Korean Aerobic Class

I feel like I could just post the title and have a self-explanatory post, but I will elaborate..

Last night was the first night I mustered up the courage to attend an aerobics class at the gym. I've been to the gym a few times to lift weights and use the cardio machines, but at heart, I am an aerobics girl.

Korean culture is fairly conservative when it comes to how much skin women can show on the upper halves of their bodies (on the bottom half however, daisy dukes and belt skirts are completely acceptable).

It's strange that I can walk down the street and practically be able to see buttocks all around me, yet be chastised by old women for showing my shoulders. Most Korean women wear shirts/dresses that cover their shoulders and never dip below collarbone level. Cleavage is a four-letter word here.

HOWEVER when these semi-conservative women go to the gym they turn into 80's flashdancers of ill-repute!

I wish I knew how to post pictures here, because the outfits I've seen at the gym would literally cause your mind to explode.

I've seen:
- enormous pleather bell-bottoms with slits up to hip-bone level (sometimes the slits are on the front of the thighs, sometimes on the side)the bell-bottoms can be neon, adorned with sparkles, jewel-toned, tiger/leopord print or all of the above.
-short shorts (sometimes jean, sometimes neon) worn with nylons underneath, and leg warmers
-and most confoundingly given the culture OUTSIDE the gym, sparkly bikini tops (always paired with the above-mentioned bell-bottoms)!
I've also seen:
-halter dresses worn over mini tube tops
-and well I could go on. The sexier the better, because what's more sexy than having sweat pour down your backless ruffled pink shirt, into you butt cleavage carefully enhanced by the hole right above your butt crack in your matching pink-trimmed navy blue bell-bottoms???

Not ALL the women dress like this. Some are legitimately there to sweat, and they wear the outfits the gym provides (I tried this outfit once, it's just a grey t-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, but I found the t-shirt made of the hottest material ever invented, and the elastic band on the waist of the shorts irritated me).

But I don't get it! There are still men at the gym! So why is it okay (and downright NORMAL) to dress like a retro 'lady of the evening' at the gym and yet I can't wear a dress my GRANDPARENTS bought for me outside the gym?

Anyway, as I was saying,

Last night was the first night I went to aerobics class. I stood in the very back, in the middle of the room, so the post would hide my from the rest of the gym (the rest of the studio is windows into the free-weight section).

All of the women in the front rows were wearing their 80's flashdance gear, while the ladies in the back with me were wearing the gym-provided outfits.

My expectations for this 50 minutes class were as follows:
-a warm up with stretching
-and then a workout, consisting of, oh I don't know, jumping jacks, some simple chreography, some jumping around, you know, normal stuff
-a cool down with stretching

What I got:
45 minutes filled with as many songs as you can fit into 45 minutes. Intense chreography for every song, that completely differed from every other song. And all of the ladies (and men), bikini-tops to sweats, knew every single intricate dance move to every single song. There were spins, and jumps, and hip-hop hand movements, and MOST of all, hip-shaking, pelvis-thrusting, gyrating moves (which the men performed completely un-selfconsiously. In fact, some men arrived a little bit late, so they stood directly in front of me, as I inched closer to the back wall).

OF COURSE I was completely lost. But whatever, I was still sweating to death (this may be because in 24C weather they refuse to open the windows, or even turn on a fan). So I just tried my best. Which was fine when we were facing the front. However, every so often we'd turn (or more specifically, they'd turn, and I'd turn 3 seconds later) so that the people in the back were now at the front. I think you know how that turned out.

Oh and the last five minutes? It was a cool-down...I suppose...We humped the air for five minutes straight, sometimes pointing at the ceiling, sometimes pointing to the left/right, and sometimes rolling our heads as fast as possible.

And the weirdest thing?

I'll probably go again.