Melanie Marchand is a personal trainer on a mission to get Sisters in Shape.
It’s not often that you open a fortune cookie and find five predictions–all pointing in the same direction. So, even though Marchand is not superstitious, she took that as a sign. Then there was the response to the newspaper article, the one that described how one of Marchand’s personal-training clients dropped 40 pounds. Marchand was deluged with more than a hundred calls. And when she sent fitness questionnaires to those women, more than 60 returned them.
“I weigh 300 pounds. Please help me,” one woman pleaded. Another wrote: “I want to be a new me.”
Marchand was moved to tears. She was also astonished and thrilled. “There’s a market out there,” she remembers thinking. “These women are asking for help, and I have to deliver.”
“These women” are African-American, and what Marchand is delivering is not only health and fitness but also confidence, self-esteem and, in many cases, transformed and renewed lives.
“I’m trying to promote the idea that what you do today has a profound impact on how you feel tomorrow,” Marchand says.
She calls herself a fitness consultant, and her business is Sisters in Shape (SIS for short). Her goal is to help African-American women improve the quality of their lives through the Big Four: proper nutrition, body shaping or weight-training, cardiovascular conditioning, and flexibility.
“Quality of life” is a nebulous term, but Marchand offers a specific definition: “It means you look and feel better and are more equipped to spread love and positive energy.”
Marchand, 37, who lives in the Old City section of Philadelphia, is a terrific advertisement. She has a lean, muscular body and a warm smile. She brims with enthusiasm and radiates passion and good cheer.
SIS is not just a business. For Marchand, it’s a mission, a cause, a holy crusade to “Stimulate, Inspire and Show” African-American women that by eating right and getting fit, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose except lard, lethargy and self-loathing.
The sisters need help, Marchand says. Compared to white women, African-American women are more prone to obesity and related ailments such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes.
Many are so busy taking care of others that they don’t take care of themselves.
“African-American women do not make fitness a priority,” Marchand says. “We tend to put everyone else before ourselves. After our families and everyone else is taken care of, we’re last on the list.”
It doesn’t help that African-American women have few fitness role models, and that cultural norms have favored a female form that is curvy and large. Says Marchand: “My mom was always saying to me, `You’re too skinny.’ She always wanted me to have meat on my bones.” (At 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, Marchand has meat on her bones, but she’s toned and shapely.)
Maybe that’s why African-American women are easily discouraged. When Marchand taught aerobics near the University of Pennsylvania campus, few African-American women showed up. Those who did were inconsistent; they would come for a couple of weeks, then disappear.
Marchand believes she can change that, and she’s determined to do it. More is at stake than buff bods. “A healthy woman makes a healthy family,” Marchand says. “When you reach African-American women, you reach a whole lot of people in the community.”
Marchand, born in New Orleans, the middle of five children, began dancing at age 5–ballet, tap, modern, jazz. In high school, she was a cheerleader, and an ace in science and math. At Tulane, where she was also a cheerleader, she majored in chemical engineering.
Her first job after college was at Union Carbide. To stay in shape, she began taking an aerobics class. She was such a quick study that the teacher asked her to be her substitute. Marchand got hooked, got certified, and launched an aerobics program at the plant. “We had a blast,” she says.
She moved to Air Products and Chemicals and was eventually transferred from Louisiana to the headquarters in Allentown, Pa. After a year as a plant efficiency engineer, she took a leave–to earn her MBA at Wharton. When she returned to Air Products, she was put on the fast track: business analyst, product manager, technical sales rep, marketing manager.
Her bosses were shocked when she resigned in May 1998. “I was having a ball,” Marchand says. “I’d just gotten a $4,000 bonus. Everything was hunky-dory. They loved me, and I loved them.”
So why quit? “I saw a fabulous opportunity to do what I love.”
It was crazy at first. Marchand scrambled and hustled, training 10 people a day, seven days a week. Today, Marchand is still very busy, but the pace is more sane. SIS has more than 80 members now. For $25, they get a T-shirt and water bottle, periodic newsletters, discounts on health-related products and services, use of the 12th Street Gym every other Saturday, and quarterly workshops.
“I’m having the time of my life, because I’m dealing with fabulous women who are taking responsibility for their health,” Marchand says. “I see their attitudes change and their self-confidence go through the roof. They’re transforming their bodies and their lives.”
Throw away the scale and forget about pounds, Marchand exhorts SIS members. What counts are those shrinking inches. “After six weeks, when their clothes feel looser, they really get excited,” Marchand says.
