The large division of the Trudy Fitness Center. Let’s talk about it. After swiping your ‘Gate Card at the front desk, you can either do cardio upstairs alongside mostly girls, or venture downstairs to the weight room and work out in a room full of guys. It’s a reality we all live with here at Colgate, but what do students think?
In general, I can confidently say that I noticed this fracture the first time I entered the gym. Among girls, a general fear of the weight room is a common topic of conversation. Why do so many girls feel this way? I spoke with two sophomores, Amelia Cohen and Margot Hayes, to gain different female perspectives and better understand the reason for this fear.
I asked the question: why do you think girls tend to feel uncomfortable going down? Hayes said she honestly didn’t know, but explained that the guys in the weight room all seem to know what they’re doing and they themselves feel like they don’t know how to use the machines . They said it was also difficult to explore unfamiliar machines because it was nerve-wracking to seem like they didn’t know what they were doing compared to the “gym brothers.” Cohen also said, “Since guys are constantly talking about what they did and how much they lifted in the gym, it makes me hyper-aware of myself in the weight room.” What’s it like on the other side?
I spoke to three sophomores who regularly hit the gym, Saul Myers, Oscar Mindich and Sam Carneal, to find out what it’s like on the men’s side. I asked them if they paid attention to the girls’ abilities in the weight room, and they all immediately said “no.” Myers said that when he’s in the gym, he only focuses on what he’s doing, not what other people are doing, no matter who they are. Carneal wondered why the girls felt this fear since “everyone just does what they do.” If men don’t judge girls in the weight room, where does this fear come from?
Cohen raised an interesting point earlier about competitive gym culture among men. How competitive is it? I asked the question: How often do you and your friends talk about what you did at the gym/talk about your weight? Mindich said he and his friends don’t really go into detail about what they did at the gym, but when it comes to weight, it’s 100% a more common topic of conversation and it’s definitely stressful. Myers also responded similarly, saying he chooses not to record PRs (personal bests) because “it’s really toxic to compare yourself to numbers, my time in the gym is only about my goals and what I do”. Maybe girls’ fear of appearing inexperienced comes from overhearing these kinds of conversations between men — conversations that Toole and Hayes say girls never really have.
I thought it would be interesting to hear the opposite: are men afraid of the top like girls are afraid of the bottom? The three I spoke with all said they never felt uncomfortable going up the stairs; they are simply aware of the fact that they will probably be the only ones in the room. They’ve certainly noticed the division, and while that doesn’t make those I spoke with reluctant to go upstairs, Myers pointed out that: “I’ve noticed that there’s a division in the gym as to about who trains where – at least that’s what it is. tends to look like it does here at Colgate. Is this specific to Colgate?
I talked to girls from other schools – Inez Malhotra at New York University, Mairead Burwell at Washington University in St. Louis, and Colette Scumberac at Wesleyan University – and they told me that the gender dynamics in the gym were basically the same. There is a universal feeling among girls when they go to the gym that makes them hesitant to strength train because the weights are mostly taken up by men, but what can we do to change that? What can we do to make girls feel more comfortable at the gym?
Two students here at Colgate, sophomore Erika Heng and junior Jessye Sabetta, decided to do something about this dilemma by starting a club called Girl Gains. The club aims to empower women through weightlifting, hoping to slowly change the narrative and make girls more confident in the weight room. With small steps like these, we can slowly achieve a gym environment in which girls and boys feel more comfortable.
