I Don't Think You're Ready for These Gym Shorts

I recently had a conversation with a female friend who does not identify as feminist, in which she stated she had never felt oppressed or attacked by men in any way, and therefore didn’t understand that aspect of the feminist dialogue about patriarchy and sexism. While I'm aware that they exist and are happening, I don’t often personally come face to face with the realities of systemic patriarchal oppression[1], but when I do, it really is staggering.

Yesterday morning while trying to pump myself up to meet an academic deadline, I epically over-caffeinated. In an effort to get a bit of that twitchy energy out of my system, I went for a run. It was 12:25pm when I left the house and 89 degrees outside. 89 that feels like 92, according to the Weather Channel.

So I elected to work out in a sports bra and spandex shorts.

THE WORLD WAS NOT PREPARED FOR THIS.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly I was thinking. I was thinking, “Fuck, it’s hot as balls outside and I’m going for a run at the sunniest, sweatiest time of day so Oh look, here’s a sports bra that’s clean and some shorts I slept in last night that are therefore covered in cat hair and will have to be laundered anyway. I’ll wear these.”

I got my first inkling of the fact that this might be a bad idea about 25 yards from my house where a literal actual construction crew was taking a lunch break. I felt them ogling me as I walked through the crowd, not yet running as I was clicking through Spotify to find my exercise jamz. I thought, “Oops, I guess this outfit is kinda revealing. Oh well, soon I’ll be running and gross and sweaty and everyone will get that I’m just a person working out and leave me alone.”

Naïve-er thoughts were never thunken.

On my run I received so much male attention that it was distinctly uncomfortable. I mean that’s kind of an understatement: the whole thing was a non-stop ogle-fest. I was ogled by all different men (wide variety of races and ages), performing all different forms of exercise, for the entirety of my 40-minute excursion. Runners, pedestrians, bicyclists riding up the path across from me, bicyclists riding down the path behind me, even the odd roller-blader who didn’t get the message that the rest of us left our blades behind in the 90’s. All men. Eyeing me lewdly, lasciviously. Now, I am not talking surreptitious, appreciative glances, or well-meaning compliments. I am talking up-and-down, head-snapping, Tex-Avery-cartoon-style ogling. I mean literally one biker turned around after he passed me and watched me run, still biking, for a full 10 seconds with his eyes not on the road in front of him. There were also a fair amount of comments being made that, blissfully, I couldn’t hear because I’M RUNNING AND WEARING HEADPHONES SUPER OBVIOUSLY.

And look, I really don't want anyone to walk away from this post thinking what I'm actually saying was that I received this attention because of something special about me. It's true I'm lucky enough to have a body and a face and a skin-tone that mainstream American society has deemed attractive. I know this. I've received my share of male attention, both actively sought and unwanted, on numerous occasions in the past. But this was beyond the pale. It was actively weird. It was extreme. It was as if none of them had seen a woman in 20 years. You would think it would take more than a pair of gym shorts to turn men whom I assume are not all total dicks all of the time into slobbering assholes, but you would, in fact, be wrong. All this is especially unnerving in the face of the fact that I do participate in the high-femme culture of vintage makeup and hair that is the modern pinup world. As a straight woman who enjoys these kinds of activities, I know what it feels like to seek the male gaze. I know what it feels like to doll myself up with the intention of being desirable [2]. And what I experienced today was NOT that. I guess that’s part of what made the whole thing so unnerving. They were just gym shorts. I wasn’t doing or saying anything to be intentionally sexy. Far from it. And yet the response I received from a large number of total strangers was extreme.

Let’s fill the scene in with a few more details, shall we? I am not running through the city randomly, parading my exercise-wear through Times Square tourists or Madison Avenue shoppers. I am running on a designated exercise path in a city park next to the riverfront. The only other people on this path are other exercisers and the occasional pedestrian who has to cross the path to get to a tourist attraction on the water. And I am not a sexy exerciser.

I’m a skinny but curvy woman – a pear-shaped hourglass. Having this body shape is one of the many things that drew me to vintage and pinup style. I realize many men consider my body shape desirable, and perhaps particularly caveman-ly oafs who aren’t up on their feminist studies or self-aware enough to realize that making women feel uncomfortable in the street is no longer in fashion. But I am also what Eric Cartman would describe as a day-walker – a pasty-pale redhead with a natural tendency to turn a ripe-tomato shade of red any time I engage in aerobic exercise, a shade that will stay with me for at least three hours afterwards. I sweat profusely, have repeatedly been told that I have terrible form and have to fight constantly with my natural tendency to hunch over. Also I am allergic to something unidentified in the air that causes me to hawk huge, gluey gobs of mucous approximately every 500 feet in order to be able to take in enough oxygen to keep moving. I am NOT a sexy exerciser. Aside from my natural endowments (over which, I might point out, I have pretty much ZERO control) just existing, I am doing literally nothing to look appealing and am in fact doing several things that are quite gross.

Post run tomato-face. Sexy, huh?

I am also not wearing sexy clothes. I am wearing what is obviously a sportsbra. It is turquoise and racerback and very athletic looking. I am wearing plain black spandex exercise shorts that can be rolled up to a highwaist or down to a low-rise waist. At various points in the run I had them rolled up or down because it was HOT, YO! I am wearing no makeup, with my hair in a messy ponytail. I am wearing ugly, beat-up sneakers that I’ve had since 2009 and probably should have replaced four years ago but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I don’t look sexy. I don’t look glamorous. I look like a goddam human person trying to burn some calories on a hot summer day on her goddam lunchbreak.

But why does it matter what I was wearing, or what I look like, or how my body is shaped? Now that we as a society have called out the patriarchy for its victim-blaming and body-shaming, aren’t we past all that? As my feet thumped along the black asphalt river path, thudding over the painted icons of man-on-bike, man-on-blades, running-man that designate this space as an exercise path (sidebar: why are they all men, anyhow?), the angry, crooning voice of Courtney Love from 90’s era Hole pumped into my headphones: “Was she asking for i-it? Was she asking nice?” Oh, the irony!

We shouldn’t live in a world where I’m “asking for it” – asking for male attention – by going out to exercise IN MY EXERCISE CLOTHES. We shouldn’t, but unfortunately, we do. It certainly wasn’t my intention as I left the house this afternoon to excite men, turn them on, arouse them or incite their attentions in my splotchy, red-faced sweatiness. It wasn’t, but unfortunately, I did.

The twentieth or fiftieth guy I passed today on my run who eyed me appreciatively and nodded insinuatingly as he zipped past me on his bike, I stopped making eye contact. Stopped holding my head up high as I ran. Started looking down and to the side, timid, defeated, actually a little scared. Forget striving for good posture, I aimed to disappear. I realized how vulnerable I truly was, I powerfully experienced my own physical weakness in comparison to the ripped, sweaty men eyeballing me, noticed how few other runners were out in the midday sun, and developed a fear that a biker would grab or smack my ass as he zipped by me from behind. “How would I report him?” I agonized. “Bikes don’t have license plates.” I mentally rebooted, reminded myself I was doing nothing wrong, raised my eyes, set my sights dead ahead, and forced myself to meet the gaze of everyone who passed me by. And thankfully, I wasn’t assaulted by some lug on a Citibike. But the point is that I shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff while out trying to get some exercise, no matter what I happen to be wearing (or not wearing).

When women, feminists or otherwise, speak about the oppressiveness of patriarchy or sexism, this is what we mean. It’s not just demeaning to be treated like a sex object when you don’t want to or don’t mean to be. It’s stultifying. It makes you feel cowed, belittled, negated. It makes you feel like you are not worth the tiny piece of space you are trying to take up on this great, green globe of a planet that we all have no choice but to share. This kind of oppression is harmful because it curtails your liberties. It pressures you to behave a certain way in order to conform to a certain set of standards that you don’t necessarily agree with, or risk real actual backlash in the form of sexual harassment or even sexual violence. What makes this kind of oppression systemic is that the backlash won’t necessarily come from on high – it will come from just another member of the system – an average American guy who has been acculturated not to respect your autonomy or value your humanity. I think this is what many men don’t understand, or perhaps try to understand but can’t hear, when women describe the oppressiveness of living in our culture as a woman. Today I unintentionally risked that backlash in response to something that shouldn't even be an infraction: daring to display my body while exercising in 90 degree heat.

I won’t be wearing those particular gym shorts on my run any time soon. 

Today's workout outfit. I asked a stranger to take my photo because I was so incredulous about the whole experience. It's blurry because I stick my phone in my sportsbra while I'm running (so appealing, right?) and I didn't realize that the lens was covered in my dried sweat.

I never thought I'd find myself quoting Bootylicious in a blog post regarding feminism, but in the immortal words of Destiny's Child, “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly.” It's 2015, and the world is not ready for women in gym shorts. Men have still not learned to respect women enough as human beings for women to be able to go out in public wearing what they damn well please. Men have not learned a woman, no matter what her body shape might be, and no matter how she is clothed, is not ever asking for unsolicited feedback [3] regarding her appearance from strangers – in words or gestures – unless she walks up and says, “Hey, what do you think of my outfit?” (in which case it would be solicited feedback, but hey, let's not split hairs). And furthermore, that providing such unsolicited feedback perpetuates a system that, in the end, negatively effects us all. Until such time as the average American male wises up to this fact, women are faced with a dismal choice: change your behavior, or risk personal endangerment (at the worst) and pervasive worry regarding personal endangerment (at the best). Conform your preferences to those of the systemic patriarchy so that you don’t appear to be “asking for it,” or continue to “ask for it” and risk emotional or physical harm. Neither of those options is particularly appealing and both are actively oppressive.

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[1] I realize that that is in part due to the protection of several privileges I enjoy. As a white, upper-middle-class, straight, cis-gender woman, I am in many ways spared from the worst vicissitudes of the misogynist patriarchy.
[2] I've also gotten all done up for no reason other than what I'm wearing makes me happy, so please nobody jump down my throat about dressing for men vs. dressing for myself. I've done both and I'm fine with that. Sometimes dressing for myself involves wearing things that many men think are beautiful, attractive, or sexy. I don't think as clear cut an issue as some people make it out to be, and perhaps I'll write a future post about the topic as well. Oh, the joys of femme!
[3] And let's be clear about this: unsolicited feedback is not the same thing as a compliment. Plenty has been written on that subject already so I'm not going to delve into it here, except to say that if you actually can't tell the difference between being a leering creep and giving a kind-hearted compliment, I sincerely encourage you to undergo some kind of sensitivity training or take up a spiritual practice, such as Buddhism, that promotes cultivating respect for all members of humanity.