After months of fighting through my asthma (fighting and losing), I decided it was time to cut down on the outdoor jogs, and instead get myself a gym membership. Of course, my school offers free fitness facilities, but my school is also four miles from my home, and the thought of taking a train just to go to the gym makes me queasy. And so, for a whopping 10-or-so dollars a month, I have been a member of Planet Fitness since January.

This seems like hardly a fleet of any sort, but previous to joining the gym, the sheer thought of exercising around other people out of the context of a sports team gave me agita. As someone who gets beet red just looking at a treadmill, I don't look at all presentable while performing any form of exercise. Despite my years of active sports and frequent exercise, there's never been anything about my appearance that screams "IN SHAPE!" Instead, I usually look out of breath, overheated, and uncoordinated. It's an unfortunate circumstance, and it's the driving force behind my gymtimidation.

The easiest way to end my gymtimidation would probably be to join a different, more exclusive, gym, whereby myself and the other Kombucha-chugging white women of the area could work out in peace and moderation. David Barton may be calling after me, but my wallet has some serious issues with this love affair, and so my heart belongs to the beautifully purple and yellow Planet Fitness. There are some perks to this membership, they keep a bucket of grape-flavored tootsie rolls at the door, and I have unlimited access to the massage chairs that I've never used.

In contrast, the gym is undoubtedly full at all hours of the day (this leads into my theory that 80% of New York's population doesn't work), and oftentimes smells of gym socks. The worst part of it all is that, while I am often hesitant to use the machines when I desire to walk on over to the plyometric machines and have a go at the Ab Blaster 3000, the hoards of gym buffs are either:

A. Are in the midst of, like, a really serious workout andmaybe you should try another machine or,

B. Have accidentally relinquished one of their most prized pieces of equipment and will stand impatiently 5 feet away from the machine, urging me along until five reps in I inevitably surrender to their stares and give them full use of the god damn piece of metal.

Yes, I am wearing socks with pugs on them and a t-shirt from an oyster festival that I didn't even attend, but this in no way means that I am less serious about working on my fitness than you, or Fergie, or anyone else. I am a semi-strong, semi-dependent woman, and if I want to do 20 reps on the leg thing (excuse my lack of technical terms), then I should be allowed to do so without any condescending looks.

If, in fact, I was interested in competitive showing-off-of-muscle-based-exercises, as they apparently are, then I most certainly would not be a member of Planet Fitness, where this morning they literally played Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" over the loudspeakers. With Jerry Garcia "just getting by" as the background music for their establishment, it's safe to say that Planet Fitness was designed for those people like myself, who are eager to maintain average statistics and make the occasional attempt to make some small portion of my body a little sore.

It's not that I'm saying to workout at Planet Fitness is to not work out at all, but what I'm saying is that to work out at Planet Fitness is to work out among everybody and assume that everyone there is most certainly deserving of access to all of the gym's ins-and-outs. It's the reason it's $10 a month and not $160; it's not an elitist gym, and shouldn't be treated like one.

I am a paying member of that establishment, who goes often and cleans every machine twice before leaving, so it's safe to say that I am an appreciated consumer of Planet Fitness's facilities. I, too, am feeding into the fitness-obsessed society we've managed to create (a fact which, while I am not proud of, am willing to admit to), just as much as the guy next to me in a ripped muscle tee from the Concordia College Division III football team with swollen muscles and a swollen ego to match. And so, when I take to those machines, I no longer am bothered by the looks of shame or judgment or confusion; I go with my pride written on my face in the form of redness and condensation.