Incredibly Specific Playlist #2: hot girl exercise.
Megan Thee Stallion. Cardi B. Charli XCX. The body is to be celebrated.
Hello, lovelies. I hope you’ve been filling your snowed-in days/ love-themed days/ sluggish wintry normalness days with sounds that make you go :).
Before we get into the rest of this, I feel like I should address the Spotify of it all. Yes, it deeply pains me that they like Joe Rogan. (As it has with a few men I’ve matched with on Bumble.) But it’s still a very widely-used platform where many of my friends/ listeners are. (Which I know is an awful excuse, but I’m not that powerful so it won’t really make a dent no matter what I do. I also don’t use a straw at Starbucks, and there’s still a lot of Co2 in the air and rings around baby turtles’ necks.) Per request, I can duplicate these to YouTube/ Apple Music if you don’t feel comfy using Spotify, but until then I’m gonna carry on.
Okay. Now I’m gonna talk about moving to and fro while Cardi B yells dirty affirmations in my ear.
When I go to the gym, I hop on the elliptical and I just daydream for 30 minutes. My favorite recurring daydream is the one where everyone I’ve ever had a crush on has mysteriously appeared in the bleachers of the basketball stadium at my college. They sit there confused for a couple minutes until I rappel down from the ceiling and perform a dance routine to Lady Gaga’s “Judas” alongside a cavalcade of lithe male and female dancers all dressed in black leather. It’s, like, revenge I think.
One time in my elliptical daydreams I was at a club and I ran into someone I met during a fraternity/sorority Homecoming lip sync in college. He discovers that I’m an amazing dancer and that he actually finds me very fascinating. I’m wearing a corset top that doesn’t make me look like I’m on a TLC show about twins with health problems in rural West Virginia. I have to step off the dance floor and take a call. Turns out I’ve just received a slot in the MFA program at the University of Oregon. I go back out and dance so hard and wait until the next morning to break the news of my move to this man who is now extremely in love with me.
Another time, while listening to Kesha’s “Cannibal,” I climbed to the highest resistance setting of the machine’s “hill” program and imagined that I was at a party at an Italian villa. Armie Hammer was dancing with Timothee Chalamet (like the scene in Call Me By Your Name set to the Psychadelic Furs’ “Love My Way”), and it was now my job to eat Armie Hammer before Armie Hammer could eat Timothee Chalamet. (I happened to be a sexy cannibal vampire vigilante. With bangs.) When I accomplished the task, I went back to the dance floor and we danced with Armie’s skeleton.
In order to enjoy exercise, I need to detach from the reality that I am in an east Indianapolis Planet Fitness at 7:30 am. I need to feel hot. That’s why any of us exercise, isn’t it? Not necessarily to look hot, but to feel hot?
I made this playlist, filled with the raunchiest, funniest, most femme, most baller, most ludicrous, most booty-poppin’-est songs I’ve gotten my hands on because it makes exercise fun. Exercise has always been more of a psychological thing than a physical thing for me. Exercise used to feel like punishment for not being thin or athletic or able to walk into a Hollister and feel okay.
For those of us with weird bad PE-class-trauma relationships with exercise, it has to be something we reclaim. Something that can’t just feel neutral, but should feel good. It should give us something in addition to its regulatory properties. It should be a mindset thing. And not an icky, coachy mindset thing. Because weird bad PE-class-trauma.
Imagining that my body is a temple for glamour, mystery, sexuality, friendship, revenge, gender presentation, and danger works for me. It’s a fantasy that I am special and taking care of myself is special. And if you put enough energy into thinking something is special, it becomes special to you.
HERE’S THE PLAYLIST: “hot girl exercise”
LISTEN TO THIS PLAYLIST WHILE YOU:
Wear a sports bra that matches your leggings
Get ready for a first date or big work meeting by stress-doing your dishes by hand
Aspirationally bump the treadmill speed up higher than you want to, because you want to impress the cool girl with long hair extensions running a couple treadmills over from you
THE MOST “THIS PLAYLIST” SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
I might venture to say that the best average of pop girl glitter meets delusional fantasy of self is “Boss Bitch” by Doja Cat. The wannabe Pitchforkian in me wants to pick a Doja song that doesn’t have a two-year-old TikTok trend associated with it. But the amateur media scholar/sociologist in me would venture to say that it’s precisely the desire to picture one as the star of this TikTok trend is what makes it so potent. MATERIAL GWORL.
THIS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT BELONGS HERE BUT I PROMISE IT DOES:
“But Julian, I’m a Little Bit Older Than You” by Courtney Love. Courtney Love does not fit the aesthetic of this hip-hop-flavored playlist. But she is one of the best examples this culture has of the attitude of “hot girl exercise.” Controversial. Glamorous. A mess. Unabashedly indulgently incorrect. If there was no Courtney Love, there would be no Azealia Banks. For better or for worse.
THE TRUE STAR OF THIS PLAYLIST:
I mean, it’s Megan Thee Stallion. Obviously. Another draft of this playlist is just her entire catalog. There’s no rolling body glitter onto my pale and adorable cream puff stomach and calling myself a hot girl without Megan.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITE SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
The subtext of this playlist is that so many songs are by Black artists and so many songs are by queer Black artists. Artists whose relationships with their own bodies are inherently radicalized and politicized. The artistic and cultural tensions present in this playlist go beyond any understanding that I will ever truly have.
“Karaoke” by Big Freedia and Lizzo absolutely bumps. Its euphoria is unique and powerful and palpable. It bumps from the soul. It goes beyond hotness into a human performance and reclamation of the body that I do not have the proper experience or language to properly articulate. Here’s what I have the authority to say about it: it makes me want to drop it. On the elliptical. Eight feet away from some old guy in a gray tank top.
I love you, my hot, beautiful, worthy friends. Try to enjoy the sweat, and take a beautiful life-giving shower when you’re done. I’ll talk to you soon.