Going to the gym for the first time isn’t the easiest thing to do. You feel overwhelmed by all of the machines you might not know how to use. You don’t really know where to start when it comes to forming a daily gym routine and workout. You think that everyone who is there is judging you when almost all of them, in most cases, are not even paying attention to you. Simply taking the time out of your day to build up the courage and motivation to work out for an hour each night can be a challenge. When someone decides to pull out their iPhone and Snapchat you during your intense and vulnerable workout, it can feel demoralizing and soul crushing.
I had never been the gym-type who actually enjoyed exercising. I have the “typical” “plus-size story” of struggling with my weight all through school and loathing the thought of working out because I felt embarrassed. When I would run my thighs would jiggle from their thickness and I would breathe heavily whenever I did those simple push-ups (though they were never that simple for me.) Working out always revealed my weakness and my insecurities. Even in high school gym class, the gym teachers would somewhat embarrass the people who didn’t do a consistent mile and would force them to run it again. Of course, I never could finish that second round and ended up walking it out—a walk of shame at my lack of physical fitness.
For me, joining a gym was a hard thing to face. Not because I was afraid of actually working out, but because I was nervous about being watched or what people would think of me while I was working out. I felt like everyone’s eyes would be on me—on my thick legs that would jiggle or on the fact that I couldn’t lift more than 30 pounds without huffing or breaking a sweat.
Back in 2016, supermodel Dani Mathers was charged with misdemeanor for snapchatting an elderly woman changing in the gym locker room. Granted, the situation was slightly different from the anxiety I feel at the gym, there are still similar tones in that situation that made me upset when I witnessed this poor old woman get mocked for her body at such a vulnerable place. When you’re at the gym you sweat, you look silly, and you are exhausted. It is the one place that should be safe from people like Dani Mathers, who make fun of those that simply want to do better for themselves, but aren’t society's typical “image of beauty.”
When that case happened in 2016, I was upset for the woman and angry at Dani Mathers. I was frustrated by people like her. But, I never thought anything similar could happen to me. I never thought my safe environment at the gym—where I’d finally learned to love working out without being anxious about my weight—would be tested by ignorant minds that couldn’t accept the fact that a plus size woman was having fun at the gym and not giving a damn what anyone thought.
I had just finished a long nine hour shift at work where I sit at a computer all day and researched companies. I was exhausted from staring tirelessly at a screen and my legs were numb from sitting in the same position for so long. Seriously, the spinning chairs at work do nothing to help with circulation and there are only so many times I can get up for a cup of coffee without developing caffeine overload. My time at the gym after work is the only time of the day I can finally relax and move around. It’s the only time of the day I can clear my mind and simply focus on the here and now instead of worrying about tomorrow morning or the day after, or any other problems in my life. It’s the one place that brings excitement to my day no matter what—even if all I’m doing is lifting weights or on the treadmill. My body is releasing toxins. It’s a place where, even if I’m having a crappy week or even if I don’t feel too well, I’ll feel great after knowing I accomplished something.
It was a typical Tuesday night and I was at the routine Zumba class that my best friend and I had started going to over a year ago. There are always new-comers and people who come and go, but we’re friendly with the instructor and the other regulars. For us, going to Zumba is more of a treat and not necessarily a depressing work out. It’s something we constantly look forward too even when we’re tired or sore.
The music came alive and the beat blared through the Zumba room, tuning out the loud voices and clattering of dropped weights and workout music coming from outside our bubble. In that room, it is a safe space for anyone who’s nervous about working out. It’s a place where people are accepted into our little group and get to feel excited to work out. There are windows where people can look in, but we don’t mind because we feel safe within this space.
But, there’s a line between general viewers and those who violate that space.
On this particular Tuesday night, I had experienced something similar to what that woman was subjected to by Dani Mathers. I was late to the class that day due to traffic so I was in the corner, right next to the windows that face inside of the gym and the door that leads to the general workout area. The room faces a couple of cushioned benches where two girls sat down and pulled out their phones. We were learning a new dance which I usually didn’t mind because repeated dances can get boring after a while and the new dance moves motivated me to work harder. I saw them through the corner of my eye. I thought they were just another couple of viewers who were intrigued by the class, but they had their phones out, clearly filming, and were mocking our imperfect dancing. I tried to focus on the instructor and ignore them, but it was hard to pretend it didn’t hurt. It was hard to pretend that I didn’t feel violated or embarrassed.
I started to trip up on the moves because I couldn’t focus—I couldn’t stop being aware of the girls filming us. No one else in the Zumba class knew we were being mocked and I felt like I was keeping some awful secret from my group. Towards the end of the song, I stopped trying. I felt defeated. I kept looking over at the girls who didn’t even care that I knew what they were doing. They didn’t even have the courtesy to feel ashamed and stop when I looked directly at them multiple times.
That was probably the worst part. They didn’t even care that I clearly cared.
It wasn’t as extreme as what happened with Dani Mathers, but I realized how safe I had started to feel with working out at the gym until someone put me in a box that said “not good enough.” As a plus size woman, even when you want to do better, there will always be someone there to tear you down, someone who will want to keep making you feel less.
People who mock plus size individuals at the gym or people at the gym in general don’t understand the implications of what they are doing, and how traumatizing it is to be unwillingly filmed in a vulnerable place. As a plus size woman who always feared working out based solely on the fact of other people's judgments, I truly believe that people snapchatting others at the gym is damaging to our society because it builds a stigma against larger individuals working out. Those who mock others for trying to better themselves are the ones putting that fear in others.
Humans aren’t born with low self-esteem or the idea of being less; other people instill it in them.
