“The media perpetuates this idea that we’re all toned, well-groomed and cosmopolitan, and then within gay communities there’s a real fetishisation of body types that match the ‘tribes’ – mainly twink, bear and jock,” Jake continued.
These early experiences with sport and fitness tend to stay with us, and many queer people end up either rejecting fitness altogether or throwing themselves at it so hard that the journey to what they see as the perfect body never really ends – an issue perpetuated by Instagram and Grindr culture. “As a result, I just disengaged with sport completely.” “I linked sports with masculinity, and masculinity made me feel vulnerable because I knew I didn’t really identify with it,” he explained. The outcome, as freelance writer Jake Hall sees it, is that we can end up giving up on sport entirely. While that is definitely not an experience unique to queer people, it shouldn’t be forgotten that young queer people are often bullied for their queerness before they have even processed it themselves, so combine that with having to make themselves physically vulnerable on a cold field, and it quickly becomes a recipe for deep rooted anxiety. One gay man I spoke to about this (who prefers to remain anonymous, let’s call him Harry), recalled he started “shying away from trying once overly-confident guys started dominating the class”. I can recall too many times being mocked for standing on the edge of the pitch trying to stay out of the way, but then mocked harder for deciding to give it a go, and being shit at it. It starts with cruel jokes in the changing room about looking at the other lads (and why was it never the fit ones who thought we wanted them?) and invariably ended with humiliation at not being good enough at whatever sport was the torture of the week. So I keep putting off going even though i’ve had the membership for about 6 weeks.”įor most of us, our first experience of fitness was PE class at school, which for those who didn’t fit in with the rugby boys or the tennis girls, was hell.
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“I get anxious over not knowing what a space is going to be like, how to find things, where to go, etc. “I joined this year and have just been really scared to go,” he told us. I asked knitwear designer Daniel James how he felt about signing up to a gym, and he echoed my own initial reluctance.
For queer people that journey can be even harder because there are extra layers of anxiety and fear around entering a space that is normally reserved for traditional masculinity. Joining the gym is something on a lot of people’s to-do lists, but as a beginner even after you’ve signed up it can still be difficult to go for that first workout. For a lot of gay men, the gym is either a place of extreme anxiety or passionate obsession.