Tracy Anderson on Goops post-baby body: she had significant problem areas
Tracy Anderson has a long history as a huge C-U-Next-Tuesday. I don’t even feel bad about calling her that or thinking that about her either. I go back and forth between thinking that Tracy is simply a horrible person, a fraud, a grifter, and a really terrible trainer to thinking that most of the stuff that she says is just incredibly hyperbolic and maybe we’re reading it the wrong way? Maybe I’m giving her too much benefit of the doubt. Because Tracy is seriously an awful trainer. The fact that women pay Tracy to insult them, mock them, shade them, and pity their “disaster bodies” is something I’ll never understand. Anyway, Tracy has a new interview in Into The Gloss – you can read the full piece here. Guess what? Tracy insults and criticizes her main client and business partner, Gwyneth Paltrow. Some highlights:
Dancer’s standards: “I grew up as a dancer in Indiana. My mother was a ballerina and she worked three jobs to put me through dance school. I left Indiana to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City on a dance scholarship; I went to school with Jason Mraz and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Originally, I wanted to be a dancer and go to Julliard, but I’m only five feet tall and I was not built like I am now. By dancers’ standards I was fat; by normal standards I was a little chubby—I gained 35 pounds when I turned 19, even though I was dancing all day. I learned very early that you can move all day and still not have the body that you want.”
Trying to lose weight when she was younger: “I’ll never forget the time where I thought, ‘OK, well, I’m going to start smoking.’ I bought a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights and smoked one for maybe two blocks like a complete nerd. I coughed so much before I was like, ‘No, you know what? I’m not going to smoke. That’s just not who I am, and that doesn’t feel good to me.’ That was the one and only time I ever smoked.”
Her definition of a normal relationship with food: “Mind you, I was eating maybe one bowl of Special K in the morning, mustard and tomato on a bagel for lunch, and maybe chicken and broccoli for dinner, and one brownie. I wasn’t eating a bunch of food… My mustard and tomato bagel was the one thing I had every day. All these years that I’ve owned my body being tiny and how I wanted to be, I still can’t look at a mustard and tomato bagel. I think if I eat that bagel, I’m gonna gain 30 pounds. I will eat a pizza, cupcakes, and cakes—I’ll eat four cupcakes—but I cannot look at that combination of tomato and mustard on a bagel.”
Her goal for The Tracy Anderson Method: “I started by analyzing how people at the top of their field all look the same—jockeys, swimmers, Baryshnikov, whoever. If you can make your body freakishly large, why can’t you make your body freakishly proportional? No one was was focusing on that.”
Meeting Gwyneth: “I’ve worked with celebrities, and with Madonna for a long time. I met Gwyneth Paltrow through a friend of hers who was really changing with the method. Gwyneth was like, ‘What are you doing? Are you having surgery?’ And she was like, ‘No, it’s this girl.’ I agreed to meet with Gwyneth, and she said, ‘I’ve got this movie coming up where I have to be a superhero.’ It was the very first Iron Man. She said, ‘I know you have a son—I just had Moses—and I can’t get this weight off. I’ve never had a problem like this in my life.’ She had 35 extra pounds on her. Her butt was long and she had outer thigh problems. Gwyneth is lucky because she’s really tall, so she can hide it really well in clothes, but she had significant problem areas. I felt so badly for her, and thought I could really help. So, I agreed, and she did everything that I asked. Now, seven years later, she looks younger every year; she’s totally transformed. And she really does the work. She and I became business partners, too, because she said, ‘Every woman has to have this. It’s not fair. I’ve tried everything and nothing works like this. You’re a real gift.’ It wasn’t a business decision for her at all.”
Ugh. “Her butt was long and she had outer thigh problems… she had significant problem areas. I felt so badly for her, and thought I could really help.” Seriously, do you have to talk about your CLIENT and BUSINESS PARTNER this way? I’ve said this before, and I will say it again: if I ever had to train with Tracy, I would end up in tears and/or screaming at her. She’s incredibly rude and nasty to her clients, to the people who are paying her to help them. I guess it’s her way of drumming up business for herself – keep telling women how disgusting and awful they look so that you can “fix” them.
But you know why Tracy and Gwyneth are absolutely perfect for each other? Because both women only care about the superficiality of exercise. Neither woman cares about health and wellness. Neither woman cares about the mental, emotional and spiritual release of a really great workout. Neither woman cares about blood pressure, vitamins, heart health or physical rehabilitation. Gwyneth and Tracy only care about how the body looks, not how the body feels or whether the body is actually healthy.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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