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The Jazzercise instructor in rural Hopewell, N.J., cheers: "Pretend your boyfriend is watching! Strut your stuff!" Up to 50 women in leotards perform a fast dance routine to the tape-recorded rock. Their movements variously suggest college cheerleaders or amateur night with a Junior League chorus line.
But the physical workout is brisk and tiring. Vivacious Jacki Sorensen, 38, the guru of the trend, who now oversees the 42-state chain of Aerobic Dancing Inc. studios, began the movement in 1971 from a church basement in South Orange, N.J. Says she: "It's a fad gone stir crazy." Indeed, Sorensen's and a host of other programs attract an amazing 6 million participants a month. Says a student at Jon Devlin's Dancercise in New York: "My main reason for coming is my head. If I miss three days, I have to come in for my fix." Says Devlin: "There is something about dancing and music that's magic—it lifts people up." Whether the reason is the music, or the camaraderie, or the behavior-mod technique of encouraging women to smile and shout during the workouts, Dancercise has reversed the trend of the lonely long-distance runner.
At the turn of the century, fashionable women were so eager to resemble Singer-Actress Lillian Russell that many gained weight in strategic spots to imitate the actress's superhourglass figure. It is a long dietary path from Russell's bulk to the mod-media anoretic, the British model Twiggy, who helped popularize miniskirts in the late 1960s. The fashionable trend toward slender frames on females continues. Currently, three of the ten nonfiction bestsellers deal with diet (see box), and they have dominated the list for months. "No woman is ever too sum or too rich," Mrs. William ("Babe") Paley once quipped. This is the first American generation that has little hope of bettering its parents' earning power, but with what may be a compensatory vengeance, younger citizens have taken up slenderizing, or fashions that make one look slim.
The country runs and runs, from fear of death and pollution and old age as well as from longing for health, beauty and wellbeing. But what Americans will do with their revitalized corpora remains to be seen. Author Studs Terkel (Working) views the goings-on like a blue-collar Jeremiah. Says he: "Working on your body is narcissistic. It's basically a solo act. Narcissism comes when you're not connected to the rest of the world." By contrast, Dr. Dennis Colacino, director of the PepsiCo Fitness Programs, proclaims: "It gives people a better self-image. It helps one's selfesteem, it sharpens one's competitive edge." Somewhere between these poles is a path of balance down which a confused American can safely jog.
Chicago Psychiatrist Ner Littner has faith in American balance. Says he: "We have a need to go to extremes, to be impulsive and obsessive. But given a little time, we always become reasonable and exercise what matters—common sense."
Meanwhile, the health and fitness boom must be a major factor in some very bracing statistics. Heart disease, the nation's No. 1