Wrapped in plastic: extreme body makeovers, almost
- Source: Global Times
- [08:40 December 09 2010]
- Comments
By Jennifer Eden
Rushing into the gym change rooms earlier this week, something made me stop dead in my tracks, spin rapidly back around and audibly gasp in shock at what was happening right before my eyes.
An empty roll of cling film was tossed into the garbage bin as three women stood there, wrapped almost head to toe in see-through plastic.
Chatting away as if squashing all of your body fat into small rolls in sandwich wrap was completely normal, the women didn't even notice my stunned-mullet reaction and everyone else just walked on by as normal.
Forgetting that my class was about to start, I stood there, gob-smacked.
Resembling marshmallow-men, with the plastic unable to contain everything and small blubs of fat spilling over, the women, with limbs forced ridged, then began to put on bright pink jumpsuits, also made out of plastic.
In a scene that was far beyond any Monty Python sketch or Keystone comedy, they twisted and bent each other into the suits, added another layer of sweat-inducing clothing, helped each other into their shoes and off they went to exercise.
Unable to pull myself away from the action, I quickly stowed my bag, speedily changed my clothes and hot-stepped it to the cardio room to watch what the jaw-dropping three pink stoogers did next.
Somehow they had managed to make it down the rather-formidable-when-wrapped-in-plastic staircase, procure a selection of electrolyte drinks and energy bars and were walking somewhat-awkwardly, as was to be expected, on three adjoining treadmills.
An entire five minutes passed when one paused her machine, goose-stepped off, ate an energy bar and polished off her drink. The others followed suit before walking another two minutes. At the 10-minute-mark (three of which were used eating and drinking), they nodded at each other and alighted the machines simultaneously.
Still fascinated and sure that they had not noticed I was stalking them, I followed the plastic people back upstairs, where they removed layer one of clothing and proceeded to take their still-clingfilm-wrapped bodies into the sauna.
With eyes wide open and slightly worried that the women would completely pass-out in their efforts to lose body water that would be replaced as soon as they drank anything, I walked back to my locker; past the girls eating cake and coffee who dress in nothing but high heels, past the old ladies who deem the communal mirror as the most appropriate place to pluck their underarms and past what only can be described as a shocking number of young women sporting 4-inch long lower body hair sprouts, to accept that the plastic-wrapped exercisers would soon become part of my everyday and with time, would inevitably go unnoticed.
