Saturday, June 7, 1975 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Seven ia" " June 7-175TE IHAfDIYaeree Taking By BETH NISSEN "LIFT THOSE LEGS higher, girls," commanded the slim woman at the front of the room, clapping her hands in rhythm. Obediently, fourteen supine leotarded women struggled to elevate their left legs an extra inch into the air. "Count of three! I can't hear you!" scolded the exercise leader. "If you don't count out loud, I'll make you hold your legs up an extra five seconds." Responding instantly to this threat, fourteen voices alternated gasped breath- ing with number sequences: "1-and-a-2- and-a-3, (huff), 2-and-a-2-and-a-3 . . ." The scene was "Happy Hour" at a lo- cal figure salon. The women contorting themselves on the carpeted floor were spending their time and money to re- duce their figures, increase their self-es- teem, minimize their lower halves or maximize their sex appeal. TO HELP THEM in their efforts, the salon featured a corps of enviably slim exercise leaders in uniform brown leo- tards, exercise sessions, diet plans, and an array of machinery that would have made the Marquis de Sade passionately jealou. "Our goal is to reduce inches, not necessarily weight," explained one svelte employee as she pushed the lead weight on the scale close to two hun- dred to measure the weight of a short, global woman. "We do have diet plans available and we sell a selection of spe- cial health and diet foods, but these are optional. You can be five foot five and weigh 120 lbs. and still look terrible. We try to get the proportions right - to bi- kini perfection. That's what's import- ant." She marked down the woman's weight on her figure chart. "You're up three pounds, Mrs. Addison," she said scold- ingly. "Too much ice cream for dinner?" "Most of the women find exercising easier when it's done on machines," ex- plained another exercise drill sergeant who looked disarmingly like a Barbi doll. "Trying to get up to do sit-ups in your living room is boring. We give the ladies a cheerful place with lots of ma- chines to take those inches off." THESE MACHINATED MARVELS of reduction filled the brightly lit salon. Along one wall stood a row of vibrator it off euphemistically the subjects tried 1. heave themselves that it contained a smuggled peanut but- into some semblance of a sit-up over ter and jelly sandwich. "It's not on my three tiers of stomach. diet," she confessed, "but you can't get energy from celery after working out A SERIES OF weight machines re- like this." flected the lumpy figures of their users An elderly woman surveyed herself in in their highly polished chrome. One wo- one of the mirror panels and fretfully man rested on a covered bench and pinched her saddle-bag thighs. "I'm here lifted a petite chrome barbell over her because I'm fat, of course," she said, head to firm her jelloey arms. somewhat wistfully. "I have been for Three women stood in line to use the years, and I hate myself when I'm fat. I bust developer, watching its present user decided it wasn't healthy to hate my- push padded weighted cylinders together self. So I come here three times a week in front of her face with her forearms, to be thin like the magazine girls. When as she anxiously checked for progress in I get rid of this-" (she gave her left the mirror directly opposite her. thigh a violent punch with her fisted In one corner are grouped the exer- hand - then I'll look better and like cycles, crippled by enterprise to remain myself more." forever stationary under enormous weight. A group of women puffed heav- SEVERAL WOMEN in the salon were ily, squirming to keep their wide bases there at the urging of their husbands, on the perilously narrow seats, and in- in search of some improvement in their tently ptedal-pushing to nowhere at a bedrooms, or in concern over the future furious speed. of their marriages. "Roy, my husband, paid for me," said THE MIDDLE OF the spacious room a dumplingish blond woman with a is left free for exercises. On the hour, she'd-be-so-pretty-if-she-only-lost-some- a pleasant voice breaks into the taped weight face. "I think it was very con- dentist-office music to announce to the siderate of him. I married him about sweating "girls" that Happy Hour is 45 pounds ago, and he misses the old about to begin. me." She sat on one of the wooden roller The women gather slowly from the machines and her voice and stomach corners and machinery and jealously vibrated like a jackhammer. "If he claim a six foot square of carpet as their wants that and he is willing to pay for own territory. For fifteen minutes, the it, I guess I can give it to him," she said, women stretch, bend, strain to make gritting her teeth in determination. "Several women in the salon were there at the urging of their husbands, in search of some improvement in their bedrooms, or in concern over the future of their marriages." .. -__ x ... _ .a "I've be( one womc 9 " en married fourteen years," laughed an," and I think he's getting bored and look in other fields, if you know what belt machines, where small groups of startin to large women talked about their prob- lems with their children, their lets and I mean." their husbands while their thighs, but- tocks and upper legs were violently at- tacked by frenzied canvas belts. their ends meet, Aligned with the belt machines were count, count, coo barrel-shaped machines about three feet high, each carrel comprised of rotating THE MOTIVAT wooden dowels upon which one pressed ing, perspiring a: flabby upper arms, ample bottoms and as the shapes of bulging midriffs in attempts to pummel "I'm here to g them into model shape. "I'm hr o gr On the bright yellow-and-brown striped years of no bre carpet in front of this line of humming for lunch, and a machines (referred to as "death row" by one pear-shaped one frustrated and agonized victim), was At the mention o a sit-up station in garish yellow plastic rolled her eyes; designed to hold the feet in place while the direction of , and try faithfully to nt. 'ION for all this pound- nd panting is as varied the women there. et in shape after fifteen akfast, cottage cheese feast for dinner," said women in her thirties. f the word "feast", she and looked hungrily in her purse, admitting ce to the sweating i. , "The middle of the spacious room is left free for floor taped dentist-office music to announc exercises. On the hour, a pleasant voice breaks into the "girls" that Happy Hour is about to beg "My husband don't find me very sexy," laughed a woman whose age and waist measurement were both well into the forties. She leaned with all her weight against the vibrator belt that was mercilessly flogging her inner thigh. "I've been married fourteen years and I think he's gettin' bored and startin' to look in other fields, if you know what I mean. I figured I had better do some- thing. I've lost ten pounds already, but he ain't noticed." She shook her head and flipped off the machine, changing the belt to the other leg. "If I'd 'a gain- ed that much, he'd 'a made a crack about me being a tub or something," she added. She looked into the mirror and self- consciously touched her teased red hair. "Maybe I oughta frost my hair," she muttered. "I should cut it, frost it, and surprise him one night at dinner ." NEAR THE FRONT DESK, a middle- weight woman waited patiently to ex- change her numbered plastic poker chip for her purse. "Since coming here, I've lost six inches around my waist, three around each upper leg, and $190," she said dryly. "I haven't gotten more atten- tion from my husband except about the bill. I don't even feel any healthier, ex- cept that now I don't rip out my panty- hose as much, and I can do ten leg lifts without getting tired. But how often in life are you asked to do ten leg lifts? low important are they?" She reached across the counter for her handbag and rummaged inside. "I prob- ably should have spent the money on a shelf full of best sellers," she said. "I have a fat body and a thin mind. It should be the other way around." She shook her head and penned her signature at the bottom of a rersonal check in payment for another four months of leg lifts. Beth Nissen is on Editorial Page staff member.