"For me, it's like biking around the neighborhood, the walks and stuff, because I have never enjoyed the gym. Or I'll do, since I used to dance a lot, all the old dance exercises"
About this Quote
There is a quiet refusal in Delta Burke's offhand “for me”: she’s not selling discipline, she’s defending pleasure. In a culture that treats the gym as both confessional and proving ground, Burke frames movement as something that fits around life instead of dominating it. “Biking around the neighborhood” and “the walks and stuff” aren’t just low-impact alternatives; they’re a bid to make exercise domestic, social, even scenic. The neighborhood isn’t a measurement tool. It’s a place with trees, neighbors, memory - a setting where the body can be present without being audited.
The subtext is especially pointed coming from an actress whose era of stardom was saturated with body scrutiny and tabloid narrativizing of women’s weight. “I have never enjoyed the gym” reads like a small act of resistance against the moralizing tone that often surrounds fitness, especially for women in public view. She’s not confessing a failure; she’s asserting a preference, and by extension permission for others to do the same.
Then she reaches for dance, not as cardio but as identity: “since I used to dance a lot.” That “used to” carries nostalgia and continuity at once. “All the old dance exercises” suggests muscle memory, a private archive of movement that predates the fitness-industrial script. The intent isn’t optimization; it’s reclamation - of joy, of familiarity, of a body experienced as expressive rather than perpetually improvable.
The subtext is especially pointed coming from an actress whose era of stardom was saturated with body scrutiny and tabloid narrativizing of women’s weight. “I have never enjoyed the gym” reads like a small act of resistance against the moralizing tone that often surrounds fitness, especially for women in public view. She’s not confessing a failure; she’s asserting a preference, and by extension permission for others to do the same.
Then she reaches for dance, not as cardio but as identity: “since I used to dance a lot.” That “used to” carries nostalgia and continuity at once. “All the old dance exercises” suggests muscle memory, a private archive of movement that predates the fitness-industrial script. The intent isn’t optimization; it’s reclamation - of joy, of familiarity, of a body experienced as expressive rather than perpetually improvable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fitness |
|---|
More Quotes by Delta
Add to List
