Bench Oppressed

I can barely leave the house in Spandex anymore.
By Zach Hively
​Image Courtesy of Zach Hively

I guarantee that I am way ahead of everyone else’s New Year’s resolutions. Check that box, notch that belt, color me successful—we’re just skidding into January, and I have already outgrown my naïve resolution to exercise at the gym.

I should mention that I already owned the killerest biceps of the entire English Department Class of 2007 at my alma mater, so far as I could tell through the graduation gowns. And unlike my peers who went on to earn doctorates and professorships, I let neither my body nor my mind slip.

With that advantageous head start, I have set lofty new goals to buff up even more muscles. For instance, I estimate that I can reach five full sit-ups by the end of democracy as we know it.

Just look at that grip strength.

Yet my primary motivation in going to the gym was never about “trimming down” or “gettin’ swol.” I went to enjoy the dedicated me-time. I yearned to escape the hustle and bustle of hiking trails and fresh air by popping in some ear buds and looking really athletic for fifteen minutes.
But--
and you dudes out there will understand precisely what I’m talking about--
it’s impossible to go to the gym without being ogled all the time. The feeling of eyeballs scouring your physique grows even harsher when you walk out of the locker room wearing Spandex shorts.

The discomfort starts the moment I enter the building.

The counter attendant—a different counter attendant both times, I’ll have you know—stalks me all the way to the check-in computer. She lingers there with my temporary membership card. Then, offhandedly, as casually as she might suggest closing an umbrella indoors, she asks me if I’d like a towel.

Oh ho! I would get smacked for so much as mentioning a piece of terrycloth drying sweat from her unmentionables, if I’d ever had the thought, which I certainly didn’t. But as a man at the gym, this kind of abuse is simply to be endured.

The blatant leering worsens in the actual fitness area. A woman who thinks she’s God’s gift to men always lingers behind me. She justifies her hovering examination of my posterior by asking if the drinking fountain will be available soon, even though I’m clearly flushing all the germs out of the mouthpiece before I drink.

Ms. God’s-Gift could use a little less time on the lat pulldown and a little more time on sensitivity training, if you ask me. Instead, I’m supposed to accept her undesired advances as a compliment.

It never stops.
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Women inquiring if the spin bike is free, or if I am just warming up the saddle. Women grazing me on the indoor track as I dash onto it. Women wiping up my sweat when I’m finished with the leg press. And just when I think I’m home free, the counter attendant begs me lasciviously to come back again soon.

Really, the only escape from this onslaught of sexual oppression is the locker room. We men stand united in our sanctuary. Here, we can talk to total strangers about what we lift, yes, but also about our deepest worries: what’s happening at home, whether our kids will be okay through the divorce, how good those counter attendants must be in the sack.

Rather, I should say that Other Men have these conversations in the locker room.
I mostly try to keep my gaze averted, because Other Men feel it’s perfectly acceptable to commune with each other in complete nakedness, without so much as a flip flop.
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It is standard, documented etiquette that any two given men may not so much as whisper about sports and cars while standing shoulder to shoulder at the urinals. Yet somehow a handshake with full-frontal nudity is a-okay? There’s a Nobel prize for the crack scientist who riddles out that phenomenon.

As for my own incidental observations, I’ve now paired every single concern I have about aging with visual confirmation. I also know precisely how I size up to your average sixty-something gym member in the, well, “gym member” department. But that’s not what bugs me most. What really bugs me is that a bunch of athletes are walking around in their bare feet. What do you get when you mix athletes and sweaty feet?

Sopping wet floors, that’s what! Also, this behavior can spread some form of toe fungus, but I can’t remember its common name right now so I’ll skip that point and go right back to aggressive attention from brazen women.

You may think I should feel flattered. But there’s more to me than skin and muscles. I’ve moved on from the gym because I want to be respected—nay, revered!—for my more deeply-rooted qualities. For instance, I still have some hair. It’s up here, if you can pry your imagination off my Lycra.