Asya Partan is a writer based in Brookline.
Not long ago, right around Valentine’s Day, my phone lit up with a text message: “Want to vibe by candlelight tomorrow?”
Forgive my middle-aged heart’s fluttering — my inbox rarely gets such action.
But this wasn’t a sultry invitation from my husband or a would-be paramour. It came from my gym buddy. It turns out VIBE is an indoor cycling class at our all-women’s gym. On special occasions, participants spin their wheels by candlelight. Then it becomes: Candlelit VIBE.
I imagine it happened like this. One day, on a Zoom call, corporate voted to reinvent the gym to lure new bodies to its dumbbells and those weird weighted ropes. A return to office, gym edition.
When plans for the new floor layout — suspiciously similar to the old one, with minor Scandinavian design tweaks — were approved, someone who thought they were muted mumbled, “What’s next? Renaming all the classes?” and the agenda was set. Because how does one reinvent oneself in America? By rebranding. Giving new names to old things. I used to be a copywriter. Then I became a Strategic Corporate Storyteller.
Before I go on, and lest my gym membership mysteriously freeze, I should say that I love my gym. I would be a madwoman without it. I just wish I appreciated its language as much as I do its group classes and sauna. I wish I didn’t feel so nostalgic about the erstwhile paper schedule that offered “aerobics,” “weights,” “dance,” and other perfectly predictable amusements that didn’t require random and inconsistent capitalization.
VIBE is just the tip of the indecipherable-name iceberg. If you don’t make it to VIBE, you can pop into ACHIEVE. What’s ACHIEVE? Coincidentally, also a cycling class. (I could say “spinning,” but then I’d have to admit how long it took me to figure out that it involves a bike and not one of those ’80s Twist-A-Ciser things.)
So is VIBE the one where you don’t ACHIEVE as much? And are the caps-lock classes louder? That might explain the artisanal bowl of mass-produced earplugs by the exercise room entrance.
To be fair-ish to the gym: I wasn’t born in this country and have maintained a foreigner’s perennial surprise at the English language. I dissect the significance of new terms and try to make sure I fully grasp a phrase’s meaning before throwing it around in conversation. Having grown up without a particular variety of poultry, for example, the notion of quitting something “cold turkey” told me nothing. Nor did the state of being “under the weather” — aren’t we all, all the time, under some kind of weather? Also: Who puts cats in bags?
I am fascinated by words, the way they shape our experience of the world and how these facilitators of communication so often end up complicating our lives. Like, say, at the gym.
The other day, I felt like shaking off all the existential questions in a dance class. I opened the gym app and sat there, blinking, as I tried to figure out which of the following might involve rhythmic movement to music: Ignite? BODYPUMP? BODYJAM? Locomotion? Remix?
I figured Locomotion. Nope! Dance is BodyJam. But also Remix. 305 Fitness, too. Locomotion, by the way, is half aerobics, half strength training. Would Aerobics & Strength have been too obvious a name? Have I lost all sense of fun?
Maybe Octane would help me get it back. Or BODYATTACK? I don’t know — I’ve been too scared to try it, and BODYCOMBAT makes me even more nervous. Though you do have to wonder about “body” as a prefix for anything that happens at a gym or why you would want to combat it.
If you’re curious about 305 Fitness and imagine it relates to 360-degree, full-body exercise minus an unspecified 55 degrees of the body, you, like me, would be wrong. It’s named after a Miami area code where the residents apparently know how to party. So now we have to learn Florida geography to take a dance class?
To obfuscate with language is to exclude. Was this my gym’s goal in rebranding? I doubt it. With the exception of its membership fees, it seems to live up to its inclusive aspirations.
But what I’ve learned in my decades in America is that it’s a land where people keep things moving. When things are going well, we shake them up. When they’re not broken, we fix them — or at least gussy them up. Good becomes great. Dance becomes Remix.
At least some classes are still what they used to be: Yoga, Pilates, Barre. Actually, scratch that. Barre, too, has reinvented itself. Like a decaffeinated coffee, a sugar-free brownie, a meatless burger — it’s become Barreless Barre. Isn’t that just — the floor?
At least my middle-aged brain is getting a workout. But it’s getting sore, too.