Anna, get your guns

I'm a gym-goer.  Rippling biceps, firm buttocks, rock hard abs.  I don't have them.  But I'm still a gym-goer. 

I found exercise later in life.  There was little to lead me there earlier.  I'd had a stunning inability for sport of any kind - and a PE teacher who'd let me play sport of any kind, so long as it was netball.  Because this was Southland back in the day.  You could be either a jock or a nerd.  I wasn't good at either.

But at some stage in my mid-thirties, it dawned on me that running for the train every other morning was making me fitter.  I kept running, albeit with the prowess of spaghetti.  Then, with a little more courage, I joined a gym.  I figured it would allow me to run indoors.

After going to the gym for a while, one particular day, I got curious about what was going on upstairs.  Maybe, until that time, I'd thought I was too cool to do burpees to an AC/DC remix.  I was wrong.  On that day, I realised I wasn't cool in any way, shape or form.  So I upgraded my gym membership.  From now on, I was joining the class.

That was about five years ago.  Since then, every week, I've pushed myself with weights, cardio, gormless attempts at yoga.  I started out as the worst hands down, lurking in the rear - but in time, I got better.  The instructors were unfailingly kind to me.  I may have started as a flaming unco, but under their tutelage, I blossomed into a moderate unco.

For me, this was a hell of a big deal.  My ineptitude at sports may have bothered me, but not so much as my body image.  I was one of those who could look in the mirror and never find a redeeming feature.  It's crap, I know - patriarchy ingrained so deep it let my poisoned mind hate my skin.  But it was, and to some extent still is, what I am.

Objectively, my body has changed a little.  What has changed more is my ability to respect it.  I floundered so long at the back of the class, until one day I didn't.  Now I do press ups, twenty at a time.  My back and my butt muscles brace me, keep my tenacious body in a straight line.  My sweat falls on the floor between my outstretched hands.

So why am I telling you this?

A couple of months ago, the classes at my local gym shut down, so the gym class studio could be remodelled.  Fair enough, I thought.  No pain, no gain, as more competent gym-goers say.  This week, with a bit of excitement, I made it back to class for the first time, in the remodelled studio.

It's hard to convey the dismay I felt.  The studio had been remodelled, alright - to a size that fits only a third of the people it did before.  The reduced studio has made room for a larger gym floor, with its machines and mats. 

At the most basic level, this is unjust, and deliberately so.  People who go to classes pay double the gym fees than those who only use the floor.  Their service has been expanded.  Ours has been contracted.  A bunch of us can no longer access the service we're paying a premium for.   

But this is way more than a consumer grievance.  The  majority of those on the gym floor are men.  The majority of gym class attendees are women.1  Gym class is a place of companionship: we see the same faces every week, and our camaraderie spurs us to do the best we can, whatever that means for each of us.  We embrace the bodies that others would judge.  We're safe.  We have fun.

When a decision makes no commercial sense, you've got to ask why else someone would make it.  Here's all I can come up with.  To some, the physical expression of people like me - inexpert, not ripped, and above all female - will never be more than laughable to some.  Buff young guys on the shop floor, who pay half the rate that I do, will always matter more.  They fit a mould my middle-aged hips insist on exceeding.  

Because this is about bodies, not spirits and minds.        

I can't fight this decision.  No matter how enraged we class attendees are - and trust me, we're enraged - the money is spent, the new walls cemented in place.  The stage, too small for the female instructors to safely do their jobs, is in place.  

But I can fight other stuff.  I can fight against this unspoken crap, incredible in this day and age, that still makes women invisible - our bodies and spirits and minds.

It's a fight I may not win, but don't write me off just yet.  After all, I can do twenty press ups.