Spring is officially here. I may not be a ground hog…but in my official capacity as spray tanner I am telling you “spring is here”. The general public of New York City have collectively decided that they can stand winter no longer and have all decided to call Brazil Bronze. It happens every year around this time. One second we are spraying the lucky few who are off to St Barts, Costa Rica, Rio – or the other lucky few who have a prospect of a hot date or an audition. 

Was it the promise of a warm weekend? The bright and spanking-fresh summer clothes in the store windows? Or probably the big excitement of the new season of Dancing With The Stars starting. Or is everyone just at that point of the winter when they are so fat and so white that they just have to have an intervention with themselves?

Talking of which I have been reading the amazing book by sexy doctor Mehmet Oz (and another doctor who is not so sexy) “YOU staying young”. If you haven’t read it you should dash out and buy it immediately. It basically explains in really understandable language how each part of the body ages on a cellular level…..the heart, the brain, everything – and then it tells you what you should do about it. Oh my god, I was reading it yesterday and as a result ate nothing but fruits and vegetables…..then of course in the evening I had two glasses of wine (red for the restiverol) and it all went to hell in a hand basket. But this book is a wealth of information. I also learned that if the average american man who is 30 pounds overweight were to loose that 30 pounds – his penis would be one inch longer. Now there’s a fact for you.

So here we are at the beginning of March and I am getting myself ready for summer. We have a ton of new salons and spas that are about to start offering spray tanning so my schedule is crazy, spraying in the salon, dashing hither and thither teaching others the fine art of spray tanning, running after my kids who are avidly into bike riding down steep hills, and trying to keep a little time for my own dancing and rehearsals which are the key to my (vague) sanity. It is definitely the busiest I’ve ever seen it. It’s funny, I think back to the spring of 2002 when I first started my business – in the beginning nobody came – I mean people had never even heard of spray tanning. I am really proud of myself – I really knew I had a good idea and did everything in my power to let the whole world know about airbrush tanning. Through the sheer force of my own will I got myself on every tv show and magazine imaginable – even crazy foreign tv shows – Holland, Japan, France – and even The Times of India…..wrote about our little spray tan salon. I feel like I am really seeing my business, which used to be such a niche, become really mainstream. 

Ok…..back to spray tanning……

I just got given this book that is so perfect for me right now. It is called “A year of Dancing Dangerously” by Lydia Raurell. It chronicles a woman who in her 50s takes up ballroom dancing and hits the competitive pro-am circuit. The book was given to me by a friend who found it in a bookshop in Palm Beach and is signed by the author “May your dream come true!”

I mean this is too funny. I started to read the book on Friday night on my way home from work. I understood the subject of which the author writes so clearly – because I too had taken the exact same journey starting in 1994…..I stepped into a ballroom dance studio and got completely sucked into the whole world, the music, the sensations, the competitions. So many things that the author writes really resonate with me from my perspective now. I mean I am still really caught up in that world. But she conveys really well what it is like to be a woman of a certain age, all the physical and self esteem issues – and how dancing can be a deliverance to a whole new level of self respect and self love. I thought it so perfect that the book came into my hands at this very moment – because right now I am very consumed with sharing my love of dance – and all the amazing transformative things about dancing – with my dance group. My husband and I want people to dance to feel good, to take away self doubt, to trust themselves on a whole new level.

It’s kind of funny because from the outside looking in Ballroom dancing is kind of freakish. I mean it is a whole other world. If you ever see the Australian movie “Strictly Ballroom” – that movie completely captures a lot of what is obscene and yet at the same time fabulous about the competitive dance world. There is so much politics, and there are so many ways in which the judging could seem to be not fair, the people look pretty outrageous…..it is crazy – but Lydia Laurell to me gets to the heart about what is really beautiful about Dancesport. I hope I some day track her down and one day when she is in NY perhaps she will come and talk to my little group about her adventure.