Pride & Performance

by Manhattan Ethington

After years of dragging my feet and insisting I would never, ever, go to a gym to lift weights, I inexplicably said yes when my fiancé asked me to work out with him on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As someone who strongly dislikes trying new things (I hesitate to use the word “hate,” although it comes close to applying here), I immediately regretted it. But it was too late. How could I refuse him now, while he was beaming and pulling me by the hand, listing off all the reasons I should be excited and not worried. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t betray my uneasiness, so I simply fell silent until we reached the gym door. I walked in and was immediately overwhelmed by the clang of metal weights, the tang of sweat in the air, and the busy combination of patterned leggings and name-brand shirts.

My three-year-old leggings and oldest T-shirt, an oversized boxy piece of clothing with a decal for my graduating class, suddenly felt shameful and embarrassing. My gray tennis shoes with dirt stains on the edges from hiking squeaked on the rubber floor, and I was grateful I had chosen my most neutral-colored Harry Potter socks. The total cost of my workout outfit? Maybe $80 initially, but the value had definitely depreciated to about $30 since buying my clothes. I looked around and started clocking everyone else’s outfits. $98 Lululemon leggings. $69 Gymshark T-shirt. $130 matching Nike workout set. $135 Air Jordans. And then there were the accessories. The stickered Hydro Flasks, the blender bottles filled to the brim with protein powder and creatine, the expensive Beats, the Apple watches tracking everyone’s heart rate and blood pressure and step count and total volume lifted. While I knew not everyone in the gym was a fitness junkie, it seemed like those with the best clothes and fanciest accessories stood out, overshadowing everyone else. I pushed my scratched glasses up my nose, my skin sweaty before even touching a weight.

Thank goodness for my fiancé, or I would’ve run right out of there. He loaded some bars with plates, explaining all the while what I was going to be doing, what muscles I would be working out, and what my form should look like. As he talked, I began thinking: Why am I here? Well, because I got to spend time with my fiancé, and I knew he would love it if we worked out together. And I was here because I’d been told exercising has health benefits. Which it does, right?

I looked around and saw all these conventionally beautiful people lifting weights, squatting with bars across their shoulders, using machines to sculpt their back and arms and chest and butt and muscles I couldn’t even pronounce, and doubt they could either. Forming themselves into some reincarnation of Ares or Aphrodite. But surely that’s not why they were there? Looking good must have just been a bonus. Because in the flood of New Year’s advice I’d seen on January 1st, going to the gym was all about improving your heart health, sleep, metabolism, and energy levels. Working out was a moral decision, a New Year’s resolution that would make you a better, happier person. It was about changing your life.

I left feeling like my life had changed, but not in all of the great ways I’d been promised. I was exhausted, in pain, and close to throwing up because of the ab workout my muscles had not been ready for. But within ten minutes, I almost fooled myself into thinking I had enjoyed it. This was good for me, right? I would be healthier. Plus, imagine how good I would look if I was just a little bit more muscular, more airbrushed like everyone else…

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” wrote Shakespeare.

While I would never be so presumptuous to rewrite Shakespeare, I would like to take the liberty to modify it. “All the gym’s a stage, and all the men and women merely performers.”

The dancers stretch their bodies in matching costumes as they crane their necks, looking to see who’s watching before bending into a new pose. The actors stand in front of the mirrors lifting weights, their faces contorting into images of pain and difficulty even as their eyes dart around the room, counting the number of plates on other people’s bars. The actresses, with perfect makeup and styled hair, lightly dab their brow with their expensive T-shirts, glancing around before gracefully dropping into a squat. Even the set crew, whose only exercise is moving absurdly heavy dumbbells back and forth across the gym and then sitting to rest.

I have a hunch that many of these performers have no idea they were hired to perform. Perhaps they started like me, a casual gym-goer who thought going to the gym was solely for health reasons. But after years of going, they soon realized what I’ve known all of my life. Part of the nature of the gym is the performance, and it’s exhilarating when you perform well.

I can see why people would chase after the applause, the cheers, the rush of hearing a fellow gym attendee compliment your form or the amount of weight you lifted. I can understand the smugness of turning yourself into a marble-carved statue of antiquity, and, when complemented, being able to say you sculpted it yourself. Perhaps that is why the performers of the gym gather together in early breakfasts, each with their own ichor-filled bottle of protein and piles of healthy calories. They compare and contrast their muscles over their meals, allowing themselves to feel superior while mentally listing things they have to do better. New weights to try, new muscles to develop… It’s as if contortionists were lined up and stretched one at a time, each one attempting to go farther, to push their leg just a little further above their head. Watching all of this exhibitionism makes me uneasy and uncomfortable. Although perhaps there is also a sense of community. They all perform, and so they all can admire a good performance. After all, a compliment received from a fellow exercise expert must be much more rewarding than a compliment from someone ignorant in the ways of working out. That’s why they pull out workout videos and lifting stats and flex their biceps. They are desperate for the applause.

For that reason, I can’t completely dislike these people who work out for the show. I know what it is to crave applause. I myself have chased it most of my life. I suppose I’m just mad that my performances always went unnoticed.

It’s not that I never wanted to be physically fit, to look good while running or playing sports. The problem was that I did want to. So badly. By middle school, after years of teasing about my failures in gym class, I was ready to put all my effort into Phys Ed. Since the best runners always seemed to be at the height of the physical fitness social ladder, I decided to get good at running. I would try my absolute hardest, even as my friends lagged behind, because I knew I could do it. All that teasing about “running like a girl”, about not being able to run because my nose was stuck in a book… I would prove them all wrong.

At first, things went great. On the first day of my new resolution, we had a Pacer Test. All the girls lined up at the edge of the basketball court, the room echoing with the squeaks of tennis shoes on fake wood flooring. The guys were all sitting on the sidelines, shoving each other, grimacing into dopey smiles when a girl happened to look back at them. The recorded voice for the test came over the speaker, and pretty soon the word, “Start!” reverberated throughout the room. I ran to one side of the gym and then ran back. Pivoted on the balls of my feet and ran to the other side again, and then ran back. I felt like a mouse in a tiny cage, running back and forth as my classmates and teacher judged my performance. Within six sprints, I started sweating, a relatively new and disgusting phenomenon for me as a middle schooler. After fourteen, my legs started shaking. By twenty, I was tasting blood in the back of my throat, struggling to take a breath. My lungs felt like they were on fire and my head pounded, aching from lack of oxygen. But I pushed through my exercise-induced asthma and burning muscles, telling myself that I was not going to let myself be beaten. I didn’t want to look weak in front of all of my classmates.

Luckily, I didn’t look weak. I pushed myself far enough to get the top score on the test out of the girls, making it to 45 sprints. I pushed myself so far that as soon as I finished, I walked out to the drinking fountain and started coughing up spit. I guzzled water and brushed back the sweat on my forehead and decided it was worth it, because I hadn’t looked weak in front of my classmates. I had beaten them. I had performed well, better than I ever had before.

The next week our teacher told us we had to run a mile on the track outside. That morning, I walked into the locker room to change into a ratty t-shirt, long basketball shorts, and a neon headband to pull back my flyaway pieces of hair. I laced up my tennis shoes and began bouncing on the balls of my feet, anxious to prove myself. When we got to the track and they told us to run, I did. I never stopped, not to talk to my friends or to take a break or to get rid of the metallic, bloody taste filling my mouth. Seeing the school athletes in my class just walking around the track only made me madder. That anger turned into a desire to run faster and longer, my unfounded pride kicking in as I desperately tried to be better than them, those naturally athletic students who got out of gym because they supposedly needed to be well-rested for their practices or games that week.

How fast I ran didn’t matter. No one even glanced at me, or congratulated me on how hard I worked. No one cared that I was one of the first girls to cross the finish line. I still got a B grade in the running unit because I hadn’t gone fast enough, because I hadn’t achieved the standard of perfection my teachers asked of me.

While a few of my classmates actually worked hard in gym, many of my fellow classmates finished running their mile lazily, walking slowly, not even pretending to try. I watched as they strutted across the catwalk of the track, showing off their Nike Jordans and crop tops that barely passed the dress code. My gym teacher would laugh with them, joking about the volleyball practice last night or ranting about the loss in the latest football game. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t completed the assignment. He still marked them down as A+ students in gym because they looked the part. Because they were graceful, and muscular, and had workout outfits that made them look three years older than their middle school age.

No matter how much I worked to be good at physical activity, I knew I would never receive the praise and respect I was looking for. I didn’t look the part. It wasn’t really cool to do well in gym. It was cool to look like you were doing well in gym.

That is how all of my life went. I ran as fast as I could, but classmates with unscuffed tennis shoes got higher grades. I dived to block a soccer ball, but still lost the point to a wannabe Messi. I would lift on the weight machines, but someone in an Athleta matching set always lifted more. I was prideful in my own way. They had pride in how they looked working out, and maybe that helped them perform better. I had pride in my hard work alone, even though my physical accomplishments were lacking.

After those experiences in middle school, I gave up trying to be fit. Gave up working out. Gave up trying to shape my body and instead ignored it, separating it as far as I could from my identity. Once I realized that fitness and working out were about performance, I was never willing to try hard enough to change my body. Instead, I conducted invisible performances for an audience of one, earning A+ grades in English that I would never tell anyone about, acing solos that I would never perform on my flute, and consistently getting high ACT scores that I would never show any of my peers, my pride in my own abilities consuming me. In that regard, I suppose I have some respect for the gym performers. They have participated in the performance and put in the work to sculpt themselves into a piece of art, and therefore have something to show, something to display, something the world finds admirable. Maybe they deserve their cheers. Maybe I should let go of my resentment towards them, since I could have received cheers of my own but was too scared.

But my mind still wanders back to the moment those supposed “athletes” in my middle school gym class sauntered over the finish line when they should have been running. My blood begins to boil as I consider how those cocky, overly mature middle schoolers have grown into college students who gather in gym cliques and pretend to enjoy protein shakes and squeeze in extra reps when someone else is watching.

These gym-goers pretend to be stars on the stage, and everyone around them are simply peasants, morally deficient because they have refused the siren call of the gym performance. We are the imperfect museum patrons, and they are the beautiful, glossy marble statues, constantly posed and picturesque. Their empty eyes stare down at us from pedestals, making us pull at our clothes and huddle into ourselves. They overshadow everyone, making people like me feel as if we are the only ones who casually work out in our cheap leggings and old t-shirts. When they walk into the gym, they push past commoners with the superiority of an A-lister, Airpods standing in for sunglasses. And when the tiniest bit of sweat beads on their brow, they wear it as a badge, a symbol to all the world that they work harder than the rest of us.

When I start to get worked up like this, I think of my fiancé. I thought he was one of these gym performers when I first met him. He enjoyed working out and he had visible muscles, and so I assumed. I assumed that he was prideful, that he was looking down on me and everyone else who didn’t value working out as he did. I was so wrong. He has reached a balance of loving how he looks but not pushing it on anyone. He works out because it makes him feel healthier and stronger, because it energizes him and gets him through another day. He eats what he wants but is conscious about it, wanting to find the right combination of nutritious foods that make him less exhausted, less stressed, and less annoyed. He says life’s too short to focus on what you shouldn’t be eating or shouldn’t be doing. Instead, you should focus on what you should be eating and what you should be doing, for you. What you should be doing to help you feel good in your body.

Yes, he sometimes flexes his muscles and winks at me, and I roll my eyes and scoff. But because I’ve taken the time to know him and understand him and love him… I know that he is not working out to feel superior to others, or to perform. He is genuinely doing it because it makes him happy with who he is. Learning that makes me consider the very real possibility that I often unfairly judge the gym-goers in their Nike shoes and Lululemon leggings. To be sure, there are people who work out for the show, for the applause.

But when I think about it, the whole point of a performance is that it’s fake. A performance is selling perfection, selling the fantasy, selling a story of how the world “should” be. This performance of the gym is not real, no matter how much the performers try to sell it. It is the fantasy of perfection - the perfect clothes, the perfect body, the perfect workout, the perfect life. No one sees the dancer all alone in her room, the actor’s struggle to finish homework, the actress holding back tears, the set crew hating their bodies when they look in the mirror. The performance is all we see, because that is all the performers want you to see. Because for some gym-goers, I’m sure if I took the time to really know them, to understand them, if I put away my pride and resentment for just a bit… I might find a much different story.