Q. A dear friend has been going to Pilates classes. She is very proud of her newly taut torso, but I fear she has been taking the discipline too seriously. She now has the rigid bearing of someone wearing an invisible neck brace, and the last time we hugged I was left with the sense of having hugged something more resembling an ironing board than a human body. I feel I am in no position to make any comments since my own body mass index is 26.1 and it would seem like sour grapes, but should I say something, Mary, and if so what?
C.B., Berkshire
A. Pilates practitioners are trained to visualise their ‘inner corsets’ when going about their day-to-day business, and when the progress of transformation is going well it is easy for the tautness to become triumphalist.
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