Yes, People Over 200 Pounds Belong in Pilates (and Literally Any Other Form of Exercise We Want)

I don’t really stay on top of SkinnyTok (I value myself too much as a fat person to constantly subject myself to that noise, and also, all the girlies on that particular corner of TikTok have a level of vocal fry that feels like it’s going to make my ears bleed), but a recent video from user Monica Cruz—a.k.a. Succulent Addict—railing against the presence of fat people in Pilates classes managed to break through my protective peace barrier recently, and even though I know I shouldn’t be letting some influencer’s random deploying of garden-variety fatphobia as a grab for attention get to me…reader, I fear it kind of has.

“This might be a hot take for some people, but if you’re 200 pounds, you shouldn’t be in a Pilates class,” Cruz said in a post-Pilates car rant, adding: “There’s no reason why they should allow 200-pound people in a level 2 class. Or, you shouldn’t be allowed to be a Pilates instructor if you have a gut and you’re fat. What the fuck is going on? Is this even real? Is this America? Standards are so fucking low.” First of all: girl, I don’t know what America you’re living in, but in the actual one that I inhabit, over 40 percent of the population has obesity. Second of all, if you’re upset about fat people allegedly ruining your Pilates class but not illegal deportations or the government’s use of pregnant women as fetal incubators, you need to open a fucking newspaper (or get one on your little phone! A lot of them are free!) Third of all: as a weekly attendee of my local Pilates studio’s mat class who currently tips the scales at just under 300 pounds, I feel uniquely qualified to tell you just how wrong you are.

When I showed up to my first Pilates class at my now-regular studio in L.A. just over a year ago, I did so with all the terror of a girl who was trash at organized sports and basically all forms of athletic activity even as a thin child. Once I gained the weight I’d long feared in my mid-twenties, exercise weirdly got easier (maybe because I started swimming, practicing yoga, going for long walks, and doing other things that actually made my body feel good instead of spending money I didn’t have on boutique spin and barre classes designed to underwrite as much caloric consumption as possible), but I was still gun shy about going back to group classes; I felt both intimidated and comically enormous at barre while surrounded by flocks of what had to be honest-to-God models taking a “reset day” in between marathon runs when I was deep in the grips of anorexia, and even after all the work I’d put in to heal my eating disorder and appreciate my body’s strength at any size, I didn’t trust myself not to compare myself to my fellow Pilates-goers.

When I attended group fitness classes as a thin woman, I was obsessed with getting the moves as “perfect” as I could and trying to hide my humiliation when I inevitably flopped, which is almost funny to me now; these days, I regularly do only about half of the moves my Pilates instructor walks our class through, modifying the rest and occasionally taking a solo break to lie on my mat in child’s pose when the physical exertion gets to be too much. Ten years ago, I could never have imagined that I’d a) be fat, b) go to Pilates, c) be semi-bad at Pilates and not care or d) actually enjoy the experience, but these days, I look at it this way: a little bit of effort is better than none, and I don’t need to get an ‘A’ in a Sunday-morning mat class or be the most Instagram-ready participant in the room, I just need to show up (ideally in clean leggings) and try.