@chris ryan I grew up the oldest child of two (I"m 14 months older than my brother) in a family that was obsessed with ensuring absolutely everything was 100% equal (usually meaning the same) for both children. I was never allowed to do anything my brother was not allowed to do--even when the reason he was not allowed to do a thing was because he was too young, and he'd be allowed to do it the next year. My parents held me back from both swimming lessons and skating lessons until my brother was old enough to be enrolled in them with me. They refused to allow me to play on the pirate ship in our local shopping mall because that was an age-restricted experience (basically an adventure playground/daycare for 3 and 4 year olds while their parents shopped) and my brother was too young. I wasn't even allowed to play with my friends if they didn't want my little brother hanging around (which they often didn't because he was younger and clumsy and had a tendency to break their toys). This was the story of my life until the summer I was 5 years old and my brother 4, and my parents enrolled my brother in our town's youth soccer league and not me. I asked to be enrolled in the league too, and my father said, "No. Soccer is a boys' game."
As you might imagine, I was outraged. I begged, I pleaded, I cried, I threw a temper tantrum, all to no avail. My father refused to relent. He then proceeded to drag me out to all of my brother's soccer games that summer, where I was forced to sit on the sidelines and watch as my brother played. When my brother's team played the girls' team (girls and boys played in the same league at that age, but for some reason that apparently made sense to youth soccer league organizers in 1976, not on the same team) my father even tried to make an example of the girls to me, saying, "Look how unladylike they look: all puffy and red in the face." This did nothing to assuage my feelings of having been treated unjustly. The girls looked to me like they were having fun. I was definitely not having fun. And my brother, who was asthmatic and not a good runner, was puffier and redder in the face than any of the girls. (I, on the other hand, was a much better runner than my brother--to the extent that I could not convince him to play tag with me unless I agreed to handicap myself by using only one leg!)
This went on for eight years. Eight years. After the eighth time that my begging, pleading, and crying failed to convince my father to allow me to play soccer, I called him a "male chauvinist pig." This was not even remotely acceptable behaviour in my family, and I was punished for it. But the next year, inexplicably, when my father signed my brother up for the town youth soccer league and I once again asked if I could play too, my father signed me up as well. No explanation was ever given for why he changed his mind, and he never supported my soccer career in any other way. He never drove me to a single practice or showed up to watch any of my games. But he let me play.
After that experience, walking into a fitness space now, as an adult, where the other people present just don't look like me is nothing. When I had a gym membership, if I wanted to workout in the free weights room, I did. I don't think I even really noticed I was the only female person in there until other women started noticing I used that portion of the gym and commented on how "brave" I was to do so. I didn't think I was brave. I was just a person doing a workout, and access to the free weights was part of the membership I had paid for. Why wouldn't I use them?
But I've learned from speaking with and listening to other people that plenty of people do not experience fitness spaces in the same way that I do. Multiple women have expressed to me an interest in trying free weights but an unwillingness to do so because they felt the free weight room was a male space. When I played ultimate frisbee in a co-ed league a number of women I knew expressed surprise and suggested to me, "Why don't you play baseball? There's an all-women's baseball league." I found this suggestion bizarre. But when I replied, "Because I love ultimate frisbee, but I find baseball boring," these women found my response equally bizarre.
When I worked in HR my employer had a policy (instituted at my suggestion) that the company would pay for a basic gym membership for any employee who signed a contract agreeing to use the membership at least twice a week. I was already making use of this policy, and recommended the club I had chosen to my colleagues. One of them tried out the gym I had chosen on a guest pass and reported back to me that she couldn't possibly work out there because the gym was "full of too many pretty people." I was confused by this assertion because the people at my gym didn't look any different to me from the people at the gym she eventually chose for herself. But later a friend of mine also accepted a guest pass to my gym but reported back to me that she did not like it for a similar reason to my colleague, but which my friend articulated more clearly: The gym I used was a fitness club that also offered a swimming pool, hot tubs, tanning beds, group exercise classes, a juice bar, personal training, and a weight loss program. The weight loss program was promoted fairly heavily via advertising posters in the women's locker room. Posters which I barely even registered. I wasn't interested in weight loss. So I didn't look at the advertising that promoted that service. But my friend--who was very athletic and physically strong but not skinny--was so put off by all the posters of skinny women promoting weight loss, she did not want to visit that gym. (Even to attend the fitness class which I taught, which she claimed to enjoy!) I honestly had not even noticed until my friend pointed it out to me just how many of these posters there were in the women's locker room. (I think there was one on the inside of every toilet stall door. I taught at that club and used the toilets there every day, and hadn't really registered this fact.)
When I worked as a group exercise instructor it was pretty common for club members to talk to me about which spaces within the gym they felt comfortable in and which they did not, and likewise regarding which instructors' classes. Certainly lots of people have their favourite teachers--I did too. I'm quite particular about the teaching styles I prefer for yoga-based fitness classes (which is what I taught and what I primarily participate in). But there was a significant percentage of members who obviously felt more comfortable in one instructor's class over another's based on the instructor's body type. In one instance, a male participant in one of my classes informed me of his opinion that I was a "mean" instructor. I was a bit stumped by this as I thought I taught a pretty well-rounded class. Certainly I encouraged my participants to push themselves hard during the portions of the class that were meant to be hard work, but I equally encouraged them to relax during the parts that were meant to be relaxing. (Also, this person had been attending my class every week for over a year. He couldn't have thought I was that "mean"!) I asked this person to clarify what he meant, and he went on to say that the other female instructor who taught the same class as me in that gym was also "mean" but that the male instructor who taught the same class was "nice". This stumped me even further, because I thought the male instructor's teaching style was quite similar to my own whereas the female instructor was of the belief that all yoga was meant to be gentle and consequently taught the entire class encouraging people to be gentle with their bodies and not push themselves too hard. It took me a few more questions, but I eventually managed to drill down to what this participant meant: The other female instructor and I were both more flexible than he was. So when we demonstrated the poses, we made shapes with our bodies which looked dissimilar to the shapes this participant was able to make with his own body. The male instructor, however, was not any more flexible than the particpant was. It didn't really matter to this participant what any of us were saying--the male instructor was less "mean" to him because the male instructor was the one who looked like him.
Through all of these experiences I have learned to listen to what other people tell me and not to discount someone else's experience of a fitness space, just because it is different from my own. A lot of people experience barriers to participating in fitness activities and spaces which I don't experience--whether due to my privilege or just bullheadedness. This doesn't make their experiences any less real or valid.
So I listen. Which doesn't always mean I can do anything to help. Which can be frustrating. A complaint I hear often about yoga in North America is that it's a realm dominated by skinny white women. And I'm a thinner-than-average white woman who teaches yoga. So I should do what about this complaint? Stop teaching yoga? I know some people who have made this choice. They're all people who enjoy more financial privilege than I do though. Sometimes there aren't any easy answers. But we can all listen. We can all ask ourselves, "What can I do to help make fitness more inclusive?"--and then not discount our answers, even if they seem like small things. I cannot not look like me. And I don't think that removing myself from the yoga world--or any realm in which people who look like me are over-represented--is a great solution, even if I could afford to do it. But I can
signal boost people who have greater power to promote diversity than I do. That's a small thing, but it's not nothing.
That's all I've got for now. But I think this is a worthwhile conversation to be having. Thank you for bringing it up.