White Male Tries Zumba, Hilarity Ensues.
Straight men can zumba too.
By Josh Frackleton
Whether he admits it or not, every heterosexual male secretly wants to try aerobic dance. If you ask him point-blank, he’ll scoff and remind you of his masculinity, but I decided to boldly go where no man has gone before: Zumba class.
In a nutshell, Zumba is a follow-the-leader type dance aerobics workout. The leader, stationed at the front of the room, performs saucy dance moves while the participants emulate him or her in real time. The soundtrack ranges from upbeat contemporary pop songs to, uh, remixes of contemporary pop songs. Don’t be fooled by Zumba’s ethnic-sounding name—the most exotic part of the session is pelvic thrusting to Slumdog Millionaire’s theme song.
I putzed around the dance floor for 50 minutes, moving limbs in ways they did not want to move and shaking parts that really should not shake. No matter what anatomy books and inside-out models try to tell you, men do not have hips. Men have stomachs and legs. What lies in between is a stiff, immobile region. Despite attempts to mimic my peers, all I could produce were awkward waist gyrations and pained facial expressions. All girls must have some kind of required reading on “how to work that ass” because every single girl in the room, regardless of shape and size, absolutely worked it.
But for real, bro, there is nothing effeminate about Zumba. On the contrary, I can’t think of anything more heterosexual than gyrating and thrusting in a room full of sweaty girls. That said, if you’re an average Joe with an inner desire to try Zumba, knock yourself out. You’ll burn some of those beer calories, learn a new dance move to break out at frat parties, and, if all else fails, creep on a cute girl or two.
Illustration by Alex Parkin