{"id":11059,"date":"2011-11-05T05:11:16","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T05:11:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-11-26T21:11:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T21:11:16","slug":"The-Buttiful-Benefits-of-Lotte-Berk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11059","title":{"rendered":"The Buttiful Benefits of Lotte Berk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I tell her I spoke with two women that morning, both of whom sounded short of breath and as if they were taking my call on their treadmills. \u201cBecause that\u2019s all they are, and it\u2019s a losing battle, and they know it,\u201d Sarah insists. \u201cThere\u2019s a kind of desperation. If he threw her over for you, he\u2019ll throw you over for the next one &#8212; unless you get one old enough to bury him.\u201d  Susan sits on the staircase at Lotte Berk Method, an exercise studio in a 67th Street brownstone that is the first stop on many an Upper East Side socialite\u2019s daily rounds, waiting for the start of the 8:30 a.m. beginner class. Demand for the classes &#8212; known for a combination of stretching and strengthening exercises that devotees say guarantees one a gravity-defying butt and sleek, rock-solid thighs &#8212; is so great that clients who fail to cancel their reservations 24 hours in advance are charged for the class anyway.  \u201cYou\u2019d be amazed what these women can do with their bodies,\u201d says Barbara, a Lotte Berk regular before the move to Darien. \u201cWomen who are doing it five days a week can touch their toes with their noses and curl up into all these pretzely positions.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One suspects that Susan will never become one of those leotarded ladies dangling from \u201cthe Rack\u201d on the floor above, a warm-up exercise that would pass for torture in an Iraqi prison.<br \/>\n\u201cI came this close to getting a disgusting jelly doughnut, but I was afraid I\u2019d get kicked out,\u201d Susan confesses, explaining that even though she\u2019s already rail-thin, she joined to prevent developing \u201cfluffy arms.\u201d  <strong>The women offer various explanations for making the daily pilgrimage to Lotte Berk. Besides the documented benefits of exercise, these include the sense of empowerment you feel flexing your biceps in public in a strapless Armani; <\/strong>the luxury of spending an hour that belongs wholly to you rather than to your husband, children, or charities; and, not insignificantly, the fact that Lotte Berk has a satellite studio in the Hamptons, where everybody seems to have a weekend house.  \u201cMine is less than a mile from the Bridgehampton studio,\u201d boasts a flat-tummied new mom who says she felt like exercising \u201cabout three hours after the baby came out\u201d but that her doctor forbade her from returning for six weeks.  \u201cI\u2019m on Halsey Lane,\u201d chimes in another stick figure.  \u201cI\u2019m on Ocean Road,\u201d reports a third.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Of all the reasons for their devotion to the Lotte Berk Method, perhaps the most compelling is the one least mentioned &#8212; that it may persuade their testosterone-oozing husbands that, despite the sexual opportunities their power and money confer, the best takeover target remains the one at home.  \u201cThey see the change in their wives\u2019 bodies and in their sexual performance,\u201d instructor Elizabeth Halfpapp states clinically. \u201cYou\u2019re more confident about yourself. You can control the muscles that control your pelvis and move it in ways you\u2019ve never moved it before. We have husbands thanking us &#8212; \u2018I can\u2019t believe how you lifted her seat.\u2019\u201d  Dana doesn\u2019t go to Lotte Berk. As a ballet dancer, she couldn\u2019t possibly have a seat any higher or legs any harder than they already are.   And she already has all the male attention she can handle. In fact, once Mark announced he wanted a divorce, Dana started walking their dog around the block at night a little more slowly and no longer changed her route to confound her admirers.  \u201cI\u2019ve had more sex since September than in the last ten years of my marriage,\u201d she reveals.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Lotte Berk is the best!!!  It changes your life in more ways than one.  In less than 20 days you will be transformed!  I used to go to the original classes mentioned above on the Upper East Side with those women and I was pretty young so I thought that they were all nuts!  A bunch of suburban mommies so obsessed with getting their butts to be high and round.  My friend Kristen and I used to laugh at them in class all the time.  I believe it was Jerry Hall who said, &#8220;My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. I said I&#8217;d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit.&#8221;  I&#8217;ve heard that you have to be a lady in the living room, a chef in the kitchen, a whore in the bedroom and a diplomat at parties.  Creating an unbelievable body that is the envy of even girls half your age is one of the greatest feelings of empowerment that a woman can have.  The only problem is that once you get intimate with a guy, he will become obsessed with you and it usually gets ugly when you want to get rid of him.  Why do you think so many Wall Street Bankers marry Ballet Dancers? Remember, men are visual so as long as you have a beautiful body that you are in full control of, you will have great men in your life (taken into account that you have a lovely face as well)!  Now I that I am older, I completely get it and so will you.  : )<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/nymetro\/urban\/family\/features\/2738\/index4.html\">SOURCE<\/a><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I tell her I spoke with two women that morning, both of whom sounded short of breath and as if<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":70655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"colormag-highlighted-post":false,"colormag-featured-post-medium":false,"colormag-featured-post-small":false,"colormag-featured-image":false,"colormag-default-news":false,"colormag-featured-image-large":false,"colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":false,"colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":false},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Joshua","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"2","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"I tell her I spoke with two women that morning, both of whom sounded short of breath and as if","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":151,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":5,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":false,"medium":false,"thumbnail":false},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Joshua","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1213"},"magazine_blocks_comment":2,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}