A woman revealed how she was put off from going to the gym after strangers kept staring at her and made her feel objectified.
As Emmie Harrison-West from Edinburgh, Scotland, claims, she decided to resume her gym membership years after giving up on workouts in the shared environment due to unwanted attention from men who allegedly stared at her while she was exercising.
“They used to eye my breasts while I lifted weights above my head. I’d catch them in the mirror openly staring at my bum and thighs while I was on the treadmill,” she recalled.
“Exercise was supposed to make me feel good, but instead I just felt objectified. Even if I enveloped my body in baggy, oversized clothes – I’d still leave feeling alert, on edge and anxious.”
Now, determined to get the most out of her gym membership without feeling objectified at every step, Emmie decided to bring her husband along and see if people would still dare to stare at her body.
While she noted that some gym-goers would still eye her briefly, Emmie admitted things were much better now that she was in the gym with her man.
“While I don’t agree, the interest in women-only gyms hardly surprises me – they’re intimidating places to be as a young woman, especially alone,” she added.
“It makes me sad to think that women are isolating themselves, just to be able to exercise. How is that normal or acceptable?”
The young lady also said she believes men should change their behavior and stop staring at women in the gym rather than women being forced to go to same-sex gyms just to be able to work out in peace.
“If you’re a man and can’t go to the gym without staring at a woman, then you should be banned – but not because you’re a man, because you’re making life harder for women,” she concluded.
As it happens, Emmie is not alone in having bad experiences with men at the gym.
According to The Gym-timidation Report by Origym, six out of ten women admitted to feeling harassed in the gym by men who would flirt with them, make inappropriate comments, or stand too close to them.
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