Powter Puff Post!

She’s baaaaaaaack!
The other she who shook me awake from my post-nicotine withdrawal, lard-puppet impersonation state 15 years ago and got me moving!
Susan freaking Powter.

She was mostly annoying to the masses, her comely face would grow distorted and she would plead in her strained, fake thee-ah-tah-trained voice, “If you’re not IN oxygen, you’re OUT of oxygen!” I loved her. I emulated her confidence for moments at a time, slowly gaining the real thing as I tried her personality on for size. I loved her ability to encourage and motivate her fitness class attendees who would blush at her zealous compliments. Loved that she felt free to compliment another woman and make her feel great. We didn’t do that with such energy until Susan Powter. She broke a barrier for me and got me into shape -just by her words and example. Trust me when I say I’m not easily influenced by anyone, I’m more cynical and untrusting than anyone I know yet I followed her voice, happy to be led to get me moving and enjoying life again when it wasn’t there inside me. Her fitness video was part of my everyday.

It was the badly edited video version that showed her class participants looking dry and fresh, then sweaty and wet, then dry again in the course of four moves. The moves weren’t matched up, the rhythm was off from what I would say was a bad ‘insert’ edit and it made that part excruciatingly long. It made me laugh picturing the editor looking at the footage, thinking the moves looked similar enough to just dump in hoping no one would notice. But the workout made the step my favourite thing to do in the world. My then five year old daughter wanted her own step so she could work out with me so we asked her dad if on one of her weekends with him, he could make her one. He didn’t ‘get’ why she wanted a step but he came through by cobbling a wide pine board together with short risers on the sides. It was cute to watch her trying to keep up with me, stepping up one inch and back down again, lasting about 45 seconds of the 45 minute workout.

Rosie is promoting her new book and she’s linked to her site www.susanpowteronline.com, so go see her. Instead of being almost bald she has crazy dreds and glasses and again she talks about the truthiness in the food industry and how we can get rid of that fat (fat makes you fat, you eat fat, you get fat). She looks great, her image has been updated, recycled, re-branded and instead of rolling my eyes when I saw her I was actually happy to see her face and hear voice again -like an old familiar army Sergeant. Welcome back, Seargent Powter, sir!