What is Zumba?: A Cynic's Guide to Samb-ercizing

Lately, despite the fact that I am not one for diet/exercise trends, I've taken up Zumba. Zumba-- like its predecessors yoga, sushi, tae bo, and bahn mi-- has made its way from foreign lands straight to the luxurious Murray Hill Crunch gym. If you're wondering what the next of these trends will be, just imagine that Sex and the City were still on the air, picture what the girls are doing while talking about sex, and that's the new fad. My money's on either Ethiopian food or Thai sex trafficking. Cultural appropriation has never looked so chic.

For those not in the know, Zumba is a mix of Latin dance and jazzercise. Every class is populated by 2 thick black girls who look good doing the moves and 40 skinny white girls who don't. The instructor is neither of these. Instead she is that type of ethnically ambiguous girl who manages to be both skinny and have an ass. She has a wild mane of bouncy curls that she wears out, despite the fact that the rest of the class has opted for the high ponytail with optional sweatband and non-optional buckets of sweat. She is the kind of girl who moonlights as a dancer at bar mitzvahs, the only straight girl at a gay bar, and the only kind of person who looks reasonable wearing booty shorts in public. She was probably on Zoom or Kids Incorporated when she was a kid. She has the energy of a cruise ship director and somehow manages to make the hair toss, wide mouth smile, and enthusiastic "Woo!" seem natural.

(In case you don't believe me that this is a type, I can think of exactly one girl from high school and one girl from college who is literally this to a T. If you went to high school or college with me, you probably know them too. They are both stunningly beautiful and making a career acting now, so don't feel bad for them. As far as I know, neither of them has resorted to teaching Zumba or leading dances at bar mitzvahs.)



This is literally the first picture in the Google image search of Zumba teacher. Now do you believe me?

Previous to Zumba, I had taken exactly two classes at Crunch-- yoga and lyrical dance. And despite the fact that I've been dancing since I was 5 and doing yoga since high school, both classes were outrageously difficult for me. I mean, I am by no means great at either of them anymore. But everyone else in them seemed like they were professional yogis/lyrical dancers. So I sucked up the 60 bucks a month and didn't set foot in Crunch for like 3 months. (Meanwhile, it took me like a year to get Netflix Instant and when I finally do, they hike the em-effing prices.)

But somehow Zumba actually adheres to Crunch's otherwise bullshit guarantee of "No judgments." Everyone is moving to crazy music, shaking their hips, potentially thinking how great these moves are going to look on the weekend after 3 G&T&roofies (It is Murray Hill, after all). The teacher doesn't even explain any of the moves-- You're just supposed to follow what she's doing as close as possible. Nobody's body is moving like the teacher's, but nobody cares. There are "Indian" songs, "belly dancing" songs, "Mexican folk" songs, none of which really seem authentic -- mostly because they're all remixed with Pitbull-- but nobody cares. I hate big groups of skinny blonde girls and tend to avoid places where I'm surrounded by them (Pinkberry, sorority houses, Blockheads on a Friday night), but somehow I don't care. Zumba is the closest I've come to CityStep post-college, "crazy signs" post-Club Med. I am a convert. Somehow I have become the kind of girl who does Zumba and I freaking love it. No judgments.