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. You admit that your own body is in need of some transformation, so why not kill two birds with one stone by asking your friend’s advice about whether Pilates would serve to correct your own deficiencies? At the same time you can gently tip her off that she might have taken matters too far. Invite her round and start by displaying your own torso to put her at her ease. There are many Pilates-bodied television presenters who have overdone it, so run some prerecorded footage past her as you chat and say, ‘Now look at her. How do you prevent yourself from overdoing it and bringing on that over-rigid ironing-board effect that turns men off so much?’ In this way, next time your friend is doing her core-strengthening exercises to excess, your words will haunt her and help to halt the condition of ‘Pilates overload’.
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