It’s a workout maintaining gym etiquette in presence of poise

A slim and trim young lady vacuum packed into a bright pink leotard stretching her lithe body through contortions that one should really only attempt alone and in the privacy of one’s own home, rather than in full view of the crowds in a public gym, was a high point of a rain-soaked week.

It was, however, not the pink panther so much, as the reactions of her fellow “gymnicks” which, for a while at least, dispelled the gloom of rising interest rates, fuel price hikes and the consistently depressing performances of presidents, politicians and public servants.

The thing with gyms is that you don’t really want to look at anyone while you are exercising — not for too long anyway.

Convention has it that if you stare at the ladies exercising they may take you for some kind or creep or for a voyeur with predatory intent.

And, if you are a man, you might not want to be caught looking for too long at another man and running the risk of either being hit, or, especially in Cape Town, being hit on.

So people in gyms, tend, whenever possible, to avoid eye contact with one other. A nod here, a grunt there — never a wink anywhere — is about all that’s permissible as with lowered glance you walk briskly from one machine to another to sweat your stuff.

And that’s the way it’s been until the advent of the pink lady.

Never in all my years in gyms of cycling nowhere, in all the hours of picking up heavy weights and putting them down again, bending backwards and forwards and over and under have I ever seen so many people trying so hard not to look someone.

There she was, as I said cling-wrapped in pink, one second legs in the air, then legs down on the ground, sit-ups, sit downs, body twists like a koeksuster, jogging on the spot while everyone in the gym found something else fascinating to do, anything, in fact, rather than be caught looking.

A lot of men I noticed suddenly found a lot of time to stare at the clock above her head although all the other clocks on all the walls in the gym were working perfectly well.

Many men, I also noticed, suddenly found that stretching on the mats on the polished floor near where she was, had instant appeal.

And there they all were, rolling about, with eyes studiously averted, stretching tugging, and pulling at their limbs as if their lives depended on it.

Everyone still looking everywhere except at the pink lady.

Some were looking so hard away in fact that they didn’t see where they were going and bumped into each other or the machines as they walked. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.

It’s amazing how cool and uninterested you can pretend to be when all your being is strained to the edge of endurance to be interested.

In the end it was the lady in pink who was most cool. She remained flexible and aloof; with just the hint of a flick of her blonde pony-tailed hair to her audience, every now and then, to let us all know that she knew that we all only had eyes for her.

What poise, what style! Thanks to her amazing performance, I am sure that I can assume without much fear of contradiction that pink, at least for those in the gym that day, is from now on the new black.