Pilates isn't magic, because nothing is

It's OK to love an exercise format. But don't be fooled into thinking it's "the best."

God, I love her. From “Abbott Elementary” on Hulu.

In the recent Halloween-themed episode of Abbott Elementary, two women are talking about a third, who is the designated “bad bitch” of the show’s universe.  

“She looks amazing. Does she take Pilates?” one woman asks the other. 

The bad bitch character has no dialogue or backstory about Pilates or exercise—the writers are deploying “takes Pilates” as a kind of shorthand for “hot woman.” 

Elsewhere on television, the latest season of glorious car crash garbage show Love Is Blind features a supremely confusing cast member named Raven Ross, whose Instagram handle is @pilatesbodyraven. Her whole thing, at least at first, is that she is a hot Pilates instructor. She has a Pilates body.

pilatesbodyraven

A post shared by Raven Ross (@pilatesbodyraven)

I also recently laid eyes on yet another article proclaiming that extreme thinness, a la “heroin chic,” is “back.”*** It proclaims the “new” [read: not new] thinness obsession “has some flocking to Pilates studios.” Pilates studio owner Tara Gordon says her classes are “doubling in size as more women seek out the ‘long, lean look.’” 

And earlier this year at the Met Gala—where all anyone could ask celebrities about was their body transformations, apparently—Lori Harvey credited Pilates for her physique. “It’s going to give you long, lean muscles,” she says.

Pilates, it would appear, is thee Thing to Do to Be Hot. 

It should go without saying that “hotness” here is a specific and socially constructed kind, the kind upon which our culture has placed a premium since time immemorial: “Long and lean” [thin] and “toned” [muscular definition, but not too much—the idea of any female muscularity at all being widely desirable is new, though]. You don’t need me to tell you this is not the only way to be hot, that hotness is in the eye of the beholder, that being hot is not the most important thing in this short and strenuous life, despite the lessons we might internalize. But I think we all can agree that what is often and ardently upheld as hot when it comes to women’s bodies is something along the lines of: Looks like she works out, but not the way a guy does. Sigh.

Doing Pilates, you might think, is the best or only way to look like that. Not only is that not the case, Pilates-speak perpetuates some frustrating untruths about bodies:

• “Long and lean,” like “toned” or “toning,” is misleading fitness marketing language. You cannot change the length of your muscles. They cannot become longer, because they are attached at fixed points within your body. You will never actually elongate your quads by an inch by doing Pilates or anything else.

• If your entire body becomes leaner (because you can’t lose fat in isolated areas) by way of any kind of exercise and dietary changes, your limbs may look “longer” because of visual trickery—and if your posture improves, you may in fact walk taller. Leanness is a matter of body composition: A lean person has a lower proportion of body fat comprising their total mass; one can be “skinny” but not lean, and a large, very muscular person can be lean. But: Pilates is not the key to leanness. Many exercises can have the same effect.

• There is no difference between “lean muscle” and whatever people think the opposite is—“bulky muscle”? Chonky muscle? Muscle is muscle. If it’s growing, it’s growing. That’s what “toning” is; when people say they want to look toned, they mean they want to look lean but not big. Fine, but you still have to add muscle to look lean. You don’t somehow activate lean-muscle-only gains by doing Pilates and chonky-muscle-only gains by lifting weights.

  
  If you want chonky muscle, lifting weights is the best way to get it, but you will not necessarily see that effect merely by touching some dumbbells. It depends what you do with them. I think people do Pilates or other non-lifting formats because there is no chance of adding the same muscle you could with lifting.

  Everyone’s experience will vary, but to illustrate my point: Here’s a picture of me in June 2021 when I was especially lean (I was also posed and catching my best light; don’t let Fit Pics fool you—I also don’t look like this right now because my body composition fluctuates).

  

  There, I was routinely deadlifting 275 pounds for reps. Back squatting my body weight was my warmup. I never trained abs alone because my other big lifts trained them. At that point I’d been lifting for like eight years—it led to me becoming more muscular, yes, but I didn’t explode into a Hulk-like physique even with five to six hours of heavy lifting a week for almost a decade.

  Another example: Is this “scary muscle” to you?

  s_abdelhady

  

  A post shared by Sherein Abdelhady DPT, CPT (@s_abdelhady)

  That’s a woman who’s easily deadlifting 425 pounds. Don’t fear the weights.

I hold no grudge whatsoever about Pilates itself, and I’ve done it several times. It’s tough and feels great! It’s low-impact and helps you develop mobility, stability, flexibility, balance, and body awareness. Pilates-only people can do plenty of things I can’t do. My criticisms are not a dunk on Pilates as a worthless modality.

I do take issue with the idea that Pilates (or anything) is the only or best way to cut fat and look “toned” but not “bulky,” and just as I do where any exercise is concerned, I take issue with how it’s almost exclusively the aesthetic benefits of Pilates that people rave about. Rarely do you hear celebrities talking about how Pilates has helped their posture, their mind-muscle awareness, their flexibility and stability—it’s always about the damned long, lean muscles. I love the look of my weightlifter shoulders very much, but I try to talk about all the other things lifting has given me, too, such as the aforementioned mobility, stability, and body awareness.

Finally: Pilates itself is not the only thing going on when it comes to Pilates bodies or any kind of bodies. Lori Harvey said herself: She was also doing other cardio and eating 1,200 calories a day before the Met Gala! (Do. Not. Recommend.) Hello?! That is going to cause one to shed hella body fat, which is a main requirement of visible muscle definition! Pilates Body Raven, meanwhile? She lifts weights, too, which I could have told you from the first second I saw her. 

Another hugely popular Pilates person, Cassey Ho, posts a lot of “do weightless arm circles to get sculpted arms” videos while neglecting to connect the dots that she’s also a former bodybuilder who still lifts weights—Casey Johnston, who I’ll never stop linking to, has written about that here. 

It’s not just the Pilates. It’s the cardio, it’s the food intake, it’s the other lifts, and it’s the elephant in the room factor: genetics. Some people are just more inclined to be “long and lean,” and those are often the former dancers who become Pilates instructors and perhaps lead people to believe that if they do Pilates, they’ll look like dancers. That won’t be everyone. Some people just have special sauce in their blood.

But go forth and do any exercise format, I say! Just keep in mind that none is magic in the sense that it’s the most effective or the best for everyone. With exercise, the magic happens when you find something you like, that you will stick with, that challenges and excites you and helps you meet your goals. It doesn’t have to be Pilates, it doesn’t have to be lifting, it doesn’t have to be any one thing. It’s up to you. 

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***Re: “thinness is back”—I’ve nearly exhausted my bandwidth on this topic, which I think can be summed up thusly: Just because we’ve in recent years seen more not-thin bodies in mainstream culture—on our screens, on runways, in magazines—does not mean that thinness was ever “out” for celebrities or many everyday people. Look at a CVS magazine rack: It’s been this “lose 27 pounds in a month” shit forever despite the recent ascendance of body/fat acceptance movements. Body shapes trend and un-trend and have for decades: The flapper look gave way to the Marylin look which gave way to the Twiggy look which gave way to the aerobics-and-implants look which gave way to the Kate Moss look which gave way to the snatched-waist-huge-ass look. Now some celebrities are reverting back to the maximum thinness their trainers and dieticians (or Ozempic and Wegovy) can allow them. “Body trends” have always existed. This isn’t “right” or healthy, but truly the only thing to do here is not care and not think of celebrity bodies as iconic or relevant to you, whether they’re plus-size or muscular or thin or anything in between. They have nothing to do with us.