misplaced anger

Veldes' article is the first of those we have read thus far that I am in complete disagreement with.  Granted, it sucks that she had to pursue a field that was not her passion for so long just because she comes from a lower class family and had to pay the bills. But I think she is taking out her years of frustration and debt on the fitness world far too harshly.  Her particular method of exercise, aerobics, does have lots of sexual connotations associated with it. The spandex, the thongs, the smiles, the big hair, we're all well acquainted with it. And its true that all of this sexualization of aerobics has to do with men. But to say "the gym has really become just another painful way we are all distracted from the serious business of our lives" is quite close-minded.

Valdes' particular experience with the gym and exercise appears to have been quite negative. Aside from it keeping her from her true dreams, she clearly was exposed to the ugly side of fitness; that of starving oneself, bingeing on cocaine, over-exercise etc. For many women, the gym has become a tool of the patriarchal society we live in, where women nearly kill themselves trying to achieve perfection [for a man]. But that is not the case for myself, or for nearly all of the girls whom I associate with. 

I recently met with an energy healer, Sean, who was teaching me about the powers of meditation. He was trying to explain to me what the moment of "peace" (that one reaches when they become good at meditating) is like. He was trying to relate it to something I may have already experienced in my life, so he asked me what my hobbies were. I told him how I run every day. He said, perfect. "Runner's high" is a term commonly used to mean the feeling one achieves after you've been running for a long time, and you no longer feel the pain of running on your body anymore. For those who haven't experienced it, its as if you lose feeling in all your appendages, you feel nothing, but in a good way; no, in an amazing way. You could run for hours and hours and hours. Sean told me that a Runner's High is very similar to that which he achieves when he meditates, an out of body experience during which you feel totally at peace with yourself and the world. I go to the gym everyday without fail to feel this way, as well as to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Now tell me, how is that feeding into patriarchal society? How is that 'distracting me from the serious business of my life'?

 

Before I came to Colgate, I was a full-time athlete. I played on a varsity sport for fall, winter, and spring, every season from my freshman to senior year. I could talk for hours about the merits of participating on these teams, and one thing I know for sure, is that none of these merits had anything to do with boys. When I was on the field or court, the only thing that mattered in the world was the game, it was my escape. I loved being able to clear my head of everything that was bothering me, which at the ages of 15-18, was 80% boy problems. None of the pressures of the outside world (the patriarchal outside world) mattered when I was playing. And yes, Ms. Valdes, we wear skirts and spandex when we play field hockey and lacrosse, but I couldn't have cared less how I looked in them, I was just trying to bring my stats up.