I did Pilates with Waka Flocka Flame. Here’s what I learned about girlhood, community, and body positivity.
I went, I worked out, I Waka’ed. And I didn’t expect to leave feeling so girly and giddy and genuinely moved by the body-positivity of the same man who wrote “Round of Applause.”
Early Saturday morning, I clambered out of bed and pulled on the required brown Spandex. With my hair slicked-back into a ponytail, I hustled down to Friends Select School in Center City, a yoga mat slung over my shoulder. There, on the private school’s rooftop turf, awaited hundreds of my peers all clad in the variations of the same Jacklyn.fit-branded workout set, the allure of complimentary energy drinks and facials, and the promise of rapper Waka Flocka Flame.
This was Sweat & Sculpt, a mat Pilates class slash wellness bazaar slash concert. It’s the brainchild of influencer and Sea Isle, N.J.-native Jacklyn Romano (aka Jacklyn.fit online), who bills the women’s workout-palooza as a “one-of-a-kind celebration of female empowerment, fitness, and community” and the “largest women’s event” in Philadelphia. That’s a difficult superlative to quantify, but organizers said there were more than 800 women in attendance.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Wait, is this real? Like 800 girls in matching workout sets and Waka Flocka?’” Romano told me. (Nearly everyone I told about this event had a similar reaction, with notably more expletives. One friend texted me, “I can’t even believe that’s a real sentence.”)
That singularity is what interested me — how someone could successfully marry a $120 “viral Pilates event” and the song “No Hands.” A TikTok commenter said it best: “Pilates & Waka is a diabolical combo.”
So I went, I worked out, I Waka’ed. And I didn’t expect to leave feeling so girly and giddy and genuinely moved by the body-positivity of the same man who wrote “Round of Applause.”
Sweat & Sculpt’s mantra
Six years ago, Romano’s brick-and-mortar fitness business was thwarted by COVID, so she pivoted to Zoom classes. Then, three years ago, she parlayed her online success (some 111,000 followers on Instagram and 20,600 on TikTok) into in-person activations — a burgeoning trend of social media stars taking their shtick on the road. This spring, for example, I wrote about another influencer, TikTok’s “Dense Bean Salad Girl,” who sold takeout containers of her signature salads at a pop-up near Rittenhouse Square.
A trainer for nearly a decade, Romano said she had always looked for an event like the one she ended up creating with Sweat & Sculpt: An inclusive space for women to get fit, make connections, and feel powerful. Despite the steep admission fee — which included the brown bra and your choice of leggings or capris, with an optional, additional $20 tank top — Saturday’s Sweat & Sculpt was the largest yet, according to Romano. (Full disclosure, I was gifted my ticket and athletic garb for free so I could write about the event.)
“Once [these women] leave here, they’re also shining from the inside out,” Romano said. At 8:45 a.m., she was already bubbly and energetic, bouncing from fan to fan and selfie to selfie. As we chatted briefly, her tooth gem caught the morning sun and her red-ink patchwork tattoos peaked out from her capris.
“They’re leaving with new friends, they’re leaving with a new form of confidence, they’re trying something new,” she said.
Cousins Dakota Hurwitz, Caitlyn McHugh, and Crystal McHugh have followed Romano for years. They’ve watched as her events grew 40-fold, from 20-person classes in Sea Isle to filling up soccer fields. Here, they said, they found community.
“It’s more than just a workout class,” Hurwitz, 26, of Bucks County, said.
Crystal McHugh, 31, of Northeast Philly, added: “It’s not just [about] confidence, it’s empowerment.”
Admittedly, before this event, I was not familiar with Romano. I recently deleted most social media apps from my phone, expressly because of the constant barrage of body checking, nutrition misinformation, ads for fat-loss miracle drugs, and commentary on what women should or shouldn’t look like. It started to feel like a nightmarish echo chamber of shame.
Romano’s brand, she said, defies that: The workout sets come in an expansive size range, from XS to 4X, and she encourages people to “worry about how you feel” but “not how you look.”
“I try to take a positive spin onto social media,” she said. “On our page, you get to see every different kind of person. No matter what size, what fitness level, what race, what religion — we all come together and we all want to empower each other.”
The workout
Sweat & Sculpt was promoted as low-impact, body-weight mat Pilates.
Don’t be fooled. That doesn’t mean easy.
I’m an ex-ballerina who’s been doing Pilates since age 11. I’m 27 now, so that’s more than 15 years of — albeit on again, off again — Pilates practice. At one point, I was taking as many as five mat classes a week; nowadays, my exercise routine consists of long walks, occasional reformer Pilates, and a weekly gym session with a personal trainer.
Yet by the second set of single-leg glute bridges, my hamstrings were burning. Then came a three-minute ab circuit. According to my Apple Watch, over 42 minutes, I burned 144 calories and my heart rate reached 167 beats per minute, more than double my resting rate.
As my arms and legs started to shake, I certainly felt that sense of camaraderie and support Romano talked about: her steady stream of affirmations — “Hang tight, ladies!” — blasting over the speakers; the smiles from the women around me; finding comfort knowing that I was not alone, that we all signed up to be breaking a sweat at 9 a.m.
Eleven mats down from me, 6-foot-6 Waka Flocka Flame cried, “Call the paramedics!”
All those glutes, in yo jeans
So why was Waka there?
“Why not bring in someone who’s iconic to our generation of women and just make it fun?” Romano said. The chorus “Girl, the way you’re moving got me in a trance. ...” once filled gymnasiums on prom night; hearing “‘Rain, rain, go away,’ that’s what all my haters say,” teleported me back to a college bar, my heeled booties sticking to a White Claw-laden floor.
But before he performed his medley, Waka, whose given name is Juaquin Malphurs, took time to answer audience questions, offering reassurance to one new mom in the crowd:
“I need you not to be hard on yourself postpartum,” Malphurs, who is also a new dad, said. “The woman that you’re gonna be is not the woman you see today, and you’ll get there — don’t worry.”
“Give your body some time ... then fight the fight.”
Afterwards, I spoke to Tamika Ford, who was coincidentally also seven weeks postpartum.
She came Saturday morning worrying — “I’m going to be so out of shape,” she thought — and left feeling fun and light-hearted and buzzing with encouragement.
Me too.