Once upon a time, I used to go to the gym regularly, run, do yoga, and win sporting events.
But then came my pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum struggles - not to mention the delicious topping of a global pandemic over it all. The last few years have taken an undeniable toll on both my physical and mental health. I have struggled to get back on the health horse ever since.
This is the story of one of my many failed attempts at mounting said horse:
Two years back, we moved to an apartment complex that had a gym. I was excited to join and start gymming regularly again.
I soon realized, however, that as a woman in the gym, I was a minority. The complex housed over 200 families - which meant about 400 women. Yet I was the only one in the gym on most days, as if there were a limit on the number of women allowed to enter at a time.
After about 10 days of regular gymming, I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
I also noticed that the men in the gym fell into two categories based on their reactions to my presence in the gym:
One variety of men would look right through me, quickly avert their eyes if I walked by, and generally try hard to pretend I did not exist. It made me feel like a trespasser in prohibited territory. I did not expect to be a part of the gang of backslapping protein guzzlers, but being treated as invisible was not the only alternative, was it?
The other kind of men were what I thought of as ‘normal men’. The guys who would give a nod or a courteous smile in case of eye contact, and then get back to their business. Only one or two guys fell into this category, but it felt nice for a fellow human to acknowledge my existence.
I did not know that it would be one of the ‘normal men’ who would become the reason I would stop gymming.
Interactions with him started as nothing creepy. He would give me a warm smile when I entered the gym. I would return it and get to my work.
But then, sometime after the first week, he walked up to me and said, ‘I noticed that you work on your upper and lower body, but I am concerned that you are neglecting your core.’ He suggested some exercises I should do to strengthen my abdominal muscles.
None of this was news to me, of course. I know the basics of working out. I just also know my body. My core was weak, which happens to everyone after a pregnancy. So it was a conscious decision to ‘neglect my core’ for now, and build up strength to work towards it in time.
More to the point, it was really weird to hear that he had been so closely observing what part of my body I was working on each day.
But I thought, maybe it came from a well-meaning place. So I accepted this comment with a smile and moved on.
A few days later, he came up to me again. ‘Uh oh’, I thought, ‘the Ab Audit is here.’
Even as I was mentally drafting what I would say about the abs thing, he said something that made me go literally speechless.
‘You know, I have been thinking. When was your last period? Are your periods regular?’
I mean, wow.
I am embarrassed to admit that I did not have enough wits about me to tell this man to stick his health advice where the Sun don’t shine. I became the proverbial deer in headlights while he was talking, and left the gym as soon as possible after he walked away.
After that, every time I thought of going to the gym, the idea of running into that ‘normal man’ deterred me. I even began crossing the road if I saw him walking towards me on an evening walk.
And that is the story of why I never went to the gym again.
I have many more such stories, and not all of them are about the Period Police.
There is the ‘Why I stopped going to the pool’ story.
There is the ‘Why I could not continue the yoga class’ story.
And then there are the 378 million stories of ‘I did not workout because there was no time or energy left after my caregiving and work responsibilities were done’.
More Helpful Uncles
Ameeta has recently started working with an online personal trainer. She does the workouts he recommends in her society’s gym.
“The gym is open from 6 to 10 in the morning. The gym caretaker comes in at around 6.30ish and his job is to take care of the machinery etc.
However, ever since I started working out, I have been getting a lot of unwanted attention from him. He randomly comes up to me and says things like, ‘Itne kam weight se karoge toh kuch nahi hoga (nothing will happen if you work with such small weights)’.
I never ask for his help but he approaches me in the middle of workouts and starts correcting my stance by touching my elbows/arms etc. His hand often lingers a few seconds too long and it makes me very uncomfortable.”
Giving a woman unsolicited advice seems to be the favorite timepass of many gym bros.
“Not just the caretaker, a few other men who are regulars at the gym have also taken it upon themselves to ‘guide’ me, even though I have never asked for any guidance. I already have a professional trainer who I am quite happy with. Men will walk up to me and tell me my stance is incorrect, or tell me not to do such-and-such exercise for some weird reason.
All this, despite the fact that I actively avoid eye contact with other gym users and have earphones plugged in at all times. Nothing deters men at the gym from dumping their wisdom on an unwilling woman.”
These interruptions and offers for ‘help’ have become so uncomfortable for Ameeta that she has started scheduling her gym timings around it.
“I make it a point to go to the gym at 6 in the morning, as soon as the gym opens. It is a very inconvenient time for me, as it means I have to wake up way too early to make it. If I oversleep even by just 30mins, I skip the workout since I hate the thought of working out in the presence of the caretaker and the other men at the gym.”
Blame ‘certain yoga poses’, not the men
Heena likes to workout in the outdoors.
“I love to meditate/exercise on a yoga mat with the wind blowing on my face. But my mom keeps asking me to do it indoors. She says that ‘certain yoga poses’ might attract unwanted attention from men. She also points it out every time my top rises even a centimeter and shows even a little skin while jumping or doing stretches.”
The commentary has affected how comfortable Heena feels in her own body and where her focus lies while working out.
“It is absurd that while my body might need and be ready for strenuous exercise, I have to do it ‘gently’ for these nonsensical reasons. These continuous remarks and comments have made me really conscious about how I might look to men walking by, and I have started avoiding working out in the open air, despite loving it so much. No man ever has to factor in such considerations while choosing the type, time, and form of his workout.”
The (evil) mother who works out
It is not just creepy men who discourage women from working out. Most women have lost the battle even before they step out of their homes.
Revathy is a single woman who lives with her parents and loves her morning walk.
“My mother often remarks that I should be prepared to give up these walks, and choose more homebound chores once I am maried. She says that married women’s workout is cooking for the family and getting the kids ready in the mornings.
My brother - who is also single and lives in the same house - gets no such reminders for having to give up his exercise after he is married.
The implication is clear - exercise is not a necessity, but a luxury for women.”
It is not even a question of the opportunity cost of time - what you do with the time is the primary objection society seems to have.
“If you watch TV for an hour, no one bats an eyelid. But if you are working out, you are seen as a selfish woman.
I see this assumption playing out all the time in an online yoga class I joined. There are a number of mothers in the class, and they are always missing classes or requesting a reschedule in the class around their kids’ school activities. Their children are also often seen hanging around the moms during the class, disturbing their workout continuously.
Why sit anywhere else in the house when I am perfectly comfortable here?
Sometimes it is clear that there are other adults in the house, but no one offers to handle the kid for an hour so the mother can workout in peace, because the mother who works out is already seen as enjoying a privilege.”
But first, hanky duties
Avantika shares the difference between her mother's and father’s proclivities to workout.
“My father is ex-armyman, and currently in the police. He was never a fan of the army discipline so he doesn’t want to get up early and exercise anymore. My mother, on the other hand, is extremely active. She is a marathon runner and has completed several 10k and 15k runs.”
Unfortunately, their availabilities do not match their proclivities.
“Whenever my mother has to step out for her morning run, she has to first ensure that the food is prepared, my dad’s alarms are on, the dustbin is kept outside for the garbage collector, lunch prep is complete, and many other microchores like this that we probably don’t even know she does.
If any of these tasks are delayed for any reason - within or beyond her control - she has to miss her morning run that day.”
Avantika’s father’s work schedule also seems to dictate whether her mother will go on a run on a particular day or not.
“My dad’s duty is in shifts. On most days, he has a 9 am shift, and my mother goes on her run on those days. But if he has a 5 or 6 am shift, he needs her around to wake him up, make his chai, feed him breakfast, pack his lunch, etc.
I am ashamed to admit this, but he even needs her to hand him his uniform, his keys, his wallet, and his handkerchief in his hand before he leaves. So she misses her run each day my dad is working an early shift.”
“This is the only pull-up you’ll do today, darling.”
“What if Pandit ji sees you in shorts?”
Akriti is a certified nutritionist, who also happens to be a newlywed.
“I have always focused and worked very hard on my health. I did not see any reason to discontinue it after my wedding. But everyone seems to have an opinion on this choice of mine.”
The opinions range from her attire, to her food, to her choice of workout.
“I work out six days a week - either at the gym or on a run. Like most runners, I find it easiest to run in my running shorts. But my husband told me that his parents would not be comfortable seeing me in shorts. ‘What if the Pandit ji sees you?’ are the kinds of questions coming my way to deter me from the shorts.
My husband is also not comfortable with the crowd at my gym. He says he would have been okay if we lived in a big city, but we don’t so that means it is not appropriate for me to be seen in shorts at the gym.
As a nutritionist, I also like to eat clean. But maintaining a healthy diet has also been a challenge since my wedding. My in-laws are constantly commenting on the food on my plate. Sometimes it is a direct criticism, where I am told that it is disrespectful to eat different food from what has been cooked in the house. Men in the family do this all the time, by the way - getting special dishes made to suit their tastes. But me making a salad makes all hell break loose.
At other times, it is a criticism wrapped in a compliment, ‘You are so thin. Why do you need to diet and exercise so much?’ It is impossible to explain to them that giving importance to my health has nothing to do with my size.
I also go to a gym. I am still wearing a chooda (bangles worn by newly wedded women in some Indian communities) so even other gymgoers will see that and comment, ‘Oh, you are a newly wed? What is the rush to start working out already? Take the first few years off to enjoy life!’
Of course, you will never see a newly wedded man getting such comments at the gym.”
“Focus on the child first”
Swagata is a member of a running group in Mumbai.
“It is very hard to find a group with women runners. I am one of only three active women in my running group of around 50! Sometimes I speak to the women who hardly show up for runs. Each and every one of them talks about kids, work, chores like cooking etc. as holding them back.
Many of these women have husbands who come running every single morning.”
Recently, someone shared an article on Swagata’s WhatsApp group. It was about a mother who ran a marathon with her toddler in a stroller.
“The article was all-praise for the mom for persevering with her passion and finding a way to do it despite her child-rearing responsibilities. In the article, the mom talks about how she carefully trained with her toddler in the stroller, to get her accustomed to it.
After a point, the child even started asking, ‘Mumma, when is our next run?’
It was an inspiring story, and a bunch of us reacted positively.”
One man on the group, however, had a different take on the story.
“He commented: ‘All this is great. But I am just wondering - is it fair for a mother to assume that her toddler is okay with running a marathon in a stroller? Wouldn’t it be more responsible if the mother just focused on bringing up the child first, and then focused on this marathon goal afterwards?’
No one questioned what this woman’s partner was doing, when she was forced to run with the stroller. No questions were raised on the group about the responsibility of the dad in this picture. The default take was, ‘Yes, of course, her fitness goals have to come second to her motherhood duties!’
There are a few moms who run on that group. After this discussion, they DMed me saying they were feeling a lot of doubt and guilt now, wondering if they were selfish to be running.”
An organizational feat
When Shravanti was in the seventh grade, she was selected for her school basketball team.
“I was very proud of it, especially because I was very short, but I could do three-pointers and all of that. But then my dad was transferred, and we had to switch to a new new school where girls did not have a basketball team. In fact, in that school, only the boys played sports, and the girls basically stood in a corner eating their lunch and watching the game. So that was my first exposure to the gender divide, and the proverbial end of my basketball career.”
As an adult, Shravanti tried various forms of exercise.
“I started as an outdoors runner. You can imagine how well that went in India. One day, a man started running behind me, changing course as I did, all through Delhi’s central park. So that was the end of that.”
A few years later, Shravanti moved to the UK, where she became a regular runner and ran several half-marathons.
“I got used to running on the streets there, and it was the best thing I have ever done for my body and my mind.
Whenever I was back in India, I would try to keep up that habit. Everyone told me that a woman should not be running on the streets. But I managed, somehow, with multiple safeguards in place:
I would run in a part of the city that felt relatively open and safe.
I would run in broad daylight.
I would never run in the same place two days in a row.
I would mix up my route everyday.
I was constantly vigilant of men around me, especially men walking or running behind me.
I would carry my keys between my fingers the whole time, ready to scratch somebody's eyeballs out if attacked.
I am sure my fellow male runners can relate to none of these feelings on their run. What a privilege it must be to run, with nothing else on your mind but the run itself.”
Fast forward another few years, Shravanti became a mother. She shares how this affected her level of physical activity.
“First come the biological challenges. As a biological mother, your body has been ripped apart, and you barely recognize yourself as a person anymore. Recovery means complete physical, mental, and emotional deconstruction and reconstruction. It does not help that this recovery has to take place in parallel while you are dealing with the challenges of breastfeeding and constant sleeplessness.
The second challenges are cultural. Caregiving is considered to be primarily the mother’s job in India. Only mothers get parental leave. This means that the mother is homebound for at least the first six months, while the dad comes and goes as he pleases. How can a woman be expected to focus on her own body’s recovery on top of all this? Those who do it, hats off, but it is completely understandable that most women are not able to.”
The third challenge Shravanti enumerates is structural - the complete absence of options in India for mothers to step out of the house with a baby.
“In the UK, for example, I was out with my baby every day of the week:
Mondays, I would do Rhyme Time with her at the public library.
Tuesdays, I was doing mumma-baby yoga.
Wednesdays, we were going baby swimming since she was 3 months old.
Thursdays, I would do mumma-baby strength conditioning.
Fridays, I was doing mumma-baby pilates.
I briefly visited India in the first year of my child’s life and I was horrified to see that the mumma-baby activities only began for mothers with two-year-olds and older kids. And this was in Delhi NCR, so one can imagine how things are in the rest of the country.
The complete absence of these options in our cities is sending a clear message to women that their role is to stay invisible and confined to the domestic space.”
When I sent out a call for stories for this piece, Shravanti responded immediately because she had just celebrated a major milestone in her journey of prioritizing her physical health.
“I am a doctor. So between my work and caregiving for a toddler, I have struggled to find time to workout. I have been feeling constantly fatigued ever since I returned to work a few years back. This, despite the fact that I was active after childbirth, and used to be a marathon runner before that!
When I saw your call for stories, I got so excited because I was coming back from my first gym class since returning to work! Today, I felt my body’s need for movement being met for the first time in many, many, many months.
But it also made me reflect on everything that had to be orchestrated for me to do this seemingly simple act of going to a gym. First, it took a lot of advocating for myself - which meant constantly and repeatedly telling my partner how upset it was making me to not workout. Next, it has taken a herculean level of organisational abilities, including a lot of support from my partner. Both of us actually had to block time in our calendars for my workout today.
I am hoping to stick to it but this level of planning does consume a lot of mental energy. It is unfortunate that mums need to do this - but we have to demand time and space for our physical and mental health, otherwise no one will give it to us.”
“Put it in your calendar”
I also spoke to Jane, a personal trainer, to see if she finds the above patterns familiar.
“Yes, women tend to spend more time taking care of everyone at home. But they often neglect their own health and fitness. We always tell our students - ‘If you have an office meeting, you will make sure you put it in your calendar. Similarly, fitness should be made a part of your routine. Put it in your calendar and just block time for it.’”
Jane also spoke about the guilt women feel in giving time to their bodies and minds.
“Women often feel a lot of guilt in taking time off for their training. I had a student who started training with us three days a week. She loved her workout. But her mother-in-law would cook on the three days she was exercising. She felt so much guilt over this that she stopped training within three months.
We see this happen all the time with women.”
When I put out a call for stories for this piece, at least half the stories I got were about sexual harassment.
Three women independently told me about men who followed them on their run, and each one stopped running after that day. One told me about her gym trainer touching her inappropriately on the pretext of helping with a stretch. Another spoke about the time her badminton coach touched her breasts when she was just a teenager.
Of course, these stories tell us how unsafe public spaces and predatory men are filtering women out of the ‘workout force’.
That said, most women are not even able to cross the filter that is the threshold of their own homes.
They simply have no time to exercise because of their caregiving responsibilities towards children, the elderly, or - my personal favourite - manchildren.
Those who do find the time and energy are asked a million questions about it - what workout they will choose, at what time, at what place, with whom, what they will wear, and so on.
These questions kill the spirit of another significant proportion of women.
There is strength in numbers - if more women were able to get out of the house and work out, it would make public spaces safer for women by corollary.
Policymakers, city planners, gym owners - would not be able to neglect women in their plans and policies, nor would predators find it so easy to target the singular woman they see in an essentially male space.
Women, stop seeing focusing on your physical health as a luxury.
Stop feeling guilty for prioritizing it. You cannot care for anyone if you do not care for yourself first. As Shravanti says, demand the time and space for your health. If you do not make it a priority, no one else will.
More importantly, people around women:
Understand that for most women, exercise feels like a lose-lose battle where they are constantly choosing between the guilt of not working out, and the guilt of ignoring their child or family for an hour to do so.
Just saying ‘don’t feel guilty’ has never worked, and will never work unless it is backed by action. Take over her role for at least an hour every day to give her time to work on herself for once. Cook a dinner. Get a child ready for school in the morning. Make a chai, pack a dabba.
Block time in the family calendar for her workout. Hold her as responsible for it as she feels for the million things she does for you.
Women have been handing men their handkerchiefs for generations now. It is time men handed women their running shoes.
Mahima
PS: The big Womaning announcement I promised last week, is coming soon. I promise.
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Once upon a time, I enjoyed lifting. But that ended when I noticed how creepy my PT was being. He'd stand too close, flirt, make inappropriate comments. I find it difficult to go to the gym because of creepy men. I've been followed around by a male gym-goer who wanted to know my schedule. But it's also hard to go to the gym when I hear from my family about how dangerous gyms are and how I would fare better if I did yoga at home. And also as woman, they tell me, I shouldn't look like a pehelwan. So much guilt and fear to just workout? Last year, a bunch of teenage boys followed me when I went out for an afternoon stroll in the park outside my house. Now I just pace in my room like a ghost. I liked reading this post, it's so affirming. Maybe if there were women-only gyms with women trainers and staff.
What a great line: Women have been handing men their handkerchiefs for generations now. It is time men handed women their running shoes.
Once upon a time, I enjoyed lifting. But that ended when I noticed how creepy my PT was being. He'd stand too close, flirt, make inappropriate comments. I find it difficult to go to the gym because of creepy men. I've been followed around by a male gym-goer who wanted to know my schedule. But it's also hard to go to the gym when I hear from my family about how dangerous gyms are and how I would fare better if I did yoga at home. And also as woman, they tell me, I shouldn't look like a pehelwan. So much guilt and fear to just workout? Last year, a bunch of teenage boys followed me when I went out for an afternoon stroll in the park outside my house. Now I just pace in my room like a ghost. I liked reading this post, it's so affirming. Maybe if there were women-only gyms with women trainers and staff.