class has nurtured regulars through pregnancy, divorce and
surgery. Says Kluger: "If someone says, `Hey, I'm getting
married next month,' people start asking `Have you bought your
dress yet?' An emotion can coalesce around that kind of thing."
When Mattia announced she was getting married, a couple of the
regulars threw a swinging bachelorette party at Chippendale's,
the male stripper club over in New York City. Says the newlywed:
"We rented a limousine. We partied all the way in and all the
way back." They also brought back pictures of the goings-on to
show the Pennington class. Mattia and her new friends have
remained close; they often meet for dinner.

    The class is a kind of grass-roots media review board that
any pollster worth his clipboard would give a rating point to
get in on. Currently approved by the majority: any movie in
which heartthrob Kevin Costner (Field of Dreams) removes his
shirt. The video of the film Bull Durham, in which Costner takes
off more than that, is one of the area's hottest rentals.
Television gets its share of attention. Before summer reruns
took over the tube, the women found that Moonlighting was funny
again, and the wacky comedy of Tracey Ullman acquired a growing
following. The women who watched The New Perry Mason marveled
at the good shape of Della Street's legs. Mused Shaffer:"What
exercises has Della been doing?"

    Sometimes, the class resembles nothing so much as a junior
high locker room. Says a regular: "We're free to be adolescent
and silly, like we were when we were 14, but without being
mean." When Shaffer played Prince's recent hit Kiss, with the
lyrics, "I'll be your fantasy and you'll be mine," she blurted
out, "Not really. What if Prince was the last man on earth?
Would you be celibate, or what?" The breathless women nodded in
agreement.

    A kind of affirmative energy emerges from the group. "Once
my husband complained that we rarely saw each other anymore,
that we were like ships that pass in the night," says Grossman.
"I told him that everybody in Jazzercise felt that way too. But
somehow we get on with life, paying the bills every month and
going to the supermarket every week." As the women leave the
center, headed toward the market and rounds of errands, one
realizes that the aerobic women's club is more than a passing
fancy. Grossman speaks for many of her students when she says,
"When we visited my husband's mother in a retirement settlement
recently, I couldn't picture myself as a senior citizen wearing
the suits that they wore and going to bridge groups. When my age
group gets there, we'll be wearing sweatsuits, and we'll turn
the bridge room into an exercise studio."