An Open Letter To The Fitness Community:
We are f*cking this up.
We believe that the wellness community has an especially important role in the fight against racism, fatphobia, bigotry, and inequality of all kinds because we claim to be all about health. But we also believe that we are only as well as our community is well. And right now our community is desperately struggling. As a community, we are telling people “not to gain the quarantine 15” when we should be showing them compassion. We are posting pictures of our white bodies and talking about racism as if we could ever understand. We are posting black squares (if we are even doing that) but not taking the necessary action to make our spaces comfortable for everyone. We’re asking our black friends to assuage our white guilt and “hold us accountable.” We aren’t connecting the dots between fitness and privilege. We’re talking about fitness as a moral high ground (it’s not). We wear lulu lemon and outdoor voices without holding those companies responsible for their platform.
We cannot be anti-diet culture and still promoting before and after pictures as the holy grail of accomplishment.
We cannot ignore the intersection of diet culture and systemic racism and claim to give a single crap about wellness.
We cannot be “body positive” and fatphobic at the same time.
We cannot use the customs of other cultures without due credit or honor and be a “yogi.”
We cannot ask black and brown people in the community to have coffee with us and to share their stories if we are not willing to pay them for their work and elevate their platforms.
It’s time for the wellness community to own our role in the harm that has been done so we can begin, together, to create a space for the healing and progress we have purported to be promoting from the beginning.
By now we have been given ENDLESS resources. We have had time to process our role in everything. We have access to books, documentaries, personal accounts, and so much more.
There is NO MORE ROOM FOR EXCUSES. People need us and they are looking to us to be leaders and in so many ways we have failed them.
