Pete McMartin hits the gym
Women aren’t the only ones cowed by muscle- bound gym rats.
Exercized at the gym: Human body beautiful, except when it’s not
“Some call it the ogling factor — a lot of women don’t want to work out in front of men.” — The Vancouver Sun, Friday, Jan. 10, on how many women prefer gendersegregated gyms.
Iwork out regularly — hard to believe, given my photo — and the gym in my municipal community centre is coed. Apparently, women pay taxes, too.
It has a few written rules. Sign up for the cardio machines. Wipe down machines after use. Put weights and equipment away when finished with them. That’s about it. It has an unwritten rule, too, and really only one. Do not act like an idiot.
Mostly, it’s observed. But then there’s the guy who continuously slams a 150- pound barbell down onto the gym floor as he does his clean- and- jerks, or the guy who, after monopolizing the bench press for a half- hour, leaves a slick film of sweat on it. What is this impulse to share their testosterone with the world? Women, mainly, confine themselves to the cardio portion of the gym. But a few do venture into the weight room. Here, they exhibit their innate gender superiority. They don’t try to lift more than they should. They use correct form. If they are unsure of how to do an exercise, they ask the gym instructors — almost all of which are women who possess a level of fitness I can only dream of — for advice. The women aren’t slaves to their hubris, as men are. They want to be healthy, not Hercules. But us men?
Oh my, the little dances we do in the gym. The sucked- in stomachs and feral strutting. The jockeying for space in front of the gym’s floor- to- ceiling mirror so as to feed our insatiable vanity. The subtle muscle- bound pecking order that establishes dibs on equipment. The surreptitious comparing out of the corner of one’s eye of another’s strength. Did he just arm- curl 50- pound dumbbells? Could I? And the deflating misery that comes with the admission that, no, I could not. Size matters in the gym, but not necessarily of the brain.
In my community centre gym, and I suspect in most community centre gyms, the clientele can be divided into a few specific demographics. We don’t get the Mr. Universes here, or the dating scene habitués hoping for a hook- up.
There’s the elderly trying to stay ambulatory and fit in their advanced years; the middle- agers fighting menopausal and manopausal spread ( that would be me); and the young, most of them male, who constitute the majority of the gym regulars, and who aren’t content just to be as thin as they will ever be in their lives, they also want to be buff.
It’s all chest and arms and abs with them, and often they come in groups of twos or threes, spotting each other on the bench press for an hour or more, gaggling about football or high school or whatever, and stealing glances of themselves in the mirror between sets.
I can’t be sure if this explains the lesser number of women coming into the weight room. Perhaps women are more intent on weight loss than muscle gain, and so look first to the treadmills and elliptical machines.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if some women stayed out of the weight room because males tend to monopolize the equipment, and women find that intimidating. Hell, find it intimidating. Are women ogled in the gym? Maybe “ogle” is too strong a word, at least in my gym. If you happen to be 19 and have the body of a goddess, chances are discrete glances will be stolen. But the cartoonish wolf- tongue- lolling- on- the- floor ogle? Rarely, at least that I’ve seen. Men can be reliably counted on to be idiots, but most of us know that baldly leering at a woman while she does bend- over stretches is a no- go.
Still, being seen is in the eye of the beholden, and if the beholden
Ibelieves she is being ogled, and being regarded with what one sociologist described in The Sun as the predatory “male gaze,” it can make for discomfort. As my wife maintains, men gaze differently than women do, especially when a body is clad in form- fitting Lycra.
Several women complained of that very thing this week when the Steve Nash Fitness World on Davie announced it was going coed and doing away with its women- only area. These women, who paid their membership dues on the understanding that area would be there for them, have my sympathy, and deserve full reimbursement of those dues so they might take their business to a gym that caters to them.
Nothing, however, will stop men, and women, too, from looking. Nor should they stop looking, at least in an appreciative sense. The human body is beautiful, except when it’s not, such as in my case.