This one is clearly NOT for the butch girls. Because I'm one.

[vass]

This One's For The Butch Girls (link is about exercise, with some references to body fat/shape but not weight, as is the rest of this post.)

"I’m not judging her. I’m empathizing with her."

Great! How about every other woman in the room? Are you judging them or empathising with them? The ones who were 'middle-aged, soft, and generally dour'? Gee, I wonder why they were dour, if they came in here to work on their back pain or core strength with a group of like-minded people, and Perky McJudgey bounces in all self-consciously tan and lean (tan makes her fitter?)

Because here's how I read this: she went slumming at a fitness class with the attitude of "I don't NEED this, I'm just looking for tips to pass on to my clients, the people who DO need instruction," and then she felt out of place because she was young, lean, tan, perky, and most of all BETTER THAN THEM.

This seems to have given her zero insight into what it might be like to stand out in a fitness class (or a gym, or a swimming pool, or the STREET if you want to exercise there) because you're fat, old, pasty, awkward, red-faced and panting, sweaty, or having difficulties with the exercises. Particularly the last one if that (not how fucking FIT you are) is what the instructor can't adapt the exercises to. (Let alone all the various intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc that could make a person unwelcome in a fitness class.)

She went to one single Pilates class with one instructor, and gave it up for life because of that experience. What do you think I would get from society at large if I told them that I had a bad experience at one exercise class so I gave up on exercise? And yet my bad experiences are not limited to one class, one instructor, or one type of exercise. They are more common than not when I exercise with other people. And this is a REALLY, REALLY COMMON reason given by people who don't exercise a lot.

I don't think the Pilates instructor was the only bad coach in that room. In fact, I would not go to the article's author for instruction if I was on fire and the class she was teaching was "bucket of water".

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I immediately pictured one particular woman from my Monday water aerobics class, who not only constantly shows off how much faster/better/more flexible she is (always takes the place right in front of the instructor and checks that people are watching her) but does a running commentary on her skills as she does it! It's a fucking water aerobics class in Colac! If that's what you have to win to make yourself feel good, that's kind of sad.

[vass]

May she one day show up to class and find herself surrounded by the entire Australian natinal water polo team.

[st_aurafina]

AAAAAAH! *clings to you in horror*

[dolores_crane]

I just... if you are writing for butch girls, and you end by saying 'There's a gym where you can wear pink and do your nails!'? I just... I don't think you really know what butch girls want. Just saying.

[dolores_crane]

I mean, not that butch girls can't do those things. But.

Spam is a complete protein

[vass]

Some context: the OP lifts heavy. There is this big cultural divide among fitness people between the ones who believe that women, if doing strength training at all, should just 'tone' by doing endless light weight high rep exercises so they don't get 'bulky' and look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the ones who think women and men should do the same lifts as men with the same weights relative to their own strength (i.e. medium to heavy weights, medium to low rep exercises.)

The latter group take great pains to point out that this won't make a woman look like Schwarzenegger because women have a different hormone profile to men and also because Schwarzenegger used steroids back in the day, but mainly because building that much muscle is REALLY REALLY HARD and not something that's going to happen to you accidentally or overnight.

This is all complicated by different people having different standards on what 'too bulky' is. Some people think Linda Hamilton in Terminator was 'too bulky'. Some people think Michelle Obama's upper arm development makes her look like a gorilla (revoltingly racist maintext intended.) (Here find a reference photo of the US first lady's arms, drooling, for the purpose of.)

There is a reason that female bodybuilders dress the same way beauty queens and drag queens do, only with less clothing. They sometimes even get breast implants while competing in the 'natural' bodybuilding category (because the implants aren't muscle and they didn't use drugs to grow them.)

It looks to me like she got so used to having to defend her femininity against all comers because she can do a 150lb squat or whatever that she forgot that butch is a gender identity as well as an insult. If she came face to face with an actual butch lesbian she'd probably reassure us it's okay if we're gay, we can still be feminine (which is true, of course: femmes and lesbians who don't identify on a butch/femme spectrum still exist and are indeed the majority.)

So when she said it was for the butch girls, she was confusedly trying to reclaim a slur that wasn't hers in the first place.

Re: Spam is a complete protein

[dolores_crane]

in haste: thanks for this! Now if I squint I can see what she was trying to do, at least. Though everything you say about it still holds.

Also THANK YOU for the handy reference photo of the First Lady's arms. It served its purpose well.

[laurajv]

WOW. just, WOW.

(at her, not at you. I am with you.)

(ps my recommended activity for butch girls is: rugby. but that is because I LOVE RUGBY and also because every women's rugby team I've ever met has at least 5 butch girls on it.)