By Sarah Miller
After numerous complaints from moderately in-shape female members, a high-end New York fitness club is considering banning above-average in-shape female members from getting ready naked in the locker room. The new regulations would require female members who are in “exceptionally good shape” from walking around, blow drying their hair, or doing their make-up without being fully covered.
The outrage was apparent as we visited the club and interviewed some of the average-bodied members. Our first interviewee declares,“How am I supposed to enjoy my fitness club experience unless some kind of action is taken? I come to the gym to feel good about myself. But when I see all these naked in-shape woman, I feel bad about myself and end up comfort-eating when I get home. How am I supposed to lose weight this way? Its really unfair.”
An average-looking member standing nearby comments, “I couldn’t even concentrate on doing my hair because, out of the corner of my eye,all I could see was this girl’s six pack and perfect breasts. I’m pretty sure the breasts may have been fake,but that’s not really the point here. The point is that my hair came out so bad that I started to cry and ended up in the fetal position on the locker room floor for a little over 23 minutes. Thankfully I was able to text a friend who was upstairs on the treadmill for help.”
One woman overhears our interviews and chimes in, “We aren’t saying we want the nice-bodied girls like totally banned from the club. We just want them to have access to larger bath towels and robes to wear while they do their hair and make-up. I mean, separate looker rooms would be ideal.But I’m not crazy. This is New York City, and there just isn’t the space for that”.
While on location, we also had the opportunity to talk with the maintenance attendant who works in the locker room five days a week, eight hours a day and gets to see firsthand the hygienic rituals of both average-and above-average-bodied female members.(Because of her thick Mexican accent,we had to translate her commentary into formal broken English.)“Some girl look good; some girl look fat; some girl look OK. Nobody look the same. But the ones who look real, real good blow-dry the hairs in the panties with the topless. The tiny little baby panties.”
The general manager explains, “I am taking our moderately in-shape female members’ concerns very seriously. Out of our 2,400 female members, about 79% of them have average-looking physiques or,to be honest, in some cases even worse than average. The members with the average-looking bodies are really upset and offended by the members who flaunt their seemingly perfect figures after exiting the showers. Its obviously hard for me to understand, because not only am I in excellent shape but I’m also a male.”
We asked him how he is able to deal with such a female-orientated problem in a fair and empathetic manner: “ I’ve been doing my best to empathize. In order to get more in touch with my feminine side,I’ve been spending a great deal of time standing outside the women’s locker room and picturing each of the females walking into the looker room totally nude. I’m finding it useful to pretend that I’m one of them and that I’m in there doing my hair. I take turns being the in-shape and not-in-shape members, so I can really try to relate to both sides. I know it’s not the professional way to handle things.But, until corporate approves my request to go into the locker room undercover,dressed as female maintenance worker, it’s the best way I can think of to make sure I’m doing all I can to collect the information I need to make the best choice.”
A physiologist from Harvard University supports the club’s decisions to move forward with the new full-coverage-for-exceptionally-in-shape-females rule: “Clearly guidelines such as these are long overdue. This high-end fitness club had an opportunity to pioneer standards which can gradually be adopted by high schools, summer camps, and even prisons.”
She continues by justifying her stance on the issue: “So many of my private female clients spend hours with me working on reversing the physiological trauma caused by these unavoidable locker room encounters with superiorly in-shape members. I’ve had women quit showering after their lunchtime workouts and, as a result, get let go from their jobs because of their odor.”
Although this is not a common occurrence, she insists that other related encounters are: “The lunchtime workout odor situation was an isolated incident. But I’ve also had multiple clients who were in locker rooms ready for dates and cancel their plans because, after seeing a naked really in-shape girl next to them, they couldn’t muster the self-esteem to meet their potential future husband for dinner. I mean,let’s be honest. Women can be missing out on the opportunity of getting married and having kids all because some girl with a nice body doesn’t have the common courtesy to use an extra-large towel. I can almost cry just thinking about it.”
The fitness club’s CEO and other top executives are currently in the process of defining what“average“ and “exceptional” figures would mean, just in case they should decide to move forward with new female locker room conduct rules. Variables such as body fat percentage, BMI, waist and hip measurements, bra size, and are you Asian will all be configured into the “average or exceptional“ female body algorithm.
The jury is still out on exactly how the confrontation between the average-looking and the above-average-looking members will be resolved. But, it’s possible that technology will provide a simple solution: “That’s why I always wear my Google Glass when I’m at the club,”one client explained. “I have an app that makes everyone look fat.”
(This article is satire written in response to a woman being asked to cover up at her gym when staff members thought she was “too toned.”)
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