The Gym and Some Notes on Spanish Fashion

My roommates and I go to the gym almost every day (Monday-Friday). We got a deal when we signed up as a “family” and we go each afternoon because: A) it’s warm; B) the showers always have hot water and great pressure (and we don’t have to pay for oil or water); C) we enjoy the classes. The gym also provides us with an interesting place to people watch.

First, let me back up, we chose the nicest gym in town. It opened in May and has tons of brand-new machines. There are stair masters, treadmills, walking treadmills, ellipticles and stationary bikes, and those are just the machines upstairs. Downstairs there are a few more machines and tons of weightlifting machines and free weights (I’d tell you about them if I knew what they were). There are also three rooms: one for yoga (it was awful; there were chairs involved), pilates and karate; another for spin class; and the third for aerobics, bosu, and toning classes.

Our instructors are hilarious. The woman who teaches some of the aerobics class (including step) is in her 40s, and her wardrobe is stuck in the 80s. She wears nylons under capri workout pants with tight little bra things. Her hair is kind of wavy and always all over the place. When we went to the gym party at a town bar she was dressed in all white: a little white stretchy dress, a white denim jacket and white boots. Another instructor, whom we refer to as “face piercing,” is partial to the single-color outfits as well. We gave her this nickname because she has a piercing through her face right above her lip. This is a very fashionable piercing here in Spain: one of my 5th graders has the same one. Today when we got to the gym face piercing was in the locker room blow-drying her hair and getting ready. We figured she was getting ready to leave the gym and go home. Oh no. She was blow-drying and straightening her hair to go give classes and hang out at the gym. She was doing all of this while wearing only a thong – no bra or top, just a thong. The third instructor teaches our spin classes along with some of the toning classes and the bosu ones. He’s less interesting because she usually wears all black.

The other Spanish people in our classes are also rather funny. One of the first days we were at the gym we saw a woman on the treadmill in pumps. Okay, the heel was only about an inch, but she was still wearing heels, and looking completely ridiculous. A few guys in our spin class wear hard-core biking outfits and make faces at themselves in the mirror. They’re really serious about spin. In the locker room, women go to take their shower wearing nothing but thongs. They’re naked under their towels (which they hold up in front of themselves), but they’re still wearing their thongs. Today, one woman in our spin class had on nylons under her workout outfit. That’s a pretty popular look: nylons under clothes (like shorts and capris). Kids wear capris and boots to school; you can see their tights or nylons in the four or five inches between the boots and capris. The other day we saw a little boy wearing nylons under his shorts. His younger sister was dressed the same way.