This cartoon is a massive lie

Pilates. The truth.

It’s a lie not because I’m marvellous at pilates (though I am a bit better than I depict), but because there are no lithe twenty somethings in my pilates class, putting me to shame with their perfect poise.

For the last couple of years, I have been going to a pilates class two days a week (in Portuguese it is pronounced peeLAtzch in case you ever need to know). I depend on it now, as it has made my lower back a functioning body part again. If you sit on your arse as much as I do (because I’m working, not lazy…), you know how very buggered your lower back can get.

My pilates class is mostly populated by women over fifty. The oldest member is in her eighties.

At the beginning of every class, our pilates coach, Ana, tells us to centre ourselves, to organise our bodies, to put our feet in first position, to suck in our belly buttons and send them inward and upward and, finally, to look at ourselves in the mirror, nose to nose, eye to eye.

Because of course I’m not looking at myself straight on at eight o’clock in the morning, without the shield that is my glasses, being over fifty and out of bed less than an hour… my face hasn’t had a chance yet to get with the programme, I surreptitiously look around the room in the mirror, to see what the others are doing. I can report that not one woman over fifty is looking at herself eye to eye in the mirror. There is an occasional forty-something that can handle staring at her own mortality in the face at that time of day, but they are few and far between.

We stick our legs in the air and roll backwards and forwards and do teasers (balancing on your bum bone and trying to keep your limbs in the air, gracefully) and for much of the time, we are staring at our arses in the mirror, and that’s almost as bad as staring at our faces. In those moments, I tell my arse that if I could take back the six years of not eating, the subsequent return to normal eating with a tanked metabolism, if I could take back all the wine in the pandemic, and if I could tell the menopause to take a hike, good lord, I would, but right now, losing the arse would be a full time job, I have proven this with every thing else I’ve tried short of ozempic and surgery, and I have work to be doing while I have most of my brain cells, hours and hours of every day concentrating, because that’s the only way I can do it. Being a bit less attractive to the world, while depressing and annoying, is less interesting to me than all the things I make and do, so suck it, world.

When I return to the class from the argument with my lycra clad behind, I look around the room again and wonder if we’re all thinking the same thing. I’ll never know, because I’m not their friend. If I don’t say a loud good morning to everyone, most of them wouldn’t say it to me first. This isn’t because they’re rude, really. They’re all very nice. But in Portugal, people don’t mix with people outside of their group. They need formal introductions, and even then, well, you need to be lucky. If you’re a foreigner who they only met two years ago, you’re not one of them and you never will be. I’ve lived this for twenty five years, so I’m not offended, but I would like to know if they have conversations with their arse while it stares at them in the mirror.

Sometimes, there is a spike in attendance, and a younger woman or two will fill up the places in the class. They never come back, though, which I find fascinating. They probably do other classes at the gym, spin classes, circuit training, or just do the thing of running on the treadmill with a bottle of water and earphones, but they never come back to the old lady pilates class.

I wonder if it’s because there we all are, the future, their future, laid out in grid formation. Our fat arses, our saggy boobs, our grey or dyed hair, our inability to be elegant when told to “sit down, elegantly” because our knees are shot, our grunts, our faces that have known adventures, seen places they have never seen.

Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just because we’re not cool, or not worthy competition, but I think it’s probably that. We scare them.

If you ever find yourself in conversation with your arse and you think your arse needs cheering up, I have some beautiful, brightly patterned leggings in my shop. I have some, and wear them twice a week, so I can at least have a conversation with a big fat beautiful arse.

Remember, PEELATZCH.