Fumbling Towards 38
November 4: Kiss My Ass, Fitness

Before you get your lululemon leggings in a bunch, please be advised. I am not by any stretch of the imagination a fit person, nor am I trying to be. If you’re looking for “a curvy lady’s guide to being fit and fabulous,” babe, you’ve come to the wrong account. I’m much more of a #FitnessCultureIsWhiteSupremacy kind of gal. I’m a fat liberationist! I don’t give a single shit about people who’re in “good shape” and all I used to see when I would stand on the path of the NYC Marathon each November was a sea of sweaty, white faces with a life-consuming fitness goal. Sorry, but running needs to be decolonized. *insert shrugging emoji*
I was recently asked to be a guest on a podcast that two of my comedy friends host called Work it Out, a show that explores fitness inclusivity. At first, I didn’t understand why they would want me as a guest because I’ve never once posted a fitness journey to Instagram or spent a single dime on anything that resembles a spin cycle class. Quite honestly, not many things give me more anxiety than the image of a stationary bike seat suctioning out of my fat ass as I stand to pedal to the rhythm of Taki Taki by DJ Snake. I imagine the muscle-y instructor’s gaze cutting through a thick crowd of very focused participants only to land on me as I sweat audibly and roll my eyes in the back row.
“Push yourself, you piece of shit!” they bark into their headset. I look around and then inquisitively point at myself as if to say, “Who, me?”
“Yeah, you, you saggy fuck! Get those legs pumping, sea witch!”
Until I discussed my aversion to fitness culture at length on my buddies’ pod, I realized I hadn’t really addressed where my workout revulsion came from. But basically, I realized that all of the movement-related activities I wanted to do as a girl were painfully exclusionary. It’s not that I’ve never wanted fitness to be a part of my life, it’s that fitness hasn’t ever wanted me to be a part of its life. Gymnastics required a financial commitment level that my parents couldn’t afford. I was the fattest girl in my ballet class and I wasn’t even fat. Sports bras for tits my size didn’t exist when I was young so I had to double or triple-up all the time. And being in-shape became a toxic message to me, a girl who was struggling to love the body she was born with.
I was a very athletic young woman. I played three sports a year throughout my adolescence and teen years but I wasn’t ever doing it for health. I was in it for the socializing and the collaboration that team sports require. There were few things cooler to me than executing plays that were called by a team leader and being one of the bodies and minds necessary to execute the maneuver. Team sports were collaborative projects! For the same reasons I loved team sports, I also loved theater and music and sketch comedy. And right before my junior year of high school, I flipped the bird to all my sports (I gave throwing the javelin a kind hug actually because come on, javelin never hurt anyone) and shuffle-ball-changed into the performing arts permanently.
Things I’ve never liked about playing sports: 1. the physical exertion, and I mean if you don’t like breathing heavily, feeling light-headed and having painful joints and muscles, why on earth do it?! 2. The pressure to be good. Honestly, intramural basketball in sixth grade when we all sucked and the uniforms were puff-painted t-shirts was where it was at. 3. The competitiveness. This is what eventually made me leave my body. Everything around athletics and athleticism was bound in competition — competition with others and competition with the self. This may irk you, American reader, but I believe that competitiveness around the body is very much a Western ideal, and I offer that my identity as a Lakota person stands in direct opposition to this and many other Western ideologies.
I’ll give another example to illuminate this anti-competition and therefore anti-American mentality that I hold. As a young girl, my grandparents took us to powwows and my siblings and I learned very early how to dance traditionally. If you’re not versed in Native culture, first of all, please become versed, good lord, but fyi, powwows are decolonized events where Indigenous people of Turtle Island (our continent) gather to practice our traditional ways — something that was made illegal by the U.S. Government until the religious freedom act of 1978. I grew up in the 1980s during a time when Native people were beginning to actively and openly practice our ways again with each other in public for literally the first time since the 1800s. Newer, more modern dances were erupting across the scene and showing up at powwows and one of those dance styles was called the fancy shawl dance. It’s extraordinarily athletic, this dance. You’re essentially bounding on your toes in improvised footwork, kicking and waving around a brightly colored shawl to the swift beat of a traditional drum. It’s hard! Your Zumba class couldn’t keep up, let’s just say that. Anyway, my older sister and I quickly launched ourselves into this dance style and we became good. I loved it so much but never for athletic reasons. I loved it because it connected me to my ancestors and my community. Because I could watch and appreciate other shawl dancers’ styles and try them on my own. I loved it because it was an expression of our sovereignty as Natives and because it made my grandparents proud. But when I became an adolescent, many of the community powwows we once attended became competition powwows. If you wanted to dance, you’d have to register for the competition and pin a number to your regalia. There were judges and now they rated you on your athleticism, your style and your ability to construct a gorgeous and flashy shawl dance regalia. If you win you receive money. So I stopped dancing. We stopped going to powwows. We slowly began to disconnect from the Native community and thus the access we had to a decolonized experience that was already so seldom had.
I argue that fitness culture is colonizing. I have seen fat people take on athletic practices for the same reasons that straight-sized people take them on and have a terribly hard time finding space in a fitness environment that doesn’t make them feel like shit. I don’t think gyms are accessible for people with disabilities or people of size or people without incomes and I don’t think they’re trying! Of course, there are rare exceptions. Of course, there are collaboratives that work to decolonize fitness culture and to creative body inclusivity into their missions but the culture of fitness itself is so insidious, it’s hard to find those places! It’s ableist, it’s fat phobic and it’s mean! Some of my loudest trolls on Instagram have been fitspo influencers. I mean, sure. I would love to incorporate more movement into my day but here’s some of the rhetoric that I hear from fitness culture:
“Fat people need to exercise but stay the hell away from my gym, fatass!”
“Weight loss starts in the kitchen, girl! And that’s why I hired a personal chef and spend the time I would be cooking at the gym!”
“Push yourself! Push through the pain! No pain no gain!”
Nah. I’m good. I don’t hate on people who love being fit or strive for fitness. I mean there’s literally nothing “more American” than being white and being fit. Congrats to you. I will carry on with my very basic daily walks and perhaps one day upgrade to leisurely hikes. When I’m ready, I’ll come back to powwows in the style of women’s traditional, a slow, steady, regal and mature women’s dance. Does my aversion to athleticism make me lazy? Who. Fucking. Cares. I’m one of the hardest working people I know and I also strive for laziness. Those two things co-exist in me. I’ll end this essay with an inspirational message about laziness. Being lazy is actually wonderful! You should try it.
