Am I the only one who thinks all-female gyms are a strange concept?

I used to be a member of such an establishment in Brighton. The clue was in the tagline: the club was for women, run by women. Yet, when it came to fixing an electrical fault (usually in the sauna) then a man had to be called in. His presence would be announced over the intercom, as if some eminent beast was about to be let loose on us all: ‘A man is entering the gym. Ladies, I repeat, a man is entering the gym’. Anyone would think such a warning would be swiftly followed by a mass exodus from the property, or at least from the locker room (which was in clear view of the sauna) but for the most part these ladies were happy to carry out their ablutions as usual.

I asked some of these women why they chose this particular gym. Like me, many joined simply because it had the best facilities, while others claimed it was because of location, although for a city that’s just four miles (or thereabouts) in length, I’m dubious about this reasoning. Most women admitted that it wasn’t so much a matter of privacy, but that they were concerned about embarrassment or intimidation.

I started thinking about pervading notions of intimidation within gym ‘culture’, and just how peculiar this ideology is, considering most men that bother to go to the gym (as opposed to exercising their drinking arm) are too busy checking themselves out in the mirror to notice a girl’s VPL. With the exception of LA, where the attitude towards the health and fitness industry is vastly different, the gym is not generally a meat market or a fashion parade, at least it shouldn’t be.

The exception to the rule – and there is always one – would be ‘WAG’ types and other affiliated groups of the spray-tan, manicured variety. For these ladies, the gym is a place of body worship, and this usually entails donning a velour tracksuit, exposing their bronzed midriff, and keeping their cycling/ walking levels down to a moderate spin/ pace to prevent their makeup from sliding down their faces.  

However, in spite of my aversion to dolly-birds apprehending the exercise equipment at peak times, I’m of the opinion that a little healthy competition wouldn’t go amiss in a gym that provides its members with ‘complimentary’ tabloid newspapers.  The aforementioned ‘WAG’ is one of two predominant groups that indulge in the lewd habit of tabloid-skimming during their exercise ‘routine’, the second being the casual gym-goer who thinks that merely making it to the gym counts (it doesn’t). For these ladies, light reading features high on their fitness programme, along with the toning tables and sauna.  

So why have an all-women gym?

Is it merely for reasons of privacy? Hmmm, I’m not convinced. Changing and washing facilities are segregated in unisex gyms, so this can’t be the reason. Also, in my experience of gyms, cases of full-frontal nudity are far more common in an all-female environment. I for one value (and respect) personal space, and can’t fathom why anyone would feel comfortable bending over naked in full (usually rear) view of a complete stranger. Perhaps I’m being markedly uncompromising, but when I joined the gym I didn’t realise I was signing up for indecent exposure.

Clever marketing tool or social construct, I’m unsure whether the purpose of ‘women only’ gyms is to represent a woman’s right to autonomy, or if conversely they serve to subjugate men, demarcating and defining women as outsiders.  Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I like to think that we (men and women) can work together to resolve our sexual disparities. Besides, no heterosexual girl should be denied a healthy appreciation of the male form, and let’s face it: men do look good in shorts.

By Amanda Carey/MOLI