Sweaty Betty’s boozy ambitions are sheer insanity
Full disclosure: I rather have it in for Sweaty Betty, the women’s gym and yoga-wear shop. I was once in desperate need of new sport bottoms and nipped into the Hampstead branch. I paid a great deal for some black leggings – something like £50 – yet they fell to bits within six months. They were also too small, despite being the largest size, because, apparently, those elegant enough (in aspiration, anyway) to shop at Sweaty Betty must also be stick insects.
So I couldn’t help but nod knowingly when I saw that Sweaty Betty continues firmly upon its irritating path, this time by applying for an alcohol licence for its flagship, multilevel Carnaby Street branch. I’m no longer the only one who finds the store annoying; local residents were incensed by the news. Not that I particularly pity those who choose to make their homes off Piccadilly Circus, then complain about “rowdiness”.
No, it’s more the insanity, the sheer ridiculousness of what Sweaty Betty’s boozy ambitions represent. On one hand, you have a shop that is dedicated to promoting women’s “performance peak”, to helping them look sexy and expensive while pursuing transcendence and everlasting life through yoga, pilates, kick-boxing and half-marathons. Mindfulness and plenty of quinoa and chia seeds are, one presumes, also
required. On the other hand, you have alcohol which, as has been made abundantly clear in countless recent studies, is bad for you.
We also know that Britain has quite a big drinking problem (baby boomers especially), from which the Sweaty Betty demographic of well-to-do middle-aged women, is not excluded.
What’s happened here is a perfect mash-up of contemporary madness. “I know,” some clever clog at the company must have said, “let’s take all the mega-healthy living our brand represents, and add to it a dash of fun in the form of... a substance known to mess with the metabolic system, raise blood pressure, add weight and increase the risk of a dozen or more types of cancer!”
A Sweaty Betty spokeswoman didn’t exactly help her case when she reassured the angered neighbours that “we love to start the day with a green juice and end with a cocktail” because, “as a brand, we believe in balance”.
Sorry, love? Ending our days with cocktails makes it more likely we’ll sooner just end our days, full stop.
If Sweaty Betty purports to be about health, it should cut the pretence that drinking is healthy, which is not sweaty; just silly.