1:13am July 26, 2014

➸ What Your Workout Says About Your Social Class

weaponsgradegains:

iron-inside:

shortmom:

Why can’t triathletes and weightlifters get along?

Things that make you go hmmmm.

“Sociologists, it turns out, have studied these covert athletic biases. Carl Stempel, for example, writing in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, argues that upper middle class Americans avoid “excessive displays of strength,” viewing the bodybuilder look as vulgar overcompensation for wounded manhood. The so-called dominant classes, Stempel writes—especially those like my friends and myself, richer in fancy degrees than in actual dollars—tend to express dominance through strenuous aerobic sports that display moral character, self-control, and self-development, rather than physical dominance. By chasing pure strength, in other words, packing on all that muscle, I had violated the unspoken prejudices—and dearly held self-definitions—of my social group.”

I encountered this recently when chatting with my cousin’s husband, a PhD in Computer Science who works at Google and runs sub-three hour marathons in his spare time (yes, you read that right) and weighs little more than me at a height of six feet. He admitted that barbells scare him which just boggled my mind, but admires the feats of strength of others as something as far beyond his reach as running a sub-three hour marathon is mine.

I will probably stir something up but in my area, this is as clear as night and day. Most people run, walk and do things to uphold some type of unspoken social norm. People diet together, run together, shell out hundreds of dollars for marathons, races..etc.

But when someone enters that group who is a strength athlete they are treated like some kind of animal. I get constantly told to “be careful” at the gym or told that I’m doing too much, scaring other gym goers, “shaking the gym”, or just get glances or judgement and disgust. People tend to stick to their social norm, which for my area and areas I’ve been to seems to be almost exactly like this article. I know some people on this site would argue the opposite but I’d disagree. Honestly, I’m a lot “worse” off than a lot of people in my area in terms of gross income and job “status”. A lot of the richer more secure people really, really look down on the “big muscular” people as vulgar or “too much”. I constantly feel like I’m sub-human to my peers around me.

And I’m okay with that.

Wow.

Yeah, this kind of matches my experience too, and more so those of a close male friend who started going to the gym with me in college.

My friend was also not white, and we were at a pretty white college, which I’m sure aggravated the problem. I definitely remember him complaining some about people treating him like a thug.

It sucks, because my friend had gotten that all his life. People assuming he’s not as smart or as educated as they are, when really he’s very smart!

With me, I’ve definitely had people act like I’m doing something weird or gross when I lift something heavy, whether it’s in the gym or outside, like moving furniture or the like. And my mom definitely seems to act like my body is more obscene now, and should be covered more, than she did when I was smaller.

I’ve also lifted myself into a state where I’m not attractive to most men, which is fine. Because for women thinness isn’t just class coded, it’s also a huge part of the beauty standard. Which is itself class coded, but like, there’s more that a woman sacrifices in terms of social presentation by becoming big and bulky than there is that a man sacrifices. A man may sacrifice his ability to be perceived as intelligent or middle-class, but a woman sacrifices those things and conventional attractiveness too.