Gyms need to ban body shamers once and for all
THAT guy or girl standing in the gym looking uncertain and self-conscious as they act on their New Year’s resolution? I was one of them, and I needed a hand, not an eyeroll, writes Gary Nunn.
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THE sagest advice that has forever stuck in my mind came from Tim Minchin.
It was in his ‘9 Life Lessons’ guest-speech at The University of Western Australia, where he studied, and was about respecting people with less power than you.
“I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful,” he said.
If that room is a gym, you rank higher on the power hierarchy if you’re a regular. You know how to use the equipment, you look fit, you exude nonchalance rather than self-consciousness. Your confidence is applaudable; you work hard and probably get up early to look how you look. And there’s nothing wrong in that.
But confidence teeters so close to hubris. Walk tall in your pumps, by all means, but don’t walk all over people with less power than you: people carrying more body-weight than you, or less confident in their technique with the free weights than you.
A viral tweet doing the rounds has drawn attention to this issue. With 47,300 retweets and over 118,000 likes, Neil Scully clearly nailed it:
As we go into 2018 and people inevitably join the gym, don't take a picture & post about them struggling to use the machines or laugh at how they obviously aren't gym fit. Put the phone down and mind your own fucking business. Or see if they want a buddy. Just don't be a dick. pic.twitter.com/aDFLYLEm3Q
— Neil Scully (@neilscully) December 29, 2017
Many of these gym newcomers have made the single most common new year’s resolution: to get fitter and healthier. They may well have sweated buckets in nervous procrastination before even walking through those gym doors. I know, because I used to be one of them.
For so many reasons, the gym can be highly intimidating. Tight exercise clothes are unforgiving. Some people sweat far more than others. And, it can feel like more seasoned gym-goers are sniggering at you if you’re doing your lat pull-down back to front and upside down. No wonder there are women-only gyms, and even less of a wonder most have ditched that new year resolution by February.
To add further insult to injury, I’m “cack-handed”. As a leftie, I’m as awkward, clumsy and out of place as a koala attempting to use chopsticks when I ham-fist my way through a free weights session.
With all of these neuroses bubbling around in my mind, I couldn’t face walking into the gym below my building on my own, the potential of dropping a 20 kilogram on my foot, breaking one of the machines and pathetically using my left-handedness as a scapegoat all potential outcomes. I’d lived my whole life fantasising about having an on-site gym in my residential building. Now I had one, I was too scared of judgment to walk in.
And we all know that judgment exists.
In 2017, 30-year-old Playboy model Dani Mathers was convicted of invasion of privacy after secretly taking a photo of a naked 71-year-old woman showering in the gym. She shared it on Snapchat, with the caption: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”
What we can’t unsee is Mathers’ lack of respect. She outranked the pensioner in that room on every level, yet used her power to ridicule and shame her. She’d do well to listen to Minchin’s nine life lessons.
If you’re anything like me, my advice is to join a CrossFit or an F45 before going solo at the gym (or, if you can afford it, a PT to boost your confidence). I spent two years learning technique at a CrossFit. I lost weight and gained confidence. Now I walk into that gym under my apartment neurosis-free. I know what I’m doing and how to use (mostly) everything in there. All it took was some coaxing and coaching.
I’d still rather take a day trip to Chernobyl than walk into certain gyms though. Confidence is like that: never a fixed state, but an ever-fluctuating visitor.
One is Fitness First Darlinghurst on Sydney’s Oxford Street. It’s full of unfeasibly hot men in Sydney’s gay bubble, probably still looking unfairly attractive as they pump iron. When I pump iron, I look like Sharon Strzelecki off of Kath and Kim.
In fairness, I probably fear these beautiful men’s judgment more quickly then they’d dish it out. When I spoke to Steve Proimos, a personal trainer, he was straight up: “Some gym goers are dicks. They think they have the right to equipment because they’ve been there longer than someone else. Or they think they’re better because they know more about exercise than the new guy/girl. Instead of helping the newcomers, they put them down. But I think that’s a very small percentage of gym-goers; most people only care about their own workout when they go to the gym.”
You’ll notice lots of sports centre changing rooms now ban mobile phones. But maybe gyms should go a step further and ban all pictures being taken. That way, no-one can be shamed on social media. As for the gym selfies it’d curtail, put your phone down, get your headphones in and stop being such a narcissist.
As RuPaul says, you’d better work.