Two weeks ago, I showed up for gym and my card wouldn’t swipe me in. After we moved into our new home, I didn’t change the address, so I suppose they were unable to send me my yearly gym renewal. The time passed so quickly, I hadn’t realized that I had been working out for just about a year.
Many people were alarmed when I told them I was starting gym as we tend to not associate working out and exercising with slim people. Slim is the overall nod to society’s perception of healthy. Constant active movement is more of a necessity for me, so as to keep my mood regulated, and, by extension, to train my body as I prepare to gradually wean myself off anti-depressants under the supervision of my doctor as long as I continue to be healthy.
For me, going to the gym and working out is easy. I work from home most days. I live in the centre of the city and the gym is a 5-minute walk from my apartment building. It is open 24 hours and provides free water.
In addition to this I don’t drive and for now I have no intention of driving. Some days I can cycle for up to 25 kilometres. Living healthily comes fairly easy because of my current circumstances: infrastructure, work/life balance. I don’t think I would be able to pull this off if one of these were to subtract itself from the equation.
This week, when I saw the Nike model installation for gym wear on a plus-size model, I thought it was superb. Finally, brands are starting to represent the reality of people and times. It was the opposite to what Telegraph journalist Tanya Gold had to say: “The new mannequin is obese, and she is not readying herself for a run in her shiny Nike gear. She cannot run. She is, more likely, pre-diabetic and on her way to a hip replacement. What terrible cynicism is this on the part of #Nike?”
It was the most vile and disgusting thing I had read in a long time. On one hand, she was shaming people who are heavy and on the other, she was scrutinizing a brand for actually welcoming people with all body types to fitness. How do people work out if they don’t have the right gear? It sounded like internalized fat phobia, which many people, me included, have been exposed to either consciously or unconsciously.
For example, while growing up, a weight remark was used to greet people in my family: ‘Eh Eh girl you put on! Weh you goin with all dat size! Keep yuh self good before yuh husband lef yuh!’
So, we learnt to internalize that being anything but slender looking was not so good, to put it nicely.
The Nike ad is the truest representation of what we need: to be more inclusive and to elevate the way we look at weight and health. Work/life balance to support extracurricular activities like training, the rising cost of healthy organic foods and safe infrastructure to support biking is what we should be critical of, not Nike’s effort to be inclusive.
