Lets Get Physical – Danielle Friedman

It was translated into fifty languages. When the book sold two million copies in hardcover, Simon & Schuster “threw Jane a champagne party in their conference room and presented her with a $1.2 million royalty check,” wrote Bosworth—the biggest royalty check the publisher had ever written. Over the next few years, Jane churned out several more bestselling books, including a pregnancy fitness book and a book for navigating menopause, reaching women in nearly every life stage. Her influence on fitness would have been vast if she had stopped there.

But the wife of a home video maker had an inspired idea. When Jane got started in the fitness industry, no one she knew owned a videocassette recorder, more commonly known as a VCR. The device had made its American debut in 1977 at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but for most people, it was prohibitively expensive. It cost around $1,280, the equivalent today of roughly $5,000. Then you actually had to buy something to watch. Want your very own copy of Star Wars?

When the film was released on VHS cassette in 1982, it cost $120. (That’s around $500 today.) Throughout the early eighties, VCRs gradually dropped in price and found a market. Video stores opened to supply early adopters with home entertainment. But few people were willing to actually buy VHS tapes when they could rent them for a fraction of the cost. And besides, who needed to rewatch a film that many times? (The one entertainment category that saw halfway decent VHS sales was pornography.) But a Southern California entrepreneur named Stuart Karl had a vision.

After dropping out of college in the early 1970s, the “blond-haired, perpetually smiling California surfer” became a waterbed salesman and quickly discovered that retailers could benefit from a magazine about the business. “When that publication became a modest success, he expanded by buying or starting others, including Spa & Sauna and, as the video cassette craze started, Video Store magazine,” The New York Times reported in 1988.

The more he learned about the video business, the more “Mr. Karl was struck by the near-total emphasis on movie tapes and what he considered a huge unmet demand for non-entertainment cassettes.” In 1980, at twenty-seven, he started Karl Home Video to make cassettes that, he liked to say, “filled the gap between Jaws and Deep Throat.” His roster included tapes on home improvement, CPR instruction, and other niche topics.

The following year, during a trip to New York City, Karl and his wife, Debbie, passed a bookstore with a display of Jane Fonda’s Workout Book in the window. Debbie had read the book and enjoyed doing its exercises at home.

To Daniel and Sam, for putting a spring in my step and moving me beyond words; to Jackie and Juliet, for lifting me up; and to my parents, Richard and Karen, for everything. OceanofPDF.com A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means. —GLORIA STEINEM, MOVING BEYOND WORDS Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.

Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands. —ELLE WOODS, LEGALLY BLONDE OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS OceanofPDF.com F ive years ago I walked into a Pure Barre studio for the most predictable of reasons: I was getting married. In a few months I would be wearing a strapless lace gown in a hotel ballroom in my childhood hometown of Atlanta. For one night, I would be in a literal spotlight.

I was marrying a wonderful man, and I had spent my career as a journalist making the case that women should be valued for their inner selves and not their appearance. But weddings have a way of stirring up our most basic desires, and even feminists sometimes fantasize about greeting the world with a flat stomach and firm arms. My local barre studio on Manhattan’s Upper East Side promised, in loopy letters on a sidewalk chalkboard, to LTB—lift, tone, burn—my then thirty-five-year-old body into that of a ballerina.

Sounded highly improbable and completely perfect. I was drawn to the studio in the same way I’d been drawn to my high school’s cheerleading squad: desperate to join, but doubtful, in some core teen girl way, that I belonged. Or that I wanted to belong. This time, though, going for it wouldn’t mean attempting a sad split in front of the popular girls—or giving up Model UN. So I slipped into the boutique fitness uniform of moisture-wicking everything, handed over my credit card, and swallowed hard.

When the class began, a ponytailed instructor wearing a headset microphone ushered me and a dozen other women to a ballet barre, where we moved our thighs up an inch, down an inch until our muscles trembled. On cue, I squeezed my “seat” (barre-speak for butt) until it spasmed and planked until I thought I might pass out.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 4b8a19c3ec7dffe3
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,393,249 bytes (4.19 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 384
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 505.75 minutes
• Total Words: 101,150
• Total Characters: 623,675
• Average Words per Page: 263.41
• Average Characters per Page: 1624.15

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