Fitness v fatness? Bodies, boundaries and bias in the gym

ABSTRACT

This study introduces the possibility of a new concept, ‘figuring’, to describe the contentious reactions and readings of non-conforming larger bodies and the spaces in which these occur. I illustrate this concept through an analysis of 15 semi-structured virtual interviews and participant journaling to uniquely explore the lived experiences of larger-bodied people in the gym. The key analytic construct ‘figuring’ put forward in this paper helps to theoretically advance work on body size and exercise by offering a way to conceptualise the role of environment (e.g. exercise contexts) in shaping boundaries of bodily difference. My findings articulate how physical activity spaces are implicated in ‘figuring’ space and are presented in three main themes; (1) the pursuit of the ‘ideal’, (2) presence: hyper-visibility and ‘belonging’ in space, and (3) mobilities: Intersections of gender and body size. This study expands our empirical understanding of people’s exercise experiences in gym environments by rendering visible the socio-spatial processes that create boundaries around participation in the gym along the lines of body size. My findings point to the need to intervene in the social and spatial dimensions of the gym, and potentially other exercise environments, to promote equity in access to physical activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Bodily difference
• fatness
• gyms
• healthism
• mobility
• physical activity

Introduction

The commonplace remedy to ‘eat less, move more’ (Biali 2008) is increasingly recognised as a one-size-fits-all prescription for reducing bodyweight. It has become customary to point larger-bodied people in the direction of physical activity spaces without considering if these facilities are welcoming and inclusive of diverse body sizes. Evidence suggests that many physical activity spaces can be associated with heightened feelings of self-consciousness, affecting both the frequency and quality of participation (Harjunen 2019; James 2000; King 2010; Stankov, Olds, and Cargo 2012). Research has shown how gym spaces can have a marginalising effect on those who challenge certain binaries. Richardson, Smith, and Papathomas (2017, 18), for example, describe the gym in particular as a ‘landscape of exclusion’ for disabled bodies, reflecting on the troubled experiences of those whose bodies might look or move in a nonnormative way. Gyms have also been recognised as hostile environments for those who do not conform to mainstream gender norms such as transgender men (Farber 2017) and cisgender women bodybuilders (Brace-Govan 2004). These experiences call into question the way that the gym functions as a space to promote health to diverse populations.

Fitness versus fatness is another binary of marginalisation in the gym that has yet to be fully explored. Bodily bigness, and the fat identity more broadly, have largely been considered in relation to exercise environments by exploring the impacts of societal weight stigma on exercise behaviours (Meadows and Bombak 2018; Myre, Glenn, and Berry 2021). They highlight the absence of positive representations of fat exercisers that contribute to a lack of self-efficacy. Wathne (2011) too considers the reality of living and exercising in a fat body, concluding that symbolic representations fail to do this bodily reality justice, and thus promoting the need for an embodied approach to academic engagements with fat bodies and physical exercise. More recently, Vani et al. 2021) formed a complimentary conclusion when considering the tension between appearance and sport competence evaluations for adolescent girls who experience body self-consciousness. Collectively, these point towards a need for improved understandings of the lived realities of exercising in a larger body, in an effort to reshape social exercise practice and enhance physical activity experiences.

However, existing literature does illustrate positive forms of engagement with physical activity for larger people, often demonstrating a resistance to healthism and body size stigma through weight-neutral physical activity settings (Myre, Glenn, and Berry 2021). Liechty et al. (2015) uses the experience of a team of tackle footballers to reveal the importance of reshaping fat-bias attitudes and behaviours, by drawing attention to the reduction in social comparison among teammates and enhanced exercise experience that accompanied an acceptance of diversity, particularly in terms of body size. Walters and Hefferon (2020) highlight how resistance training works to foster self-efficacy and develop positive body image and psychological wellbeing for fat people who experience body self-consciousness. Dance has also been recognised as a pleasurable form of exercise for some people. In a study exploring physical activity and fatness, Wittels and Mansfield (2021., 353) note how dance activity ‘appeared to usher in both a sense of achievement and self-fulfilment and for some, a kind of epiphany about the capability of their moving bodies’. In this way, positive social interaction and self-fulfilment play a significant role in evoking pleasurable exercise experiences, irrespective of weight-loss, and further demonstrate the complex socio-spatial dimensions involved in shaping the physical activity experiences of those identified as obese and/or identifying as fat.

This study aims to build upon this literature, addressing a health equity concern through an exploration of how health is understood in relation to the fat body and by investigating the social, physical and emotional barriers, which operate to exclude larger-bodied people from the gym. This has very real implications in terms of participation in physical exercise, and the findings might therefore offer useful insights to those who identify with this community as well as healthcare providers in encouraging physical activity among their patients and fitness professionals to be more sensitised to fat experiences when working with diverse populations.

There is an ethical challenge navigating the language surrounding ‘fatness.” The use of “fat” or “obese” are pejorative terms; they are problematic as they mark a body as diseased based on size and are imbued with socially constructed body-images and behaviours. Throughout this project, the terms “fat” and “fatness” are used in line with Fat Activists’ terminology as part of collective social creativity strategies to positively redefine fatness as a means of self-definition (Lindly, Nario-Redmond, and Noel 2014), reclaiming it from its derogatory use.

Previous studies have placed health, physical activity and diet at the centre of the ‘obesity crisis’ (Kirk 2006), claiming obesity cases are underpinned by an ‘obesogenic environment’ (Colls and Evans 2014). This study problematises the focus on physical activity as a commonplace method of addressing obesity as it implies the solution lies within individual bodies, mandating intervention to make bodies smaller. Following Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg (2020), this study seeks to decouple obesity and health by looking beyond the body, placing the site of intervention as the space of activity itself and foregrounding issues of equity in access to physical activity. This study takes a unique qualitative approach by exploring the lived experiences of the gym as a physical activity space by those who identify as a larger body type or with the ‘fat’ identity. This results in a critical understanding of how the gym reinforces a discourse of healthism, creating exclusive environments, which make fat bodies problematic. Adopting an emotional approach, this study is interested in unpacking the human embodied experience of place and the socio-significance of the relations imbued within them. Seeking to advance ‘critical geographies of physical activity’ (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2020), my empirical analysis arrives at the conceptual construct ‘figured’ space, which articulates the place-based exclusionary processes that draw boundaries around body-sized social categories specifically.

This study makes an original contribution by presenting a geographical understanding centred on an exploration of the role of space in the boundary-making (figuring) of exercising bodies and what this subsequently means for equity in opportunities for participation. With this in mind, my research objectives are to: (1) explore the discourse of healthism, and how it is taken up or resisted through experiences of the gym; (2) demonstrate the ‘figured’ nature of the gym, as a process of legitimising ‘fit’ bodies over ‘fat’ bodies in place; and (3) illustrate how emotions shape exercise experiences in the gym and have implications for participation for larger-bodied individuals.

Conceptual framework

Healthism: the fit and healthy

Healthism is defined by Crawford (1980) as ‘the preoccupation with health as a primary focus for the definition of the achievement of well-being; a goal … attained primarily through the modification of lifestyles’. The body is implicated as a symbolic metaphor of healthism, one which can be visually assessed to possess (or not possess) the characteristics associated with being healthy. The frequent conflation of the terms ‘healthy’ and ‘fit’, perpetuated through health and fitness ideologies, have resulted in the conceptualisation of the appearance of physical fitness as health (Crawford 1980). By consequence, the dominant discourse of healthism fosters the ‘fit’ body as a valued representation of health, while marginalising variations in human body size, shape, and ability (Preston 2019). The appearance of health becomes embedded with body ideals, characterised by the slim, toned woman and the well-defined, muscular man (Chrisler and Barney 2017). Rysst (2010) notes how the ‘ideal’ body is also characterised by the absence of fat, with ‘fatness’ considered a transgressive state in opposition to health. This is pertinent to this investigation as it locates ‘fatness’ as an individual ‘moral problem’ that assumes fat people have ‘free choice’ to become ‘healthy’ (read: smaller) through their own actions and decisions. In line with critical fat studies and critical geographies of physical activity, this study seeks to challenge such discourses by foregrounding lived experiences of fatness and decoupling the presumed linkages between health and bodyweight (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2020; Colls and Evans 2014).

Scrutinised by size

Johansson (1996) recognises the ‘ideology of the dissatisfied’ as an invisible, yet oppressive force of healthism resulting in extreme body consciousness. Being dissatisfied with one’s body becomes normalised, instilling ‘normative discontent’ (Rodin, Silberstein, and Striegel-Moore 1984) which enforces a desire for physical change, primarily through weight loss. By consequence, ‘good’ health practices have entered macro and micro scales of communication in everyday life, resulting in a heightened awareness of the appearance of our own bodies. Thus, ‘in a health-valuing culture, people come to define themselves in part by how well they succeed or fail in adopting healthy practices and by the qualities of character or personality believed to support health behaviours’ (Crawford 2006, 402). Williams (2018) comments on the body-scrutiny faced by fat people as they are thought to be non-conforming to health ideals. Williams argues stigma disempowers larger-bodied people, incurring broader health implications as they become less likely to visit the doctor, get routine check-ups or engage in physical activity. The latter point is pertinent to this investigation as this contributes to explanations of health inequalities faced by fat people – a consequence not because of their weight, but rather the reception of their bodies.

Sizing up health: understandings of obesity

Increasing awareness of stigmatising attitudes and behaviours towards larger bodies has been coupled with a shift in thinking where obesity levels are thought to be a result of obesogenic environments (Marmot 2006). Swinburn, Egger, and Raza (1999, 564) describe the obesogenic propensity of some environments as ‘the sum of influences, opportunities, or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals or populations’. Associated research aligns with this, focussing on the quantitative mapping of obesity cases in proximity to fast food, fresh food and exercise outlets (Mellor, Dolan, and Rapoport 2011; Papas et al. 2007), thus blaming their environment for making bodies thin or fat. Pickett and Cunningham (2017) recognise this perspective limits experiential understandings of fatness; they argue that exercising involves physical and psychological effort, for those who identify as larger-bodied, the psychological costs to participate are higher. In line with Colls and Evans 2014), this project aims to shift the emphasis away from environmental factors which make people fat, but to the spaces in which fat bodies are made problematic. By placing the space of activity as the site of intervention, this project encourages a view beyond the body, recognising how the benefits of physical activity extend much further than body size and weight. In doing so, it foregrounds issues of inclusion and emotional equity in access to physical activity.

Belonging: in place, out of place

The gym has been recognised as a ‘landscape of exclusion’ (Richardson, Smith, and Papathomas 2017, 18) permeated by exclusionary messages, structural barriers and the alienation of certain bodies and identities (see Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2018, 2020, 2021 on gender). Cresswell (1996) explains how something or someone who belongs in one place and not in another, can be described as ‘in place’ or ‘out of place’. He acknowledges that belonging in a place is largely related to one’s relation to others, and by consequence there are ‘expectations about behaviour that relate a position in a social structure to actions in space’ (Cresswell 1996, 3). The interaction of the spatial and the social is crystallised in the space of the gym, giving rise to pronounced articulations of social interaction. Creswell’s notion of transgression, or in place/out of place, is a valuable analytical concept, which I take up to unpack the construction of ‘difference’ in the gym environment. One way this is drawn out is through an acknowledgement of the intersection of body size and gender; in particular, the microgeographies of moving through the gym in a gendered way, and the layered experience this creates when additional boundaries around body-size co-exist.

Entwined in this has been the development of a ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), which reflects a growing recognition that relationships with space and place are connected to the way we move or are unable to move as individuals. Mobility is used as a lens to investigate the power dimensions that shape the way people and ideas move on a variety of scales in the gym. This paradigm recognises the complex patterning of varied and changing social activities and the ways in which physical movement pertains to variations in social mobility. While Sheller and Urry (2006) demonstrate this through the physical movement of bodies across borders or through local commutes, I adopt this paradigm to provide a complementary perspective on participation in physical activity spaces. The principles of this concept are used to investigate new modes of physical and emotional social inclusion/exclusion through the way freedom of movement is heightened or restricted in the gym in fat people’s experiences.

In summary, I bring these concepts together – healthism (and health practice), stigma, understandings of obesity, transgression and mobilities to frame a critical exploration of fat people’s experiences in gym environments that aims to render visible the socio-spatial processes that create boundaries around participation in the gym along the lines of body size. In doing so, this research seeks to make two main contributions to knowledge and practice. First to challenge the ideology of healthism by calling into question the body ideals and behaviours that are associated with health. Second, the need to foreground the lived experiences of fatness in the gym in order to decouple understanding of health with body size and promote equity in access to physical activity for all bodies.

Methodology

Methodological approach employed in this study

Qualitative methods were used as a form of social inquiry to provide a critical focus on the way participants’ interpreted and made sense of their own lived experiences. Such techniques allowed me to focus on the discovery of what was significant from the viewpoints and actions of larger-bodied people in relation to time, place, context and situation (Wiles, Rosenberg, and Kearns 2005). My use of qualitative methods, including interviewing and journaling, reflect the value of first-hand perspectives and understanding multiple truths. Thematic analysis was conducted within a constructionist framework, which seeks to theorise the socio-cultural contexts, and structural conditions, that shape and inform individual accounts (Burr 1995). In line with this, I draw on the principles of feminist and fat epistemologies (and their intersections) to frame how I understand notions of power, agency, the construction of knowledge, and ‘the body’. I took an approach that centred participants’ voices, encouraging them to bring forward their own experiences and share what they believed was significant. This allowed participants to be the creators of knowledge, rather than the dominant (often fatphobic) narratives of the fat identity and health, which continue to shape mainstream understandings of fatness. This aligns with a feminist epistemology which advocates that there is no single truth, and that ‘objectivity’ is neither possible nor desirable (Rose 1997). In this way, this study recognises and privileges the agency of larger-bodied people in their own truths and therefore brings forward a perspective gained through an empathic understanding of participants’ lived social realities.

Engaging with feminist and fat epistemologies led me to consider my own positionality and the ‘locations’ (Pausé 2019) in which I live my life in order to acknowledge the privileges, environment, and structural forces that shape my experiences. My own experiences of the gym are largely centred on my position as an athlete. This forms an important part of my positionality as I have a long history routinely engaging with exercise practices (in the gym amongst other places) deemed to shape a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. Engagement in physical activity spaces led me to question their inclusive capacity; despite not identifying as fat myself, I resonated with accounts of friends’ who considered themselves comparatively larger-bodied and felt the gym alienated their bodies, often making exercising a self-conscious experience. In this way, I was drawn to consider the ways bodies and space interact to draw bodily boundaries. I recognise that engaging with fat voices, as a white British, non-fat writer, invariably still elevates my own voice over others as author and analyst. In response to this, I employed self-identification techniques so that I did not prescribe what ‘counted’ as fat or larger-bodied, along with an interview approach that centred participants’ voices in order to adopt an empathetic stance, which engaged with participants outside of my own bodily experience. To uphold rigour and reflect on my relationships with the data, I maintained an in-depth research diary throughout this project, which noted critical observations at every stage of research.

Taking my cue from feminist and fat epistemologies, I paid special attention to embodied knowledge and how participants shared and told their stories, noting tone, pauses, and non-verbal communications such as body language (Keegan 2008), allowing a more intimate and nuanced reading of how a story is told through an interview (Aronson 1990). I employed a mixed qualitative methods research design to allow participants to both engage in reflective dialogue about their gym experiences via interviews and in-situ documentation about their thoughts and feelings via journals. Using a multi-method approach ensured that ‘the issue is not explored through one lens, but rather a variety of lenses, which allows for multiple facets of the phenomenon to be revealed and understood’ (Baxter and Jack 2008, 544).

This study was approved by the ethics committee of the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham, and undertaken in line with University’s ethical guidelines.

Data collection

Participants were recruited through posting on the social media platforms Instagram and Facebook and in print form at a local community centre in southwest England, inviting participants who self-identified as larger-bodied to speak about their experiences in the gym. My sample included 14 self-identified larger-bodied people (5 men, 9 women) who all lived or worked within a 5-mile radius of a mid-size town in the southwest of England. Participants were between the ages of 19 and 62, with a mean age of 39 years. It was not a requirement for participants to be a current member of a gym, since the focus of this study was on experiences of the gym broadly and participants were encouraged to recall experiences from any locale at any period in their life. A supplementary on-site walking interview was undertaken with a gym manager from one of the gyms in the town where four participants were members; this data was used to provide a grounded sense of the environment and contextualise my participant narratives, but was not included in the thematic analysis. All participants identified as either white British or white Irish (n = 14) meaning experiences may not be reflective of those from other backgrounds. It is worthy of note that the participant demographic largely reflects that of the local population.

Self-identification was an appropriate method of recruitment as it avoided drawing rigid boundaries around categories of body types and minimised barriers to participation. Interviews took place from July to November 2019, with gym journals submitted on a rolling basis thereafter to help ‘capture more immediate observations and reflections on the micro-geographies of exercise experiences’ (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2018, 31) that may not be possible in interview settings. Journals were offered to all participants, with nine of these returned after a four-week period. The journals asked participants to record the date and duration of their workout, a general summary of the activity they undertook, and included a space to note down any immediate thoughts and feelings. They were then asked to rate their workout by circling a number from 1 to 10 to reflect the comfort and satisfaction of the activity, with a comment box to justify the quantitative evaluation of a qualitative experience. Extracts from participant journals will be indicated throughout in the following format: (Pseudonym, DD/MM/YYYY).

Interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom or Microsoft Teams video call, in order to give participants greater control of their environment given the sensitivity of the topic. For Avis (2005) virtual social interaction ‘leaves people undisturbed as far as possible’ and avoids extracting people from their environments and placing them in public or highly structured social settings. While undertaken remotely, video calling allowed for visual interaction between myself and the participant, allowing me to access the nuances of both verbal and non-verbal interview talk (Gee 1986; King 2008) and give attention to the embodiment of ideas through emotion, gestures, words and physicality as people attach meaning to experience. I employed a semi-structured interview guide; topics included motivations for using the gym, how and why participants identified as fat or larger-bodied, inclusion and exclusion in the gym, and emotions associated with exercising in the gym. Participants were encouraged to expand and change the direction of conversation as they wished. As Charmaz (2004) points out, the logic of the experiences studied is better understood this way, rather than simply imposing the researcher’s logic through an overly structured interview course. Interviews ranged in length from 16 to 68 minutes, with an average of 42 minutes. Each participant was anonymised chronologically under an alphabetical pseudonym; the first interview labelled Anna, the second Beth, and so on.

Data analysis

Coding

There is a school of research stating themes do not emerge from data (Braun and Clarke 2006; Miles and Huberman 1994). Rather, they are analytic outputs created by the researcher ‘at the intersection of data, analytic process and subjectivity’ (Braun and Clarke 2019, 594). I brought these elements together through an inductive approach to data collection, allowing themes to be identified from interviews and clear links to be established between my research objectives and findings from the raw data (Thomas 2003). To remain close to participants’ voices, drawing on an in vivo approach (King 2008), keywords and phrases used by participants were the basis for developing and naming the codes in my analysis (see Figure 1). Interviews were transcribed and annotated, then read several times to identify themes, labelling particular words and phrases used by the participants as codes for analysis (Seale and Kelly 1998). Highlighting was used to identify a total of 29 initial codes within participant responses, followed by a merging and sorting process to group these into shared themes and extract key quotations, illustrated by Figure 1. This allowed for systematic analysis and avoided establishing premature conclusions (Jackson 2001) while also preventing ‘cherry picking’, therefore enhancing rigour and ensuring inferences were meaningful (Baxter and Eyles 1997).

Figure 1. Thematic map illustrating coding and analysis framework.

Observations of body language were used to support coding, allowing where relevant, a reflection on how participants spoke and why this mattered. In presenting my results, these observations are interwoven, drawing attention to key examples where how what was said mattered in relation to my themes. Italics are used to draw attention to how participants spoke, reflecting their own emphasis within the narrative. This is an effective analysis tool within this study as sensitive experiences, involving stigma or discrimination, can result in specific use of language, rhetoric and common place phrases to frame certain experiences (Wiles, Rosenberg, and Kearns 2005). Investigating ‘textual content’ (Potter and Wetherell 1987) alongside oral and aural narratives (Gee 1986), allowed for interpretation of responses on several connected levels, providing a ‘richly textured and sensitive’ approach to interpretation of interview talk (Wiles, Rosenberg, and Kearns 2005, 11).

Findings and analysis: ‘figuring’ the gym

As shown in Figure 1, the concept of ‘figured space’forms the key analytic construct that arose from my analysis and is used as an overarching frame to capture the contentious reactions and readings of non-conforming larger bodies, and the spaces in which these occur. I put this construct forward as a useful device in studies of exercise/body size to articulate and express place-based exclusionary processes that draw boundaries around body-sized social categories, and to highlight the prejudice and exclusion that can be associated with existing in a larger body. In doing so, it hopes to bridge a gap in literature that overlooks the particular interaction between bodies and spaces of physical activity that contribute to the innate place-based narratives and biases present in spaces such as the gym. By ‘labelling’ this experience, I hope that it will bring attention to the unequal physical and emotional equity in access to physical activity for larger bodies. The inverse of this term, ‘dis-figuring’, refers to the ways figured spaces may be addressed in order to reshape attitudes and understandings of fatness within them.

I present three main themes which collectively illustrate the ways in which space is ‘figured’ (see Figure 1). Firstly, the gym acts as a mobilising space for the ideology of healthism, fostering the moralisation of health behaviours and creating a space in which to pursue the fatless ‘ideal’ body. Secondly, I address the hyper-visibility of larger bodies in the gym. This explores the ways the body becomes a visible manifestation of healthism and is subject to the scrutiny of other gym members. Factors including clothing, perceived ability and the panoptic quality of mirrors in the gym contribute to this. Finally, I examine the (im)mobility of larger bodies in the gym through the uneven intersection of health with identity and gender, which prompt new understandings of social relationships between people and place.

The pursuit of the ‘ideal’: obligation and discipline

I demonstrate how the ‘ideal’ is the physical embodiment of the valued body, characterised by the slim, fit and fatless aesthetic. The ‘fat’ body is often framed as deviant from the ‘ideal’, associating bodily largeness with character traits such as laziness and a failure to fulfil the moral imperative of health. The ‘ideal’ therefore acts as a difference-creating force, by distancing the fat body from the ‘normal’ other, thus positioning these bodies ‘out of place’. Participants’ narratives illustrate this by articulating particular character mechanisms (Cresswell 1996) such as ‘obligation’ and ‘discipline’ that relate valued behaviours to differentiate, classify, and naturalise certain bodies in the space of the gym. I argue these actions moralise health behaviours, informing ‘good health practices’ and by consequence people come to define themselves in relation to how well they adopt these practices and personality traits (Crawford 2006).

Obligation was expressed by the dual notion of ‘need’ and ‘work’ in relation to the body, positioning the hard-working body as a desired personality trait. This came about in two senses. Firstly, there was the notion that the body is in need of being worked. Anna, a creative professional and regular gym-goer described her gym classes as a ‘real work-out! It makes me feel like I’m really working my body’. She later added how she felt some classes were ‘not worthwhile unless you’ve worked your butt off and got something out of it!’ Here, the body is distanced from the pleasurable experience of exercising by measuring value based on the effect it has on the body – the harder one has worked, the greater the value of the activity. Daisy, who participates in circuit training at the gym, recalled a frequent desire ‘to just get the job over and done with’, showing how exercise is something she feels strongly obliged to do despite the experience not always being positive. She praised her mindset where she ‘gets in the zone. 45 minutes, job well done’. Referring to exercise as a ‘job’ implies there is an obligation whereby responsibility and necessity take precedence over eagerness or desire for completing an allocated task. This reflects the distancing of exercise away from an activity satisfying a broad range of wellbeing aspirations, towards a fundamental fulfilment of the moral imperative of health practice. The syntax of Daisy’s expression compounds time with completion of the task, denoting a desire for efficiency in exercising. For Daisy, minimal time with maximum output is a valued element of her exercise experience – this presents the physically active body as a subject of moral appraisal by coupling it with the productive, working body.

Secondly, obligation is reinforced through repetitive vocalisation of the body as something in ‘need’ of working on. Daisy felt the ‘need to work on some areas’ commenting ‘ … my muffin top needs to go’. Daisy reproduced the dominant narrative that equates the slim body with the healthy body, reifying the production of the ideal feminine body in the gym as fatless, or ‘muffin top-less’. Working on the body enforces the idea that the body is malleable, and its shape, size and performance is dictated by individual commitment to moulding each part through healthy practice. Perceiving the body in this way reflects the uptake of Johansson’s (1996) ‘ideology of the dissatisfied’ where normalising a dissatisfaction with one’s body enforces the need for physical change in order to achieve the arbitrary end goal of a desirable and healthy body. This idea supports Wiest, Andrews, and Giardina (2015, 22) who comment on how this relationship conjoining health and fitness ‘is a product of the contextual forces that make fitness a necessary constituent of healthiness’. I argue this shows how wider cross-cutting experiences of bodily dissatisfaction and the internalisation of cultural ideals on attractiveness (Tantleff-Dunn, Barnes, and Larose 2011) feature into the experiences of fat exercisers. Studies show that engagement with exercise behaviours to achieve the ‘thin ideal’ predicts increased body dissatisfaction and weight and shape concerns across a range of body types (Low et al. 2003; Shroff and Thompson 2006). In this way, the pursuit of an ‘ideal’ body does not separate the experience of that fat body, but affirms the desirability of socially defined ideals and the inescapable nature of idealised images of health and attractiveness in today’s society.

Participants also commented on how the space itself shaped their exercise behaviours. Ellie, a gym member in her early sixties, noted the journey she takes to reach the changing rooms and exercise studio inevitably involves walking through the ‘Health Café’. She commented, ‘the menus they provide … they’ve all got the calories of everything on them. But … .there are no puddings or brownies … they have chosen and decided for you that you don’t want to eat that food’. This demonstrates how the space of the gym is implicated as a structured pathway of decision-making from entry until exit, moulding controlled and regulated bodies who engage in morally appraised eating and drinking practices. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) recognise this unconscious behavioural influence as a ‘nudge’, which alter choices through shaping the environment in which these decisions are made. The choices available in the Café enforce behaviours deemed appropriate within the gym environment; consumer agency is removed by omitting choices which may tempt members to make morally ‘bad’ decisions when it comes to their consumption practices. Making certain food options ‘visible’ and others ‘invisible’ reifies the presence of health in all aspects of the gym, further entangling the ‘fit’ body as one which is inherently healthy. In this way, the discourse of healthism is exercised through the physical structures of the space, creating highly figured spaces, which endorse smaller, disciplined and aesthetically ‘healthy’ bodies over larger bodies.

Differentiation: the ‘normal’ and the ‘other’

While it was apparent the majority of exercising bodies, regardless of identifying as fat, experienced normative discontent, many participants felt there was a differentiating factor between their bodies and those of other gym users. As shown in Figure 1, differentiation was a strong theme where most participants had something to say. Participants frequently referred to the ‘normal’ person (participants Anna, Beth, Connor, Ellie, Frances, Ian, Jack and Max) representing a disjuncture between participants’ perceptions of themselves and others in the gym. The differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ creates a dominant and subordinate relationship between the so-called ‘fits’ and the ‘fats’. I argue this demonstrates a form of boundary-making through classification, distancing bodies through an evaluation of their physical characteristics. Differentiation mobilises ideological values about the healthy body which are then transmitted and enforced through the creation of a cyclical flow of ‘meaning, actions and places influencing, constituting, and structuring each other’ (Blaxter 1997, 747). In this way, the gym becomes inherently ‘figured’, contributing to the creation and reproduction of action-orientated (ideological) beliefs which value the fit body over the fat body. Connor (aged 54) emphasised how he feels out of place compared to other members of the gym, in both appearance and characteristics, noting ‘you’ve either got to be an older guy, of my vintage but muscular … .or you’ve got to be a young guy who is brazenly walking around with his muscles going … .which just isn’t me’. This notion was shared by Jack who felt the appearance of his exercising body was ‘way sweatier than any normal person’ which made him feel ‘just different to them’. The direct contrast between Connor/Jack and the other(s) reflects the tension between different bodies; the unhealthy, body-conscious ‘self’ and the healthy, confident ‘other’, suggesting differences in individual commitments to health. Connor considers two types of people who you have ‘got’ to be, inferring there is an identity and accompanying aesthetic appropriate for the gym environment. Both are referred to as ‘muscular’, overlooking the presence of the fat body. These ideas convey how everyday understandings of health directly influence the perceptions of people with larger bodies, and their experiences in the gym. Larger-bodied people are seen to defy the moral imperatives of good health by appearing not to adopt character mechanisms associated with healthy practice. Before they have even set foot in the gym, the pre-existing assumptions of the healthy body reify larger people as ‘out of place’ in this environment.

Participants’ narratives illustrate processes of territorialisation and the act of boundary-making, in a classification process akin to what Cresswell (1996, 149) argues is always ‘structured in relation to the unacceptable, the other, the dirty’ and (in)appropriately, the fat. This classification functions ‘below the level of consciousness and language, beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control by the will’ (Bourdieu 2010, 468) making it an oppressive invisible force shaping experiences of the gym. Anna commented on how she felt when exercising in the free-weights area of the gym:

It’s a very testosterone, grunting men and then like there’s an

element of like if I do this wrong [pause] … . I immediately feel like an intruder

and like I have to have a certain reputation or status to enter this area, which I

clearly don’t. Like not with a tum like this.

The positioning of Anna’s larger body as inferior to other bodies, notably the masculine body, exemplifies how these underlying structures of classification are internalised resulting in Anna feeling an ‘intruder’ in this space. The body becomes (size, appearance, style and mannerisms) a socio-material metaphor for an indicator of status; Anna directly dismisses her own (lack of) status due to her body featuring a ‘tum’. This places the requirement of a fit body as a prerequisite to exercise in this area of the gym. In the same way, Hannah commented on how she felt her larger body was ‘taking up a bigger space you know, a bit like, tidy, tidy, tidy, and then I know it’s horrible to say but, untidy’. I argue that the internalised classification of the body based on size, and subsequent ‘tidy’ or ‘untidy’ appearance further enforces the power of character mechanisms in depicting larger bodies as unkept in comparison to the smaller, fitter others. A common denominator for the ‘ideal’ body, is the absence of fat. Hannah’s experience of living in a bigger body and being comparatively untidy to her fitter and ‘tidier’ others, reflects how ‘fatness’ is characterised as a malleable state that appears to stand in opposition to being healthy. This implies that people in larger bodies are inherently unhealthy, attributing their undesirable figure to personality flaws. This produces a damaging misconception directly linking body appearance to health. This narrative is also reflected in Hannah’s attempt to correct herself mid-sentence, justifying her opinion on the untidiness of bodies by stating ‘it’s horrible to say’. Schegloff (1997) attributes these conversational features to an individual’s difficulty constructing the utterances that achieve social action, indicating that this was a problematic moment in the conversation for Hannah in admitting these preconceptions about fat bodies. This indicates Hannah is aware of the stigma surrounding fat bodies, yet actively reinforces it by engaging in the derogatory narrative around the fat aesthetic.

Presence: hyper-visibility and ‘belonging’ in space

I argue that visibility is a defining element of positive or negative experiences of the gym. This operates in two ways. Firstly, many participants felt hyper-visible when exercising in the gym, due to perceived visibility-enhancing factors, which heighten their own self-awareness. Conversely, other factors inspired self-assurance within participants, making visibility a desired (often imperative) element of their experience. As illustrated in Figure 1, four main factors arose that influenced how self-conscious participants felt when exercising in the gym: the body; clothing; competition; and mirrors. These factors place emphasis on the visual, positioning the gym as a ‘sensuous themescape’ (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2021, 4) and proved critical in connecting people to place through the multi-sensorial experience of the gym.

Connor demonstrates that he is alert to a disjuncture between his own body and the ‘ideal’ through his discomfort in having ‘rolls’. He describes ‘that roll that kind of sits there, when you sit down it’s over your belt … if I got rid of that I would be more comfortable in how I look in the gym’. The desire to modify the body shows motivations to exercise in the gym are not always the pursuit of health itself, but a healthy-looking body characterised by a fatless figure absent of ‘rolls’. Similarly, Hannah shares her unease around her abdomen, stating apologetically ‘I’m really aware of my mid-section, like I know I have rolls’. Hannah’s body language displayed her discomfort, covering her tummy with her hands and leaning forward, as if to hide it out of embarrassment. The recognition that she has ‘rolls’ and her apologetic tone can be read as a self-citing of failure to meet the moral imperative of healthism, rendering her body as less valuable than the ‘roll-free’ other. The internalisation of guilt and shame coupled with the constant evaluation of one’s body evidences an anxiety around fatness that can become a stigmatising force in the gym for larger-bodied people.

My findings reveal a link between appearance and one’s degree of visibility, materialised through clothing. Niamh, who uses the gym for boxing classes, commented ‘If somebody big came in, in say GymShark [popular brand name], I probably wouldn’t blink an eyelid, but if they came in really baggy hoodie and joggers, that would really stick out … ’. This demonstrates how clothing becomes a defining factor of visibility or invisibility through social recognition. Wearing a recognisable, fashionable brand insinuates that person embodies health beyond their exercise practice but also through their wider lifestyle choices. This positions bodies closer to the ‘ideal’, giving authority to a body and legitimising their presence within this landscape. For larger-bodied people, this legitimacy is harder to achieve due to the perception that these types of clothing are not deemed suitable for larger figures. This idea builds on the visceralities of the gym, brought to the forefront by Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg (2020, 6), which denotes the power of clothing to alienate bodies within space using the visuality of appearance to ‘connect bodies to representations, other bodies, and materials’. Ellie stressed how ‘tiny shorts and crop tops’ are fashionable, but it would be ‘inappropriate’ for her to dress like that and instead she chooses to put on a ‘baggy top or a less fitted T-shirt’. The prevalence of gym attire that is tight-fitting and revealing, reifies the slim, toned, and athletic body as one which is worthy of display and attention. Yet, it is considered unsuitable for larger bodied people to dress in such a way, confirming the presence of ‘unwritten social rules’ for bodies when it comes to exercise attire (Myre, Glenn, and Berry 2021). It also draws further attention to what we see in determining feelings of value and self-acceptance. These visceralities reify how the visible implicitly connects bodies to structures of power (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2020b), in this case purporting larger bodies as less aesthetically desirable and less worthy of exposure.

Furthermore, clothing makes visible the body parts people feel most conscious about, exposing them to the visual assessment of other gym-goers. Hannah chose to wear ‘black all the time’ so as to ‘not show that roll in the middle’. Similarly, Beth, a mother in her fifties, would always wear a lightweight gillet in the gym, stating ‘it’s really just because I wanted to cover up so people can’t see the things I don’t like bouncing around’. Beth and Hannah allude to the power of clothing to materialise the largeness of their own bodies in particular ways, using specific garment choices to render invisible the body features which they felt differentiated their bodies from the ‘ideal’. This has similarities with Colls (2006) account of women clothes shopping, noting that some women use clothing to normalise their own bodies ‘by covering up her bigness and slimming bodily boundaries so as not to be judged by other people’ (Colls 2006, 539). I tie these clothing practices to the gender-oriented works of Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg (2020) to show how clothing actively contributes to the materialisation of a figured hierarchy; the validation of the fit over the fat is evident in the hyper-visibility of the fit body through tight, revealing clothing, in contrast to the invisibility of the covered ‘fat’ body.

Participants frequently spoke of how competition with themselves and others was a powerful motivator for both the intensity of their workouts and their perceptions of themselves in the gym, giving rise to both positive and negative exercise experiences. I argue that the perception of competition in the gym becomes a visibility-enhancing factor by inducing a heightened sense of self-awareness. Beth expressed her preference for doing exercise classes ‘for the competition … .I won’t be the worst or the first one to stop’. Here, Beth’s self-assurance is inflated by evaluating her ability in comparison to others. The motivation that is inspired by out-performing someone else, or knowing there is someone ‘worse’ than you, demonstrates the underlying forces of classification at play by placing those with greater capabilities at the top of this hierarchy and according them higher worth than less-able bodies. Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg (2020) made similar observations, noting the double-edged nature of competition which can be a source of motivation and anxiety, simultaneously elevating some bodies in the social hierarchy of the gym and subordinating others. Performative expectations of certain bodies subsequently become figured, as well as the space itself; larger bodies are presumed as physically less fit and less capable, and by consequence less healthy than their counterparts. Francis, a rugby playing student, exemplified this when describing a message he received from a personal trainer after a workout which read, ‘you’ve left the 48s (weights) on the floor, I know you can’t lift 48s’. Francis’s (in)ability is determined from a distance by someone else, who assumes he is incapable without even seeing him. Being viewed as incompetent was a pervasive source of ‘frustration’ showing how self-esteem is rooted in social validation and recognition of physical competency. This suggests that, in line with Coen et al. (2020a) discussion of motivation in the gym, competitive comparisons largely act as a positive motivational factor ‘when the individual perceives themselves to occupy the upper-tier of the comparison’ (ibid, 324). In Francis’ case, the perception of his larger body appears to demarcate the boundaries of his physical (in)ability, positioning him at the lower end of that comparison. The positioning and repositioning of bodies in the gym through competition shows how people and place iteratively shape each other, creating a deeply figured environment, which casually dismiss fat bodies as inherently less capable than the fit body.

In a similar vein, an unspoken competitive pressure was felt when exercising amongst others. Francis commented about his apprehension when using the free weights in front of others who ‘ … are almost sizing you up, like ‘oh yeah I’m bigger than him” making him feel ‘so self-conscious’. This reflects the naturalised orders of classification at work within the gym environment operating to differentiate bodies through judgement of their perceived ability, linked to their physical size. Expectations about behaviour in place therefore become fundamental to the construction and maintenance of healthism; the adoption of masculine behaviours driven by an aesthetic to ‘look enormous’ operate to make people of physically larger bodies feel ‘consciously’ smaller and consequently inferior to other members. These behavioural expectations are imbued with power relations, serving the interests of those at the top of the social hierarchy, relating to a position in social structure with certain actions in space. This presents an interesting contrast to Coen et al. (2020b) who talks about how masculinities are seen to take up space sonically and visually, yet here the masculine tendency to take up space operates negatively for people with larger bodies. This difference can be more fully appreciated when we bring considerations of body size to the fore, which complicate traditional gender hierarchies and encourage discussions about the disjuncture between different understandings of what it means to be large. The normalisation of this competitive landscape where, as one participant Ian, put it, ‘sizing everyone else up is just a gym thing’ positions the gym as a place for scrutiny but also self-evaluation in comparison to others.

Foucault’s (1977) ideas about the function of mirrors can be extended to the gym. My findings reveal how mirrors encourage body scrutiny by centralising the physical appearance of the exercising body and the gaze of the ‘other’. The majority of participants commented on the discomfort of their own reflection. Hannah felt mirrors heightened her awareness of her own body affecting her exercise practice, noting how she tells herself ‘don’t look at your mid-section, like don’t bring attention to it’. Mirrors bring a panoptic quality to the gym (Markula and Pringle 2006), reflecting the gaze of other gym members, but also accentuating a participant’s own gaze and visual perception of their own body. Their own self-scrutiny as a self-perceived outsider, now on the inside, can be seen in Hannah’s internal evaluation of her body, notably her ‘mid-section’. The power of the ‘inspecting gaze’ (Foucault 1977) interiorises each participant as their own overseer, as each individual exercises surveillance over and against themselves.

Overall, the visibility of the body becomes enhanced through the interconnecting power of clothing, an awareness of a deviance from the ‘ideal’ body, and the competitive nature underlying exercise performance. These factors are intensified through the panoptic gaze facilitated by mirrors within the gym.

Knowledge is power

Negative experiences did not totally negate all positive experiences. Visibility became a desirable feature under certain circumstances with the gaze of others positively affecting gym experiences for larger-bodied people. These factors operate collectively to boost confidence in participants, enhancing their sense of belonging.

Most participants felt most confident when they felt they knew what they were doing, and more importantly, when they were seen to know what they were doing. This highlights the role of what is visual in achieving social validation. Hannah felt her most positive experiences of the gym occurred when she ‘knew exactly what was going on’, an experience often coupled with a feeling of ‘owning the place’. The regularity of exercising in the gym and her increased familiarity with equipment appears to legitimise her body, and give her authority. Hannah continued along this line of thought describing how ‘knowing other people at the gym … being that person who chatted to the instructor … . It’s obvious you know what you’re doing, you’re a big dog’. The reference to a slang term ‘big dog’ emphasises the control attributed to the knowledgeable body, authorising her presence in this space regardless of her size. In a gym environment, identity formation is consistent with Weiss (2001) who emphasises how self-awareness needs reinforcement at a social level, whereby satisfaction comes from the attention and approval of society. Regardless of any physical evidence of success, Hannah positively self-evaluates based on the internal belief that recognition is coming from other gym members or instructors. This reinforces Weiss’s (2001) conclusion that ‘we cannot have any self-awareness, when cut-off from contact with other human beings’, rearticulating the way people and place iteratively shape individual experiences of the gym and the emotion when exercising in the presence of others.

Conversely, the fear of not knowing what one was doing was a common feature of interviews. Connor commented on how he felt the gym ‘is an area where you stand out if you don’t know what you are doing’, with Georgie echoing this noting how ‘being bigger, people make the assumption that I don’t know what I am doing’. Both Connor and Georgie’s responses reinforce notions of being ‘out of place’ (Cresswell 1996) reflecting the alienation of the larger body from the healthy body who is perceived to be confident and knowledgeable. This augments the ‘emotional weight’ (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2020a, 322) carried by some bodies to perform correctly in order to legitimise their position in the gym. Beth deepened this argument describing how they made specific choices in their exercise practices to avoid being ‘the new girl who doesn’t know anyone’. Beth prefers attending classes as she felt she could ‘just follow on, copy until you get the gist of it’. This shows how classes composed of multiple people, often of different ages and abilities, allow an individual to become less visible and less comparable to other bodies. Lewis, an older gym member who enjoys pilates classes, associated group exercise with feeling ‘less insecure, especially when everyone is doing the same thing’. By engaging in collective exercise, there is less opportunity to differentiate between bodies, therefore mitigating orders of classification and hierarchy. In this way, knowledge can be positioned as an overriding force of the figured space; being seen to know what you are doing accentuates a desire for visibility, elevating the self-assured, confident body up naturalised hierarchies driven by aesthetic and physical ability. The combination of visibility-enhancing factors augment the presence of larger bodies in the gym; exposing larger bodies to scrutiny and surveillance on the one hand, while offering an opportunity to enhance the legitimacy of other bodies on the other.

Mobilities: intersections of gender and body size

I present mobility as a concept that influences both the physical movement of bodies through space, but also participants’ emotional freedom afforded by powers which act to confine bodies to certain spaces. Bodies are inherently gendered and often categorised on physicality (Bondi and Davidson 2005). The gym is an exceptionally gendered environment which has both spoken and unspoken norms about how we participate in different spaces (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2018, 2020, 2021). In this theme, I point towards the intersection of body size and gender by acknowledging the microgeographies of moving through the gym in a gendered way, and the layered experience this creates when additional boundaries around body-size co-exist. Sheller and Urry’s (2006) new mobilities paradigm provides a lens in which to understand an interplay between these socio-spatial figuring processes, which mobilise the ‘fit’ and immobilise the ‘fat’ within the gym environment.

While data from participants’ gym journals show preferences for duration, location, and constitution of workouts, they also reflect the subtle boundary-making processes at play in the gym. Most profoundly were gender-orientated boundaries; spatialities of the gym and the type equipment used can be linked to the fulfilment of gendered exercise practices, in line with previous research that has detailed the gendered nature of gym environments (Coen, Davidson, and Rosenberg 2018, 2020, 2021).

Daisy’s final gym journal entry (30/07/2019) noted the use of ‘leg machines and free-weights’ locating her workout in the ‘free-weights section’. This was unusual given her previous entries positioned her primarily in cardio areas or studios for classes. Daisy quantified her experience as a 3 out of 10, commenting how she was ‘the only female at the time’ in the free weights section, she felt ‘daunted’ and did not stay in this area because ‘she couldn’t work out what weight to use’ and feared for looking like ‘an idiot’. The combination of not knowing what to do and feeling uncomfortable in her body as the only woman reifies the masculinity of this particular area of the gym, exposing Daisy not only for her lack of knowledge but also by positioning her feminine body as out of place in this space. Daisy’s perceptions and feelings are neither located solely within her own body, or produced by the gym or the people in it alone, but occur as a circulation of affects between her own body, the other (men) members and the intersectional figured and gendered space of the gym.

Francis documented an experience of a ‘leg-day’ workout with two male friends (26/08/2019) which involved the use of the adductor (inner thigh) machine. He described this experience as ‘awkward’ as none of the other men would touch this specific machine, labelling it the ‘career-ender’ and ‘emasculating’. Here, the choice of language reflects the gendering of certain equipment; the pressure to satisfy gendered practices in the gym becomes a powerful force in prescribing the space and mode of workouts, thus dictating the mobility of masculine or feminine, fit or fat bodies within the gym. A socio-spatial divide is therefore created where mobility can be enhanced or restricted. Sheller and Urry (2006) relate high mobility to a well-connected professional who works from home – yet, I suggest this can be applied to people who embody the fit ‘ideal’ and are considered ‘belonging’ in the gym. Comparatively, a person of low mobility may move as a secondary effect to someone else, perhaps a child moving between households of divorced parents (ibid). Parallels can be drawn with larger bodies in the gym, exemplified by Daisy moving out of the free-weights area as a secondary effect of the gender-exclusive environment created by the presence of the (masculine) other. The mobility of larger bodies becomes bounded, relegating them to the ‘slow lane’ (Pooley, Turnbull, and Adams 2006) through their restricted socio-spatial capacity, competency, and agency. In line with Sheller and Urry’s (2006) new mobilities paradigm, it is recognisable that the relationship between space and place and participants is intrinsically connected to the ways they move (or are unable to move); Daisy’s ‘daunted’ experience, and Francis’ ‘awkward’ workout reflects the identity-driven gendered powers that shape the manifold ways in which people, objects and ideas move on a variety of scales.

I argue that Williams (2018) application of the social gradient to body weight, can be extended further to address a ‘mobility gradient’. Fat bodies are positioned at the lower end of the mobility gradient and experience restricted capacity around their exercise behaviours due to inequalities in the perception of their bodies. This creates a corresponding gradient which draws parallels to inequalities in physical and emotional mobility; the figured and gendered powers within the gym regulate who ‘belongs’, and who can or cannot move freely. I argue these different social contexts provide ambivalent ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979) which place ‘healthy’ bodies in the ‘fast lane’, enhancing their mobility within the gym. The new mobilities paradigm can be applied in this sense to suggest that smaller bodies are afforded relative freedom of mobility, allowing them to enter and re-enter spaces of health with less expectation of fear or judgement, contrary to the experience of fat bodies in the ‘slow lane’. The uneven mobility, between the fit and the fat, and man and woman, are constantly created and recreated by the place-specific mobilisation and demobilisation of certain bodies over others.

Conclusion

The key analytic construct ‘figuring’ put forward in this paper helps to theoretically advance work on body size and exercise by offering a way to conceptualise the role of environment (e.g. exercise contexts) in shaping boundaries of bodily difference. This study expands our empirical understanding of people’s experiences in gym environments by rendering visible the socio-spatial processes that create boundaries around participation in the gym along the lines of body size. In terms of practice, my findings point to the need to intervene in the social and spatial dimensions of the gym, and potentially other exercise environments, to promote equity in access to physical activity. While this study has very real practical implications in terms of participation in physical exercise for those that identify with this community, the findings also offer useful insights to healthcare providers in encouraging physical activity among their patients and fitness professionals to be more sensitised to fat experiences when working with diverse populations.

The gym provides insight into the socio-spatial processes which manifest, routinise and reinforce figured spaces of health, and the attitudes towards fatness within them. In line with my research objectives, my findings illustrate how the gym mobilises the ideology of healthism, fostering the moralisation of health behaviours in the pursuit of the fatless ‘ideal’ body. Preconceptions of the ‘fit’ body compared to the ‘fat’ body are internalised, alienating larger-bodied people, disempowering their presence in the gym and instilling a feeling of being ‘out of place’. Consequently, the gym becomes an inherently ‘figured’ space, contributing to the creation and reproduction of action-orientated (ideological) beliefs which value the ‘fit’ body over the ‘fat’ body. The body is also seen as a visible symbol of healthism. My findings showed there is discomfort around the hyper-visibility of the body in the gym, exacerbated through clothing, comparisons of physical ability and the presence of mirrors enhancing awareness of the size and reception of their bodies. The cumulative and intersecting power of these factors deepen the figured nature of the gym, positively endorsing the fatless, fashionable, and capable body over the polarised larger body.

It is important to note that the findings from this study must be contextualised as grounded in the experiences of people who were willing or in a position to talk about these issues. People experiencing particularly distressing instances of body size discrimination or harassment may not have come forward. Indeed, people who are made to feel most problematic on account of body size may avoid public exercise spaces such as the gym. The participant population was primarily white British, which points to the need for greater diversity to better understand experiences of the gym across a greater range of racialised and minority identities. Future research should seek to sensitively explore these perspectives.

In line with healthism, understandings of health generate a ‘politics that individualises human worth, essentializes variations in human capacities … and discriminates against, constrains, or excludes those found biologically abnormal’ (Rose 2001, 2). This study recognises that dis-figuring understandings of health and fatness requires addressing the deeper social and spatial structures that underlie fat oppression and exclusion in order to promote equity in access to physical activity for everybody.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Stephanie Coen, my undergraduate supervisor, for her continued support, expertise, and guidance throughout my research project, and critical reviews and feedback on this manuscript. Further to this, I would like to thank all the interviewees, who gave up their time to reflect upon and share their honest experiences of the gym, and for their genuine and generous interest in supporting me with this project. I would like to acknowledge the Geographies of Health & Wellbeing Research Group for recognising my dissertation with their Annual Undergraduate Dissertation Prize, and for their invaluable feedback and support in relation to my work.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

There was no financial support received for the conduct of research and/or preparation of this article.

Notes on contributors

Charlotte Ross

Charlotte Ross completed her Honours Bachelor of Arts in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom) where her undergraduate dissertation focused on the lived experiences of larger-bodied people within gym environments. Her research interests include critical geographies of health, qualitative and creative research methods, and emotional geographies.