Pennington, New Jersey

By J.D. Reed

Amid a tang of perspiration and perfume, 60 women in shiny tights and baggy T shirts strut to the strains of Jailhouse Rock. In the large, carpeted room, the instructor, sleek as a seal in a chocolate-colored unitard, takes the Elvis song from the record player when it finishes and puts on George Michael's Kissing a Fool. She cocks a hip and asks the women: "Will anyone else be kissing a fool today?" She is answered by a breathless chorus: "Yeah!" "I know I will!" "You got it!"

Husbands, it's 10 a.m. Do you know where your wives are? Selling real estate? Processing words? Marauding the malls? Forget it. Every weekday morning in Pennington, N.J., an upscale village of 2,200 about halfway between New York City and Philadelphia, a number of busy wives and a sprinkling of single women put aside all thoughts of jobs, husbands and children to gather for what has become a new style women's club. In the aerobic dance classes at the local Jazzercise center, women are talking about who's hot on the silver screen, trading bargain tips and supporting new mothers and divorcees. The workout classes have become a combination gossip fence, networking center, self-help group, junior high locker room and place to affirm grownup community values. "There's no place like it," says JoAnn Mattia, 32, a physical- education teacher who gets to four or five hour-long classes each week. "Everybody talks about what videos to rent and which stores have the best sales. I've made new friends here."

Women in the speedy suburbs need a guilt-free place to gather. Old-fashioned women's clubs no longer seem to fill the bill. The country-club lunch -- a large helping of chitchat served with a garnish of innuendo -- is too fattening and "unsupportive." Self-employed or with part-time jobs, with homes to run and volunteer work to do, what woman can spare three hours for the afternoon bridge club? "Even though there's been a revolution," says instructor Anne Grossman, a part owner of the Pennington Jazzercise Center, "we women have been taught that you don't waste time. You have to tell yourself that you're going to do something productive like exercise. A lot of women come because they want to look better. They stay to socialize."

On a weekday morning out on Route 31, between Pets of Pennington and Party Things!, the Jazzercise center is alive and humming. Driving everything from BMWs to Toyota pickups, women arrive for class with coffee mugs in hand. The class is a mix of violin teachers, novelists, horse breeders and substitute teachers who range in age from 20 to 60. Some drop off preschool children at the center's nursery; others gather in small groups to discuss someone's vacation tan and the pros and cons of buying a car for a 17-year-old.

During the pulse-raising half-hour aerobic section of the class, there is only time for a quick "How's everything going with your (new baby, surgery, divorce, job, novel, college student)?" When the women settle to the floor to stretch tired muscles and rest racing hearts, however, the informal club comes to order.

Husbands are a favorite topic. A fiftyish front-row regular complains that her husband does the grocery shopping (the most hated activity) every Saturday morning but says that he buys all the wrong stuff. She has to go back to the market all week long. The women agree: husbands don't know how to shop.

Physical fitness and finesse crop up on the daily agenda. In one of the last places that women regularly gather without men around, there is much discussion of quads, glutes and pecs. Many of these women know their cholesterol count, optimum training heart rate and body-fat percentage. Says instructor and center co-owner Karen Shaffer, 43, who bears a striking resemblance to Carol Burnett: "We talk about boobs a lot." Jazzercise is also an hour of dancing, something that women seem to like a good deal more than men do. Says writer and editor Phyllis Kluger, 51, a six-year Jazzercise veteran: "I enjoy dancing, and, if I come here, I don't have to think, 'Oh, my husband never takes me out dancing.' "

Family matters and suburban survival techniques get regular attention. They are the cement that holds the classes together. Says Grossman: "There's a sense of shared community here about the fact that there's not enough time, the kids won't do the dishes, and father paces the floor when daughter is out on the first date. You need to hear that everybody else is going through it too."

For some, the sharing has fostered deeper relationships. The class has nurtured regulars through pregnancy, divorce and surgery. Says Kluger: "If someone says, 'Hey, I'm getting married next month,' people start asking 'Have you bought your dress yet?' An emotion can coalesce around that kind of thing." When Mattia announced she was getting married, a couple of the regulars threw a swinging bachelorette party at Chippendale's, the male stripper club over in New York City. Says the newlywed: "We rented a limousine. We partied all the way in and all the way back." They also brought back pictures of the goings-on to show the Pennington class. Mattia and her new friends have remained close; they often meet for dinner.

The class is a kind of grass-roots media review board that any pollster worth his clipboard would give a rating point to get in on. Currently approved by the majority: any movie in which heartthrob Kevin Costner (Field of Dreams) removes his shirt. The video of the film Bull Durham, in which Costner takes off more than that, is one of the area's hottest rentals. Television gets its share of attention. Before summer reruns took over the tube, the women found that Moonlighting was funny again, and the wacky comedy of Tracey Ullman acquired a growing following. The women who watched The New Perry Mason marveled at the good shape of Della Street's legs. Mused Shaffer: "What exercises has Della been doing? "

Sometimes, the class resembles nothing so much as a junior high locker room. Says a regular: "We're free to be adolescent and silly, like we were when we were 14, but without being mean." When Shaffer played Prince's recent hit Kiss, with the lyrics, "I'll be your fantasy and you'll be mine," she blurted out, "Not really. What if Prince was the last man on earth? Would you be celibate, or what?" The breathless women nodded in agreement.

A kind of affirmative energy emerges from the group. "Once my husband complained that we rarely saw each other anymore, that we were like ships that pass in the night," says Grossman. "I told him that everybody in Jazzercise felt that way too. But somehow we get on with life, paying the bills every month and going to the supermarket every week." As the women leave the center, headed toward the market and rounds of errands, one realizes that the aerobic women's club is more than a passing fancy. Grossman speaks for many of her students when she says, "When we visited my husband's mother in a retirement settlement recently, I couldn't picture myself as a senior citizen wearing the suits that they wore and going to bridge groups. When my age group gets there, we'll be wearing sweatsuits, and we'll turn the bridge room into an exercise studio."