This has turned into “weird Dubai-defining stories” week.

The kid fined $136,000 for turning donuts on the streets of the UAE’s biggest city.

The Dubai website that listed for sale an Airbus A340 jumbo jet for about $41 million.

And today?

The Dubai personal trainer who told a woman she was too fat to join his gym.

The story is a little hard to follow, but this is what I take from it.

A Canadian woman attempted to join a pricy gym during a period when it was offering a free, seven-day trial.

She believes the man who runs the place doubts her ability to become a paying customer, and that is why she received an automated rejection notice. Fees at the gym are Dh4,200 per month, or about $650.

And when she said so, via social media, and complained to the man who runs the gym, he responded, she says, by suggesting she is too fat to belong to his gym.

She said he told her being fat is a choice, and if she wanted to meet for coffee he would call her fat to her face.

The woman said she didn’t mind being called fat, conceding she is “big”, but she said she did take offense to the trainer/owner insulting other overweight people.

The trainer/owner has not backed down from his statements, and the story has been among the “most read” on The National’s website for several days now.

Apparently, this trainer comes from the “abuse brings results” school of physical trainer. And maybe from the “we prefer do deal with beautiful people” school, too.

As someone who has exercised on his own for a very long time (and perhaps shows it), I have never understood that whole odd relationship between some trainers and clients — the demanding, hectoring, insulting trainer, and the client who apparently welcomes the abuse.

What makes this a “Dubai” story?

The desire to be part of what is perceived to be the “elite” gym in the city, the notion that physical attractiveness can be bought or sold and the high prices charged — up to $4,000 per month.

Dubai is a fascinating place, but in many cases it also is shockingly shallow, and it seems to attract people and businesses who are prepared to be part of that five-star/VVIP/exclusionary lifestyle.

The owner’s website biography is biography says he is a “typical New Yorker who doesn’t mince words”.

Instead of hugs and compliments, The National wrote, he offers clients an “unsurpassed passion for developing the human body” as well as his “unique skill for designing fitness systems”. The website states his “rare combination of passion and knowledge are the driving force behind the gym’s success.

And, as unsavory as it might be, the nasty trainer probably distilled the Dubai experience when he wrote to the woman on social media: “Sadly, we live in a society where big is not beautiful.”