out that the space was also used by Yvonne Lin’s husband, who was a martial arts master, and that this was some kind of self-defence training.
We cautiously entered the training studio. When Yvonne Lin stepped in, wearing a tight outfit with perfectly rolled legwarmers, and put on Human League singing ‘Don’t You Want Me’ with the bass pumped up, I was swept away.
This was completely new.
The workouts had the rhythms and choreographic awareness of dance routines. They focused on exactly those body parts that I wanted to reshape; they had glamour, elegance and humour and alternated between precision and free expression. There was an upbeat feeling to the workouts, and they boosted our self-confidence, since we all worked in front of a large mirror, looking at ourselves for forty-five minutes. It was like being on Broadway, or participating in a lineup of dancers in Fame, where we would collectively dance our way to success and the perfect body.
Now, more than thirty years later, I can see the narcissism in this. The fixation on the body, disguised as neo-feminism, partnered with a business mindset masquerading as health movement. I also remember Jane Fonda’s almost desperately clenched jaw when I got to interview her on TV a few years later. She was a slim woman who seemed slightly fearful to me then – a far cry from the liberated workout rebel we had all believed in.
But she was a child of her time. The United States and Europe had left the hippies, unisex styles and political demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s behind, in favour of white wine and prawns, Wall Street, padded shoulders, yuppies and a new interpretation of what it meant to be a man or a woman. And yes, it was largely about the body and material things. Or as Melanie Griffith famously told Harrison Ford in the movie Working Girl: ‘I have a head for business and a body for sin. Is there anything wrong with that?’
The ideal probably lay somewhere in between. But we should look at our past with compassion and realise that maybe we needed a daily dose of Jane Fonda in order to grow up and become ‘whole’ human beings. In any case, our little self-help group, ‘The Exes’, needed a daily fix. And little by little, the feeling of being dumped faded away.
Gradually, the swinging food pendulum calmed down as well. I had a breakthrough one morning. I was sitting at the dining table at home in my apartment. The table faced out over a courtyard where two little children were playing. The night before, I had eaten sandwiches, ice cream and sweets. I felt anxious and guilty and was now considering whether I had the right to eat breakfast.
I drew a diagram, looked at it, and tried to think about what my relationship to food looked like and what feelings it triggered. Out of these thoughts an image emerged, a circle or spiral where crash dieting was followed by hunger, which was followed by overeating, which in turn was followed by feeling bad, which in turn made me feel that I had to start dieting again. It kept turning, around and around and around. Dieting – hunger – overeating – bad feelings – dieting – hunger . . .
I couldn’t control the hunger that appeared when I had been eating only little broccoli florets and some cottage cheese for several days in a row. It was also impossible for me to control the overeating once it started. Nor could I control the anguish that overeating brought with it. But between the anguish and the decision to start dieting there was actually a little window – a window of willpower.
There and then, at the dining table, the thought struck me. I could feel anguish – but still decide that I was allowed to have breakfast.
A new spiral was born. It was a better spiral, where I always allowed myself to eat, even if I had overeaten the night before. Since I didn’t diet as strictly anymore, I was less hungry and my indulgences became more modest, eventually tapering off. Jane Fonda gave me this victory. But it was a brittle harmony. I had to exercise in order for the balance to work.
Yvonne Lin decided to train workout instructors. We were a large group of hopeful young women who came to the audition that preceded the training itself. I was now a completely different person than I had been just a few months before. My relationship with food was more balanced; I was stronger and had higher and more consistent energy levels. And I was dependent on exercising, which had saved me.
When the audition came, it felt like a matter of life and death. I stood in a row with the other women and did aerobics like crazy. Even though I had never been much of an athlete, I hoped to be able to become an instructor, to be able to get into the training.
And I was chosen. When we gathered for the first time and introduced ourselves, all of Sweden was there. We were a cross-section of the country, cutting across educational levels and family backgrounds. We waited tables, we fixed teeth and we worked in shops. We were students. We danced or taught. We were ordinary girls but also girls with mysterious occupations who seemed to glide around in Stockholm’s underground/fashion/artistic/glamour world. We formed a true sisterhood in our way-too-cramped dressing rooms.
When one of the sisterhood had just had a baby, her boyfriend cheated on her with a TV celebrity. After our training buddy found someone else’s black lace undies in bed when she came home with her newborn – and when the TV celebrity also gave an interview in a tabloid where she talked about how she seduced men in carpenter trousers – there was no end to the sisterhood and the primal power that came roaring out of our group. Wasn’t the TV celebrity a snake and the boyfriend a swine? We watched over the abandoned mother like lionesses. No one would be able to hurt her.
We exercised for hours at a time, day after day.
And now I began to see the structure behind the training. How you started with a warmup, and then worked the shoulders, back, abs and waist, legs, butt and finally abs again. There was a system. I also understood which types of exercises were good for each body part. And how to find your place in the music and count the eights correctly, with the beginning impetus of an exercise on beats one, three, five and so on.
We learned how to stand, move and speak in front of a large group of people and get everyone to move in the same direction – literally. How to get the energy and joy going and build up the participants’ motivation. It was extremely useful.
We also learned to do things many times. Since we didn’t use any weights, we added extra resistance to the movements and did endless repetitions – for example, lifting your leg 155 times at a certain angle. It required toughness, but we learned to be tough. That too was extremely useful.
I had studied physics and maths in Stockholm, then biology. Biology was exciting and I wanted to continue, so when there weren’t any courses in human biology in Stockholm that spring, I went to Lund. It was March when I came down from Stockholm by train, and the Lund night was damp, raw and cold. There were no rolling suitcases back then, so I was carrying two heavy suitcases from the Central Station to the apartment that a friend had let me borrow. The apartment was supposed to be furnished. That was debatable, as it turned out.
There was a kitchen table, a built-in bed, a stuffed eagle and a saltwater aquarium with fish from a Norwegian fjord that the owner had caught during a course in marine biology.
At first I felt lonely in a city full of young people who all seemed to know each other. My genetics course had few students and didn’t really provide a context where I could meet other people. And there wasn’t anything like Jane Fonda’s workouts or Yvonne Lin.
A thought struck me, and I
