Tracy Anderson Thinks You Can Change Your Body

The thing that we all seem to do, from time to time, is forget that celebrities can look the way they do because they are paid to look that way. The rest of us have to make do with whatever window of time we can find for the gym, a 20-minute walk around the neighborhood, or even just a shower in the middle of a hectic day. A day of facials, massage and microderma-botox-peel whatever?

Well, add that to the List of High Hopes, right?

Celebs like Madonna and her BFF Gwyneth Paltrow have people like Tracy Anderson. Tracy Anderson, if you haven't heard, is the woman responsible for Madge's ripped biceps and abs, and Gwynnie's long and lean legs. She is a one-woman drill sergeant of fitness who says, more or less, that if you're not doing at least 30 minutes of exercise (though one and a half hours is ideal) six days a week, well, you might as well shove that Dorito into your mouth and wash it down with three milkshakes and be prepared to live with you saggy bits. All of them. On all parts of your body.

Which, does, does it not, beg the question: Is that, maybe ... OK?

Anderson's got something (or a lot of somethings, actually. The $900 a month fee to the new gym she is launching, for example) here with the idea that you can change your body, in some pretty severe ways, if you're willing to do the work. But, what about if you can't? What if you can't find the time for her two-hour workout that her DVDs suggest doing? How about the (radical) acceptance that most of us, no matter how hard we try, will never look like Lady M or Gwyneth?

Nor should we, we aren't they.

Her concept is interesting, and an intriguing look inside the mechanism that is the celebrity body culture — just take it with a grain of salt (and maybe a big ol' bowl of pasta, if you want). Her standards are a little out there.

Read the Telegraph's piece on Anderson here. [Via New York Magazine]

Photo courtesy Stephanie Berghaeuser@sxc.hu