Fitness modeling

I'm not sure I've ever admitted it here, but one of my secret goals in life is to become a fitness model. It all started in law school when I was reading a copy of Shape or Fitness or Oxygen magazine. While I was busy not doing the suggested exercises, and instead reading the articles, I came across the section where they interviewed and photographed some fitness models. This was shortly after I hired my very first personal trainer and set a weight loss goal for myself. One thing I noticed about all the ladies featured in the article is that they were short. Around my height. It gave me hope that I could someday grace the cover of a magazine too.

Having no clue on how to achieve this goal, it's more or less remained on the backburner. I found it resurfacing when I accepted The Mission. An acquaintance from school once told me to verbalize my goals and dreams. Because you never know who you know -- and people want to help others acheive their dreams. So, with the impending Mission, and all the work necessary to acheive my goals, I began verbalizing my desire to be a fitness model.

And, side note? It should go without saying that most of my arrogance is all bluster. I'm not trying to imply that I am hot stuff. I'm just saying that I'd like to take some pictures and have them published somewhere after I worked my ass off...literally.

Anyway, one of the people I verbalized this to was the Ninja. Pause for collective groan. As part of his frenzied offer to trespass back into my life and on my last nerve, he said he could train me. The very thought of having to deal with his over-emotional philosphizing about the state of our defunct-never-to-return-from-the-dead relationship was a lot to bear. I was fairly certain I'd turn down that offer.

Another person who made the same offer was my former trainer, the Diesel. Diesel is a ginormously freakishly huge guy. He's roughly the size of Goliath. With legs the width of tree trunks, hands the size of dinner plates, and a neck that has the same circumference as one of my not-insubstantial-thighs. To top that off, he's 7 feet tall, topped off by dreds which resemble the hair of a rag doll (Black Raggedy Ann -- Blaggedy Ann?). He's the color of dark chocolate, and has a facial structure not unlike the face of a Mayan sculptural mask. Suffice it to say, when he's around, you notice him. Unfortunately, he's also one of those huge and athletic guys, that he has no awareness of his body movements. When he's speaking to me, he would stand at roughly the same distance as one might stand relative to a puppy. (Towering and WAY too close). He is completely clueless as to the fact that my neck is breaking trying to make eye contact, and that the very act of having the conversation requires me to bed my spine in unnatural ways, and that his personal space has not only invaded mine, but has taken it over and is holding my personal space as a POW.

That said, training with him was exhausting. Yes, he whipped my butt into shape, but it took a huge amount of restraint on my part, not to substitute one of the dead lifts for exercising my quads and hams with kicking him squarely in the nuts. To accompany his herculean proportions, he also had an ego that took up most of the gym, and a pea-sized brain to go with it. I can't say that he was a stupid man. Rather, he was narrow minded. So maybe instead of a pea brain, he had a vanilla bean brain. He spent most of our sessions alternating between providing ridiculous examples of how great he was (did you know the female attorneys at the firm where he worked would ask him to come sit in their office? Just so they could look at him!!); and offending my feminist or liberal sensibilities (a man is going to stay with you, just so he can break you down.). All of this would be fine-ish, if he wasn't just preening and peacocking around in an attempt to wow me with his greatness. I doubt that he's hitting on me in particular, it's just that I'm a girl that he gets to spend an hour with once a week. And, he can reasonably be expected to touch me. But, pray-the-eff-tell, what sort of spotting requires you to touch my waist constantly? And why do I suspect that while you're watching my form, you're simultaneously picturing me naked?

While I don't think either of these offers would truly come to anything; they did make me wonder what I would put up with for a free lunch? Incessant whining and philosphizing? Or, insulting egomania? I think part of the problem is that I don't know if this dream is even worth pursuing. Without knowing anything about it, how would I know whether I could actually make this happen? What if, after I've walked 500 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways -- I find that you need to invest a large sum of money, or take a spin on the audition couch, or quit your day job to make this happen? I guess then, not only do I have a great butt, but I'm also on the verge of committing homicide for the person doing me a "favor."