(Reflection) On Blue Eyes and Pilates
This image-episode was captured in the Fashion District. This post is an independent creative work and is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or professionally affiliated with Khloé Kardashian, Kate Hudson or Fabletics.
I'm standing in the middle of a Fabletics, holding two pairs of leggings I can absolutely tell apart — one is the PowerHold, the other is the Scrunch, and they are not the same thing, no matter what anyone says — while my boyfriend is three doors down at his entry-level gym, trying on a new lifting belt and compression shorts between clients. He's Italian, the kind of Italian that means he trains with intention, eats with passion, and does not half-do anything. Customer service is not really his thing. His position on it is simple: if you want him smiling at the front desk, you need to pay him like a front desk person. Until then, he's on the floor, doing what he was actually hired to do. When he's with a client, the whole world can wait. That's just who he is, and honestly, I respect it.
This hour in Fabletics is mine.
And this is my store. I have a lot of feelings about that.
Khloé Kardashian is one of the biggest names behind this brand, and that matters to me more than I can fully explain. She has spent years being the most publicly scrutinized woman in a family full of scrutinized women, and she just kept showing up, kept working, kept building something real. Her relationship with fitness isn't about punishing her body. It's about reclaiming it. I respect that deeply. I feel that every time I walk through these doors.
Kate Hudson is the other reason I feel at home here. She built Fabletics from a genuine place — she actually moves, actually sweats, actually believes that how you dress for a workout changes how you show up for it. I have watched her in interviews talk about dance, about discipline, about staying soft and strong at the same time. That balance is everything to me. Both of these women treat movement like a lifestyle, not a chore, and that energy is woven into this place. I feel it in the fabric.
I pick up a second colorway and let my mind wander the way it does on slow afternoons like this.
I think about how I found Pilates. Or maybe how it found me first.
As a kid, I was always the one stretching on the kitchen floor, holding still in ways my dad found strange. I'd lie on my back and lift my legs, drawing little circles in the air. I'd balance on one foot while brushing my teeth. I'd tuck my pelvis and pull my belly in without knowing those were real cues people paid good money to learn. My body was practicing a discipline I had no name for yet.
I didn't learn the word "Pilates" until much later. I was in my early twenties, tense and burned out, when I walked into a studio almost by accident. The instructor said, "Pull your navel to your spine," and something clicked. I had been doing pieces of this my whole life. I just hadn't understood the shape of it. Getting older gave me the language. It gave me the patience too.
My favorite movement is the Teaser. It still humbles me every single time. You lie flat, then lift your legs and torso into a V, balanced on your sit bones, arms reaching forward. It looks elegant from across the room. It feels like a negotiation with gravity that I usually lose. On a good day, I float into it. On most days, I wobble, fall, laugh, and try again. The Teaser reminds me that control isn't about force. It's about honesty. Your body tells you exactly where you are, no performing allowed.
That idea — being seen for what you actually are — has been sitting with me lately.
Years ago, someone I know, Mitchell, posted photos from a shoot in Moorpark. He'd worn blue contacts (2015). Just a styling choice. But the reaction got complicated. Comments started circling, and the way people told it, a district manager at the store where he worked seemed uneasy about it, as if the blue eyes didn't match the face they expected him to have. I wasn't in the room, so I won't pretend to know exactly what was said or meant. What I do know is the questions it raised stayed with a lot of us.
Why do we decide certain features "belong" to certain people? Why does a color, a contact lens, a small act of self-expression, make others feel entitled to draw a line around who you're allowed to be? Identity isn't a costume someone else gets to approve. Appearance is just the surface. People project their assumptions onto it constantly and call those assumptions truth.
Khloé knows something about that. So does Kate. Both of them have had their appearances picked apart publicly, their choices questioned, their looks used as a way to define or diminish them. They kept going anyway.
The Teaser taught me that balance comes from your center, not from how you look doing it. Maybe people work the same way.
My boyfriend texts me a photo of two compression tees — black and dark navy — asking which one. I tell him both. He sends back a single thumbs up. Very Italian. Very him.
I head toward the register, still turning all of this over.
So here's something to sit with.
A Reflection Exercise
Take ten quiet minutes.
Write about what Mitchell having blue eyes means to you. Not whether it's "right" or "wrong," but what it stirs up. Consider these prompts:
When have you been judged for a feature, a choice, or a look that didn't fit someone's expectation?
What assumptions do you make about people the moment you see them? Where do those come from?
What does self-expression cost, and who decides the price?
If appearance is the surface, what lies underneath that you wish people saw first?
When have you quietly held someone to a standard you never actually said out loud?
Write freely.
Don't edit as you go.
Let the honest stuff come up, even the parts that make you uncomfortable.
When you're done, read it back. Notice what surprised you.
Because the body remembers before the mind names it. And sometimes our reactions to others reveal more about us than about them.