The Global Sociology Blog

I take a lot of fitness classes. I work out quite a bit, cardio kickboxing, step aerobics, strength training, pilates, core strength. I have done them all. But of course, it is impossible to switch off the sociologist thing. And of course, in fitness classes like these, gender is the first thing one notices. Instructors are often women and so are the students in attendance. In roughly 25-student classes, you’re lucky if there are two or three men.

So, where are the men? At the college where I work, the student population is roughly equally divided between men and women. Why would mostly women take fitness classes? Because fitness classes are “girly”. How do we know? Because the instructors are women, for one. A woman instructor apparently automatically feminizes what she teaches. Also, it often happens, mostly in cardio kickboxing classes, that our instructor leaves the door open. It is pretty intense, so, a bit more air circulation is nice. Quite often, groups of young men – mostly athletes – will stop at the door and mimic the moves the class is doing, but with a “faggy” twist (if you’ll pardon me the expression), shaking their hips (we don’t do that in cardio kickboxing), dancing to the music (there’s no dancing in cardio kickboxing), punching in a “weak” and girlie fashion. These guys wil do that for a few seconds and then walk away. That’s all they need to demean our workout as not really working out. We’re just doing girl stuff.

Incidentally, one day, two guys from the football team were doing that for longer than usual (turned out one of them was the boyfriend of one of the young women in the class and they were waiting for them to be done, but they probably got bored waiting, so, on they went, mocking us). The instructor probably had enough and made them come into the room and do the routine with us. After a few minutes, they were dying, they could not keep up with the pace, their coordination was bad.

So, what about the few men who do show up. A few come and work out seriously and realize that it is the real deal. From my random observations (see? That’s why I put it in the title), we often get scrawny / geeky guys. Non-athletes. For them, it’s a relatively safe environment. No one makes fun of them for their lack of masculine traits (not big, not muscular), and they get to work out. However, they tend to stay in the back of the room unless they have women friends in the class.

Then, there are a few athletes who show up. And boy do these suffer. Especially in pilates and core strength which often made me wonder what kind of physical conditioning they get. One would think that core strength would be necessary in any sport. So why do athletic guys have such a hard time? For many men, pilates is unfamiliar territory: you take your shoes off, you spend a lot of time with your legs up in the air, you go through movements slowly and with control, with a lot of emphasis on posture, breathing and coordination (and boy, do guys lack coordination). Somehow, men suffer in that department. I blame bodily socialization.

What is interesting is how men react to lousy performance in fitness classes. For instance, in core strength class I am currently taking, there are a few athletes. It is less uncomfortable for men than pilates. It is more athletic and we keep our shoes on. The exercises are tough and mobilize one’s entire core in a sequence of challenging moves. Women go through it with more or less effort (it’s not easy for anyone)…silently. But men go through it with much huffin’ and puffin’ and loud moaning. Somehow, we all HAVE to know how hard it is and how much effort these guys put into it. And they don’t perform all that well. There are several middle-age women like me, these guys are half our age and we do better than them. And we’re much more quiet in our efforts.

Again, I think this goes back to gender socialization. It’s socially ok for men to be loud as they work out. It’s the masculine thing to do to display that you’re putting in the effort. Us women, we have been socialized into being quiet and not complaining. Actually, when it comes to athletes, there is a lot of performance going on. They show off whether it is to show their strength (when we work with weight, they always take the heaviest weights available) or to offset a poor performance by displays of effort (like moaning).

But it still remains amazing to me that work out classes even of a non-gender type, such as cardio kickboxing or various strength classes, are too gender-threatening for many men to take.