100 lbs. on the bar. You go under, set your stance, and lift
off. You’re in the zone. While you do your squats (with expert form, mind you),
you feel eyes on you. After racking your weights, you walk around to hype
yourself up for your next set, and confirm your suspicion: you are being
watched. Men look between you and their friends, nodding heads and cracking
jokes with each other. Other women look at you with scorn, as you’re taking
“much needed attention” away from them.
You can ignore that, though. When you walk outside, you give
up your right to complete privacy. Who leaves the house and never looks around,
right? You do some looking around yourself. You notice a man, probably younger
than you, attempting to bench. He’s not under a press—hell, he’s not even using
the right bar. He’s rolling an elongated barbell from his hips, up his chest,
trying to push-off, lift the weight, then get back up—all on his own.
This is exactly what happened to me the other day. When I
noticed him, I was busy doing my leg press (with 135 lbs. on the machine). So,
I left him be.
When I left the gym, I told my boyfriend about what I saw.
He laughed and said, “Man, if a girl came up to me when I first started working
out and told me I was doing something wrong, I’d have just quit.”
This really baffled me. What’s the difference between a man
and a woman telling someone something in the gym? Honestly, I’d rather have a
nice woman come up to me and say, “Hey, let me help you with this,” versus your
typical meathead guy saying, “Hey, dumbass, you’re fuckin’ that up.”
(Note: I realize that this could be reversed. Women can be
just as mean and men can be just as nice.)
When I asked him to explain, he said, “It’s simple. Men go
to the gym for a confidence boost. They want to look good, and they want to
feel good about themselves. There’s nothing more emasculating than a woman
telling you how to workout.”
The reason I write isn’t to praise the “men-haters” or
condemn those who subjugate and objectify women. It’s not to prove my boyfriend
wrong or pick a fight. My reason for writing is much simpler.
Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., women have a dream. We
don’t want special treatment. We don’t want supremacy. We want phrases such as
“like a girl” to disappear. We want to be loved and accepted—as equals.
My goal is to help eradicate the male-dominant status quo. I
want to help those men in the gym realize how degrading they can make women
feel, but also how much he can mean to the woman (or man- no hate here) he
loves. I want to help women stop bickering with each other and putting each
other down, and instead encourage them to empower females everywhere. The goal
of this blog isn’t supremacy—rather, the goal is to shed light on topics that
people are otherwise misinformed on.
I hope your goals are similar. I hope you want to speak up
and take a stand with me. I hope you’re ready to start making waves in societal
groupthink.
I hope you’re ready to help make a change.
Photo Sources:
1. http://www.fitbie.com/sites/default/files/bell-squat-b-female.jpg
2.http://www.themuslimtimes.org/wp-content/themes/advanced-newspaper/timthumb.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.themuslimtimes.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F06%2Fgender-equality.jpg&q=90&w=479&zc=1
No comments:
Post a Comment