From every angle, womxn and people of gender minorities are scrutinized for their bodies; what they do to their bodies, what they do with their bodies, and most importantly; how other people perceive their bodies. Too fat? Too thin? Too muscly? Too masculine? Too feminine? We have constant gendered expectations forced upon us, and end up stuck chasing unrealistic beauty standards. In many ways, the gym can offer some kind of solution to these pressures, and even the chance to take charge of your own body.
In reality, gyms are overwhelmingly heteronormative and hyper-gendered spaces, imbedded with toxic masculinity, judgement and an overpowering air of sweaty, protein powder-fuelled testosterone.
If you’re not a masculine-presenting straight man, fighting to claim your space and be taken seriously amongst the Gym Bros Club is impossible.
Between sets of bench-pressing their own body weight, these men spend their rest period gazing at womxn’s butts and then stealing their equipment. So much for ‘weights over dates’. Keep your eyes on your squat rack, and off mine.
The mirrors are there to check your form, not your biceps. And trust me, your huge ego is still visible too. Just like a man cave or a 10-year-old boy’s bedroom, the gym’s “No Girls Allowed” gate-keeping is eye-roll-worthy at best, and terrifying at worst. Wall-to-wall, full-body mirrors, and still no room for womxn.
Despite this alarming culture, girls, gays and they’s are, of course, allowed. They’re allowed to pay for memberships, use the binary-enforcing bathrooms, and run on the treadmills – because that’s what girls do. As long as they keep quiet and continue losing weight so they don’t use too much of the Gym Bros’ space.
Womxn may be granted access to the weights machines if they’ve had plenty of eggs that morning and woke up with the confidence of Valerie Adams. But shock, horror, if they dare to venture into the free-weights section – that’s ‘Real Men’ territory, where the next generation of hair-pulling politicians and protein-shake-drinking, Laurel Hubbard-questioning CEOs are bred.
I’m a 5”10, queer, cis woman with 78 kilograms to my name. I’ve played sports my whole life, and feel pretty confident in the way I look and feel in my body. I’m the kind of confident that’s just asking for neighbours to complain about my casual nudity. When the gym is empty, I blast my music and go to town. But when it’s flooded with hyper-masculine performing seals, I find myself tiptoeing around trying to be as invisible as possible. I keep my straight-passing head down and avoid eye contact for fear of initiating conversation, but there are plenty of people who would never even dream of stepping foot in that toxic environment.
Even the gym’s welcoming consultation process can be unnecessarily gendered and looks-focused. For example, Auckland University Gym offers access to the Fit3D body scan machine. This is a highly technical tool that measures body fat percentage, balance, and all sorts of physical measurements, comparingit to the average body and the ‘ideal’ and ‘fit’ body. It gives a body shape rating out of 100, where it takes all sorts of physical body measurements and spits out a ‘score’. The lower the number is, the higher risk you are of developing certain cardiovascular health issues, but based purely on the shape of your body rather than lifestyle or genetic factors.
It can be useful to gather benchmark measurements to build a programme with specific, achievable goals. So naturally, I jumped on the machine myself. I stood on the rotating platform in my bra and underwear in a dark room and gripped the handles while it spun me around 360 degrees. Then I sat down with the fitness instructor and tried to absorb the numbers being thrown at me.
I had been pre-warned: take the results with a grain of salt, don’t focus on the visuals. Be informed by the data but don’t take it too personally.
Now, I’m a body confident bitch, but I came off the machine feeling like I had been told to lose weight.
The fitness instructor and I talked about how I was in the ‘healthy range’ for most measurements. But the whole time we were both staring at this freaky anthropomorphic figurine, an exact replica of every curve and bulge of my body, all 78kgs from every angle. This ultra-realistic digital clone smacked me in my real-life face and bulldozed those body-confident-bitchvibes.
Our conversation continued on about functional fitness, and the fitness instructor wrote me a programme that reflected my own goals. But the session had been hijacked. The Fit3D scanner couldn’t measure my strength or the way my body feels after a good workout. I walked out of that room with irrelevant information, delivered in a way I’d never asked for. All I’d been given was a ‘before’ picture in my assumed weight loss journey.
Auckland University Women’s Fitness Director Emma Gillard recognises that body scanning isn’t for everyone. She empowers womxn and people who the gym isn’t designed for, by giving us plenty of tangible skills and a little of that straight-man confidence.
“I see ladies coming into the gym, and they’re intimidated. They don’t know what to do. And they might just go to the aerobics class. And they get frustrated because they’re spending hours at an aerobics class and not achieving the goals of dropping weight or putting muscle on,” she says.
One way Emma makes the gym more inclusive is by fostering communities of like-minded people. She runs a Women’s Fitness Programme, to make sure womxn know there’s space for them here at the gym. Emma explains it can be less overwhelming when you know how to write your own training programme.
“My main focus and reason for doing it was exactly that – ‘Do women feel comfortable in the gym?’ No, they don’t,” she said. “I wanted to create an environment so these women could come in and know what to do and be confident.”
The way fitness is so closely intertwined with looks makes things difficult. I haven’t let my Fit3D results change the way I use the gym, and it hasn’t made me want to lose weight. But that’s because I’m lucky to have a positive support system, and not many added challenges that many others struggle with, like eating disorders or body dysmorphia. People of all genders, sexualities and body types might feel insecure after a Fit3D body scan, but for those outside the Lads Club, who don’t see themselves represented in mainstream gyms, it’s like adding a little extra weight onto that already tough set of deadlifts.
Emma reminds us that exercise should never focus on the way you look. “It’s not just about body-beautiful. You can take pride in your body, but it’s about being functionally healthy.”
I don’t care about the Fit3D scanner’s ‘body shape rating’ or ‘waist to hip ratio’. At the end of the day, I just want to beat my girlfriend in an arm wrestle, and be the one who can open the olive jar on Pizza Night.
maia.hall@wordpress.com 