I know to many people Richard Simmons is a joke. The silly hair, the short shorts, the flaming gayosity. But those people can suck it, because My Richard Simmons “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” is awesome. And here is why:

1) They are made for fat people, not workout crazies. If you are 2% body fat and own a muscle shirt or a midriff baring top, we clearly live in different worlds. I have owned many many workout tapes, all to failure. Why? They are Boring as hell, and clearly made for skinny people. Boring skinny people. This has stretching, warm up and cool down included. The workouts are enough to get you sweating and breathless, but not dying of heart failure.

2) You don’t need a lot of money. I don’t know about you but I don’t have a lot of spare green. Certainly not enough to buy a heart rate monitor, A Step, weights, those rubber stretchy things, a blow up doll, work out clothes. Nope, all you need is a pair of Sneakers. And today I didn’t even have those, and everything was fine.

3) Diversity. In most work out videos this means 1 lady who is a size four and 1 person of color. Both in the back and both frequently the same person. This is bullshit. As if fat people can’t work out. In the Oldies DVD, there were about 15 people, all ranging from 100-300 pounds. And people of all Colors in the Damn front row.

Richard Simmons is basically all about acceptance. Accepting all bodies, all colors, all sexualities, all short shorts. All terrible eighties hair.

4) The music is Good. There is a reason they are called classics. Much better than than new age musac silliness that gets me to sleep. Or that hard core stuff that sounds like I am training for the apocalypse. It is familiar and energizing.

5) I have never been able to complete an excersize video on the first or fifth try because I have no coordination. No matter how many “Begginers” tapes I tried, I ended it feeling stupid and frustrated. But I could follow the Simmons DVD, the first Damn time.

6) You don’t need to do it in public. Like most fat people out there trying to lose weight, I have had the lovley experience working out at a gym. Nothing like being surrounded by 30 hardbodies staring in a mirror and your body flab wiggling about to give you the motivation to do it again. You might feel silly jumping around to oldies with Richard, but no one knows but you.

7) There is no Yoga. I actually have a ton of respect for Yogis. I think the way they are in tune with their body is amazing. But there is nothing worse than trying to do those positions with body fat in the way. They can be painful and harmful. Think about it this way. Take a normal gym goer, then strap 100 pounds of cotton to their body. They would collapse, and if they tried to work out, they would get hurt. But this is what a fat person deals with every day. I walk around all day with a 100 pound backpack strapped to my front and then have to function, why people sneer and wonder why I don’t “Just” lose weight.

8 ) It is Virtually impossible to Get Hurt. Way more people get hurt exercising than you would think. This is even easier if you are overweight. You only get 2 knees, my mother can attest to that.

9) It is fun. Really. Once you stop with the stupid judgment of others blathering in your head, let lose and have some fun. Really, this is the truth.

10) Almost everyone dancing with him has lost about 100+ pounds, ranging from 55 pound loss to 200 pound loss. So they are with you, and you feel part of it. It’s nice.

11) He is the Opposite of Pretentious. I am so sick of pretentious, arragant, excersize folk. They are never inclusive or understanding, and why should they be. They are 120 pound people who became 100 pounds of muscle. They could never understand (no pun intended) the burden under which we work. He may be squeaky and earnest, but it must be nice to be someone who is so self confident that he could care less what you think of him, and he is happily his sweet, campy self.

12) Warm Up, Stretch, Prance About, Cool Down. If you are anything like me you skip the introductions in books, and also tend to skip the warm up, stretching and cool down with a workout because it feels tedious and you just want to get to it already. In the tapes these are part of the workout and they meld seamlessly with the rest, so you have a more successful work out/

Even my parents laughed when I told them I was going to do Richard Simmons, but you know what, Fuck it. I am going to do these tapes and laugh all the way to 100 less pounds.

So there.

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