Society has taught men to chase women. Everywhere.
Men chase women at coffee shops, at the grocery store, in the restroom line (which I actually find to be pretty clever because the girls can’t escape), at church (“Oh hay girl, I like the way you prayyyy”), on the freeway, just everywhere. However, the one place I find really annoying where men chase women is at the gym.
Veiny-armed man in tight dri-fit shirt: “Hey, do you need some help lifting the 45’s off that bar?”
Girl in sports bra and black yoga pants: “Ohhhh hehehehehehe, only if you don’t mind.”
WHAT was that? And ladies, you are enabling this behavior. What I really don’t understand is why girls that wear booty shorts to the gym get mad that guys stare at their ass.
The gym is my sanctuary from the series of stressful or embarrassing (usually both) events that make up my everyday life – work, neurotic family members, rush hour traffic, everything. Exercise is also the yin to the sweet tooth’s yang.
Skinny probably 20-year old Asian guy waving 5 times: “Hi there. Hey. Hello. Ahem, hi. Um, I couldn’t help but notice you might be doing your deadlifts wrong.”
Me: “Actually, no I’m doing them right. I was waiting for you to finish with the 70lb barbell so I could use it, but you looked like you were struggling so I went with the 75. You’re going to throw out your back out if you keep letting the weight pull your shoulders forward. Maybe you should go lighter til you’re strong enough to do them properly.”
Yes, I’m a bitch. Would you interrupt a meditating monk to ask if the towel service is free for all members? No.
So leave me alone when I’m in the zone and trying to get a good workout in. And I’m not even going to delve into detail about the weird old guys with Asian girl fetishes. Ok lurky 60-year old Spanish man, I really don’t care if you can speak Japanese. I can’t. And stop watching me in the mirror.
I’ve always been about comfort and efficiency at the gym, and never dressed girly to exercise – just the normal t-shirt and running shorts. But after being interrupted (and creeped out) enough times, I did what any girl who wanted their solitude back would do.
I started to dress like a man.
I have an endless supply of basketball shirts from the tournaments and leagues I play in, and made cut-offs out of a number of them. And I don’t mean the Carl’s Jr. commercial cutesy crop-top cut-off t-shirt, or even the cut-offs of a Never Nude. I mean a DUDE’s cut-off. And I even made them out of gray shirts so you could see my sweat. I would pair them with the baggiest of my basketball shorts and crew socks pulled up. Oh yeahhhhh, no one’s going to bother me now.
It definitely worked for a while, but it really didn’t last long. One of the employees at my gym started to make pretty normal small talk with me regularly. “Is that a Keppel basketball sweatshirt? Shawty, you play ball for MARK KEPPEL HIGH SCHOOL? You look like you still play in high school. HAAAAA.”
It was a girl. And she was big. And aggressive. She knew my name even though I never gave it to her.
After workouts, I normally hop over to the basketball court to shoot around if it’s empty. It was too crowded to shoot one day, so I turned around resolving to go home. Aforementioned she-brute was RIGHT behind me but played it off like she was intending to go into the employee break room. As she opened the door, she looked me up and down and said “You not gon’ BALL today gurrrrl?” I said no, and that it was too crowded and I didn’t want to play pick-up with those boys. She said, “Oh come on, you can BAWLL girl. I seen you on the cameras and in the hallway bawwwwllin dem foos up.”
She’s watched me. On the security cameras. And from the window in the hallway peeking into the gym. A lot.
I stopped going to that gym for a month after that and went back to delightfully find that she no longer worked there. Now, I dress for the gym with hopeless androgyny aiming to confuse people, ultimately getting bothered by neither sex. I want to be left alone.
So alone that here I am, writing about going to the gym instead of actually going. Here’s another update from my Holiday Bake-A-Thon 2012 – the lemony yang to my cross training yin.
I found this recipe on Martha Stewart. I chose these because lemon is a great compliment for tea, though there is no actual tea in these cookies themselves. The cookies themselves were good and really easy to make, but what I really liked was the tart glaze. I’ll totally use it for something else in the future – maybe atop some scones or muffins?
Here are the directions for the glaze as taken from Martha’s website.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
- 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
Directions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 cups confectioners’ sugar, 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest, and 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice until smooth.
After zesting the lemons for the glaze, I squeezed out the lemon juice on top of the zester to catch the seeds instead of picking them out after the fact. Those slippery things are too hard to grab sometimes. And no, not like that.
Overall, the cookies were really refreshing!
AT-AT Everywhere 
