What’s long, lean, and had a very public breakup? Please welcome to the stage, your friends and mine, Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde!
It is with a deep sigh that we report that the exes were both spotted at celebrity fitness guru Tracy Anderson’s Studio City fitness studio Wednesday. Sounds juicy, right? Fresh squeezed? Some pulp? Probably $12, minimum. Some quality juice, right?
Nah. Styles and Wilde haven’t been together together since their breakup in November after nearly two years as a couple, and they weren’t physically together yesterday, either. Don’t worry, darling—Styles arrived at the studio about half an hour after Wilde left. May the only sweat that drops over this news be due to cardiovascular effort, not our fascination with the duo’s saga.
Anderson’s workout, which emphasizes high-rep, low-weight movements to tone “accessory muscles,” feels like an apt comparison for the Styles-Wilde split, actually. First of all, we’re obsessed with both of them. Gwyneth Paltrow is business partner to Anderson, and other celebs, like Lena Dunham, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham, Miss Piggy, and many, many more, have pledged allegiance to Anderson’s micro movements. Thanks to studios on both coasts, plus a series of at-home DVD and streaming workouts, normies can get in on the method as well. Likewise, here we are, breathlessly following the romantic travails (or not) of Wilde and Styles.
In fact, we’re following it so closely and often, that you might even say that it’s, well…high-rep and low-weight. That there are actual headlines about them having what I wouldn’t even consider to be a near-miss, not even being in the same place at the same time? It’s barre class’ “up an inch, down an inch,” a burn that builds over time and you don’t realize is wearing on you until you go to sit down later in the day and surprise yourself by making that involuntary grunt-squeal noise of effort on your way down.
They haven’t been together for so long! It’s been months! Remember how long ago the whole salad dressing thing was? That was shortly before they split up, it’s been so long. Heck, Styles was recently spotted smooching Emily Ratajkowski. He’s moved on. The fact that he, a celebrity, and his ex, also a celebrity, happened to work out at the same place, on the same day, not even at the same time, is less dramatic than the time I saw my neighbor in the freezer aisle at Trader Joe’s in the next town over (when you need mini peanut butter cups, you need mini peanut butter cups). What are the odds? We’ve gotten so used to this constant speculation and will-they-won’t-they exposure (they won’t) that it feels normal until we take a beat to realize, oop, the news of their split was like five months ago, and they seem to be largely chill with one another, if Wilde rocking out at Styles’ concerts the same week as the break was announced is anything to go by.
Boutique fitness has never met a euphemistic term it doesn’t love, and there are roughly 47 different ways to refer to your butt during a group workout class. I’ve heard “seat,” “glutes,” “rear,” even “ledge” (that one is for what I’d like to think of as your thutt, where your thigh meets your butt). I’ve had barre instructors coach me to “let my seat muscle float just an inch off the ground,” as if my butt has taken on a life of its own and has decided to take its leave of me to achieve its true potential. The one word for butt that I haven’t heard in class is the word, well, butt.
The gossip world has been, traditionally, less prone to elision. Though that’s not to say it hasn’t had a place here and there. Certainly that was the case with Wednesday’s non-news cycle. Now, we’re straining those glutes to the max, floating that seat up, up, and away, chronicling “near-misses” and “different priorities” to avoid just flat-out saying what we really know about Harry and Olivia.
Let’s just call it a butt, folks: Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde, separately, exercised on Wednesday. The end.
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Kase Wickman