So, I teach Pilates’ and I love it. I don’t love everything about it, but I love the way it allows you to connect with your body, strengthening it help it withstand stress and prevent injury. I love being able spend an hour at a time doing something for myself – when most of my day is wrapped up in what others need from me. I love being able to help others do the same; it is remarkable how often I work with women (and some men) who have been completely alienated from their bodies due to unmet beauty standards and even sexual taboos. I enjoy witnessing this visceral re-connection as they learn to breath and feel the work in their bodies.
However, there are aspects of teaching that make me uncomfortable, not surprising in our beauty and body obsessed culture. Teaching at a large studio in the Midwest, I encountered sunken, emaciated women who would beat all before missing their routine Pilates’ class. I heard countless self-deprecating comments and comparisons from women about their bodies and their inability to live up to internalized social expectations. Outside of the studio, when you turn on late-night infomercials you will more than likely encounter advertisements for Pilates’ related exercise equipment – complete with extraordinary before-and-afters and unusually thin celebrity spokeswomen.
How is this to be reconciled? I’d love to hear from any fitness instructors, trainers or enthusiasts out there about how they navigate these conflicts.
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I am frequent gym goer. I like the way exercise makes me feel and I like to know that I can pick up heavy objects, run fast and have great endurance. It also reduces my anxiety, which can be a serious problem for me. But many people who come up to me at the gym to talk seem to think I am trying to lose weight, which is nuts, as I'm at a perfectly healthy weight. They don't seem to get that their are a myriad of reasons a young woman wants to exercise.
As to the comments, I suggest discouraging them by not talking about calories burned or losing weight (you probably don't do this, but many instructors do and it is very annoying!) I suggest talking about how you gain strength through your exercise and role model good body image. I think that is the most you can do.
Joan
I think probably every woman who exercises runs into this issue in one way or another. Controlling my weight (not to be skinny, but because on my father's side obesity does seem to lead quickly to diabetes and heart disease) is one reason why I exercise, but there are many others.
1) I like being stronger than people would guess
2) It helps my insomniac and ADD tendencies, and regulates my mood
3) I like accomplishing things, whether it's mastering a new skill or setting a new personal record
4) I just generally feel better and more energetic if I'm fit
Your control over why your students are there is limited, to say the least. Would it be possible to set a 'no negative body talk' policy, though? Many of them might not even be fully aware of how often and how harsh their comments are.
The first thing to realize is that by referring to women as "emaciated" you are imposing your own unmet beauty standard on them.
What? The basic definition of "emaciated" doesn't revolve around the simple fact of being thin, it means being unhealthy as well. We might look at someone and think, damn, s/he looks like hell, when in fact they are perfectly healthy; but even then, it's a judgment on their apparent health, not adherence to a standard of beauty.
People use the health excuse all the time for fat women, too. Who are we to judge whether another person, fat or skinny, 'looks' healthy? Isn't that kind of judgment best left to the individual and hir doctor? Everyone's version of healthy looks different, anyway.
Or left up to an individual, their doctor and in turn, their fitness instructor. As teachers, we have to be very aware of our client's/student's bodies - including apparent malnutrition.
I would slip things into conversations and classes about being beautiful and healthy as they are, being beautiful and healthy at ANY size, etc. Never saying things about your waistline or watching your weight or whatever other b.s. that gyms like to throw around. You could even read up on health at every size and thrown tidbits into your classes.
Well, "gyms" don't really throw things around, since gyms are just a building with lots of exercise equipment in them. Having used a gym for many years now, I've come across various people working within the gym who have different philosophies about how to encourage people to work out. Personal trainers seem to talk a lot about weight loss, my theory being that weight loss is the reason most people hire a personal trainer and they want to motivate their clients into continuing to pay for them. It's also an identifiable goal that gives the trainer tangible proof of being effective - again, to continue to sell sessions to their clients (I do realize not ALL trainers do this, but so many do and it's the reason I stopped trying to find one to work out with).
Class instructors don't talk about these things. In fact, if any of my class instructors started talking about us being beautiful and healthy, I'd probably stop going to that class out of annoyance. My class instructors discuss the proper way to do things, which is very important since in a room full of people, they can't personally spot each one. If they stopped their flow of informative talk to wax poetic about beauty at any size, I'd find it more than a bit ridiculous. Furthermore, if the OP's whole goal is to stop the focus on size, the best thing to do would be not to talk about it. Talk about strength, endurance, stability, flexibility, proper form, breathing (very important in pilates) etc. etc. Anything but looks.
Well, obviously, by "gyms" I didn't mean the brick and mortar buildings, I meant the people running them.
You are very lucky to have had such positive gym experiences. I have heard far too many people in far too many places talk 99% about weight loss and 1% about actual health to believe that it isn't the most common M.O.
My mom taught fitness classes for about 25 years, so I've been in a LOT of different facilities in my life. Even as a small child I can recall thinking that the way most of the people were talking was messed up. One example I can think of is how the woman who was the director of fitness classes (!) complimenting this woman who had an obvious eating disorder (not based solely on her appearance but on her actions as well) and asking her what her "secret" was. And as fitness director she taught several classes per week.
Short response: I agree with Joan.
Longer rationale: One thing I've noticed in being around active women and helping friends of mine get started on basic fitness routines is that, quite logically, they become more positive about it in general when they focus on what they're trying to gain rather than what they're trying to lose. If I'm talking to someone whose main concern is losing weight, and I convince her to focus on gaining strength instead (since that will lead to better fitness in the long run than concentrating on losing x pounds), she becomes more enthused. I grant that this revolves around convincing them to be consistently active, which you said is the least of problems with your students. But a better mindset is the goal in each case.
Also, you have an advantage in the fact that they're coming to every class, so you can take a long-term approach to helping them develop a positive attitude towards themselves. Joan's absolutely right- if you bring up issues like weight loss unprompted, it's going to do little good and probably reinforce their focus on it. If you're responding to your students, either through direct comments/questions or overhearing something you just can't let go, that's different, but it's still better to make it about improvements as much as you can.
Mostly, though, it'll probably require consistent messages from you during class about the positive changes that your students will gain from whatever you're doing. If they're doing something difficult, that they're almost guaranteed to feel, cajole them with comments about how much better they'll be for doing the exercise rather than how many calories it's burning.
You may do all this anyway. In that case, good for you, and keep it up. But don't be too concerned about getting them refocused quickly; deeply ingrained attitudes take time and consistency to shift, along with well-placed messages when they start to break free from the shackles of their mindsets. And it won't work with everyone- some people just can't deal with not having an instructor who caters to their obsessions with weight loss. But I'd bet dollars to houses you'll help more people overall this way.
I know the basics about pilates, but I've always wondered, does the media see it as a more
'feminine' sport activity? Because from the media and how they market it, it seems to be aimed more at women, than men.
But I do remember Danny Glover promoting it on some latenight TV ads here in Aussie.
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know, wiki = teh bads), it was designed for WW1 veterans, so it was initially for men. But that was before weightlifting boomed. Going by general attitudes towards exercise, the (usually incorrect) fear many women have of bulking up leads them to anything that's good exercise but doesn't involve lifting heavy objects, and Pilates fits the bill. Likewise, men often don't feel like they're really doing what they should if their workout regimens don't include a healthy dose of brute force (weights or body-weight exercises), which leads them away from methods like this.
Obviously men can gain something (probably a lot) from Pilates. But advertisers target specific demographics, and they likely found it more profitable to cater to women rather than try and pull a token sum of men. Lo and behold, Pilates becomes a feminine exercise method. Self-fulfilling prophecies are great.
I agree. I used to go to Pilates classes at my old gym, and there were definitely guys in every class, but they were usually bikers or runners or other athletes that benefited from gaining lean muscles and not bulking up.
On an unrelated note, I remember always feeling embarrassed in the class because there were always women and men in their late 40s and 50s who could do textbook examples of the exercises, and at 22 years old, I was doing good to make it through the class without falling over or pulling a muscle.
By emaciated, I truly meant emaciated. Not that they were too skinny for my own "preference," but too skinny and weak to have been properly nourished.