‘Where is the space for continuum?’ Gyms and the visceral “stickiness“ of binary gender

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a visceral feminist geography of the gym to expand our understanding of how everyday physical activity environments are implicated in the gendered context of physical activity. The gender gap in physical activity is well-documented, with women around the world less likely than men to meet the minimum physical activity recommendations for health. Fitness gyms are popular venues for physical activity, but they are not necessarily inclusive places. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of interview and journaling data with 52 Canadian women and men gym users, we identify five visceral domains through which the gym enacts gender boundaries: the imaginary, bodily haptics, the soundscape, visual fields, and material “stuff“. Each of these revealed a series of gendered dichotomies that, taken together, contribute to an overarching gender binary of unbounded masculinity and bounded femininity. We argue that these “visceralities“ matter because the gym as an institution comes to codify gender differences in ways that perpetuate possibilities for practising physical activity as bifurcated ways of doing gender. One of our key findings is how women’s participation in the gym was underwritten by material expense and bodily preparatory practices that extend far beyond the gym into the geographies of their daily lives. Physical activity interventions that do not account for the multisensorial features of place may miss opportunities to reduce gendered inequities.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• gyms
• health
• performativity
• visceral geography

Acknowledgments

We extend gratitude to the research participants involved for their generosity in sharing their experiences and time. Our sincere thanks goes to the anonymous peer reviewers for their exceptionally helpful reviews which were instrumental in helping us to strengthen this manuscript. We also thank Edwin Morelli for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Coen’s doctoral research was supported by Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Awards [#134844] from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Notes on contributors

Stephanie E. Coen

Stephanie E. Coen is Assistant Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom). Her research interests include critical geographies of health, qualitative and creative research methods, and feminist geographies.

Joyce Davidson

Joyce Davidson is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). Her research interests include emotional geographies, feminism and geography, gender and embodiment, and mental health and illness.

Mark W. Rosenberg

Mark W. Rosenberg is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). His research interests include ageing across Canada, geographies of voluntarism, health status and access to health care among older Aboriginal people, health care delivery systems in Ontario and Canada, and women’s health.