Last week, I went down to get the mail from box in the foyer of our apartment building and found this charming bookmark-sized flyer sticking out of the top of each mailbox along the wall:
Image Description: The bookmark-sized flyer is a coupon for a free one-week trial membership at Boston Sports Club, a local gym franchise. The text on the flyer is black on white reading “Reading Expands Your Mind. Sitting Expands Your Butt.”
It was something about the heady combination of book hatred, body hatred, and invasion of my personal space (er, mailbox) that momentarily filled me with such rage that I had this vision of myself setting fire to the leaflet and letting the thing burn before dropping it in the toilet.
And filming the whole thing so I could email it to the BSC marketing department.
Just to let them know they’d lost a potential customer.
I haven’t done this yet, but as you can see I still have the flyer and every so often I consider actually following through on my evil plan.
Why, you may ask, do I have such pent-up animosity towards the neighborhood gym?
For the past few years, Hanna and I have been observing the marketing strategies of the various gyms around Boston (note: I have never lived in a place with such a high gym-to-population saturation level!), and Boston Sports Club is consistently the most in-your-face with their messaging. Other gyms might make flexible hours or convenience to work a selling point, their on-site-trainers, or the fact that they’re women only. But Boston Sports Club relies 100% on peddling shame and anxiety.
“Two-thirds of Americans are overweight,” reads another advertisement at the gym I walk passed on the way home from work, “come see how the other third lives.” As if people who are “overweight” and people who exercise are two completely different demographics.
Other ad campaigns have encouraged people to worry about their bodies in relation to bathing-suit season, and about food consumption during the holidays. None of this is particularly novel — lifestyle magazines for both women and men have been successfully selling these messages for the past hundred years, at least.
But the constant exposure to these ads on the street and in my freakin’ apartment building is grating and has started to provoke feelings of rage. After finding the flyer in our mailbox, I happened to walk by a BSC promo table outside the local CVS and was this close to stopping and reasonably explaining my rage:
“Excuse me,” I had the script all worked out in my head, “I just wanted to let you know that I find your advertising strategy so offensive that I will never, ever purchase any of your services, and I will strongly recommend to anyone that asks that they find a gym that doesn’t resort to body shame as a marketing strategy.”
It seemed a little rude to just dump all that on the two lackeys who were probably just college students working a $8/hour summer job. So I didn’t stop.
The next time I walked past the BSC with the “two-thirds” sign in the window I gave the establishment the finger.
With both hands.
(Much to the alarm of the man who happened to be exiting the building as I walked past.)
Hanna and I have talked about their approach and come to the conclusion that body shame must work to get people in the door buying memberships — but probably not much else. Certainly the best research on self-care is that self-hatred and shame is not a motivator in terms of changing harmful behavior. So even if the goal of the BSC is to encourage people to exercise, this is a piss-poor way of doing so. Even from a bottom-line standpoint, I doubt it’s going to do much by way of retaining customers. So they must be counting on a high and continuous turn-over in memberships to be sustainable.
Or they’re just convenient to where people live or work, and the convenience factor out-weighs the insult factor (which is actually, I think, the most likely scenario).
I haven’t torched the flyer yet. But it’s an option I’m still considering. Because if there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s one more piece of paper telling us to hate our bodies — and the conflation of intellectual activity with getting FAT OMG.
tl; dr: Boston Sports Club = For The Lose.
I used to belong to BSC, had a trainer, and even interviewed to work there. I was APPALLED at the way the gym ran, hired, and even spoke to some of their customers. After my contract was up, I did not renew and switched to working out at home.
Probably the biggest issue I had was the employees complains about their customers…not everyone in a gym is going to be skeleton!!! The fat shaming was insane and I think stemmed from the fact the majority of their employees are college aged kids, and disproportionately male at that.
Bottom line…set the thing on fire…if you want a gym environment there are much better ones in the area that will make you feel good, not bad, about being there.
Anna, let me try to answer this as a “gym rat” who spends a lot of my time there…
In my experience, places like this are really lousy at actually trying to draw in customers. Preying on insecurities and fat-shame is a really EASY way to get people in the doors – but it rarely keeps them there. Either because 1.) the people will meet their weight-loss goal and leave, or 2.) the rampant fat-shame inside will drive them off. But it basically is a cycle of self-loathing – a place like this will need to be in a constant state of advertising, since it’ll never keep customers for long. Gymns do better business when they create spaces people want to be in long-term – and weight loss is generally not a long term goal. Everybody eventually needs to hit maintenance.
I belong to a gym that is, honestly, a “muscles gym.” Which basically means for people who really aren’t trying to lose weight. Most are athletes, or trying to gain or something along those lines. I have seen female weightlifters who are by no means thin – and who could scare most men with their strength. But this gym, above all, is just engaging in really bad business strategy; why would you attempt to get somebody in through shame, shame them until they reach a designated goal, and then they’ll leave when they do not have the source of the shame anymore? It makes no sense, from a business perspective.
Ugh. I used to belong to NYSC, which is the same company. I joined them because they were close to my office and I stayed as long as I did because the yoga classes were good. But I hated the fat shaming ads. And the personal trainers who sat on the mats while their clients exercised, taking up space that paying customers could’ve been using to stretch, etc.
They didn’t seem to care about keeping members. Every January, the place would be full of New Years resolutioners who had no idea about gym ettiquette (seriously – one woman came into yoga class and placed her mat overlapping on 5 other people’s mats). Then those people would stop coming because the gym was too crowded, but their bank accounts would keep getting billed because they’d signed a contract for the whole year.
If the company actually cared about getting those people to stick around, they’d manage the crowds better.
Anna, I agree that the tactics are utterly ridiculous.
I don’t go to gyms at all, ever, for a couple of reasons.
First, I’m fat, and I don’t have energy to deal with the bullshit I get just by being fat in public, let alone fat in a gym. (It’s one of those lose-lose situations where if I don’t exercise, I’m a Fatty McFat headed toward Disaster and Death, and if I do exercise, I’m a Super Gross Fat Person and I offend people’s sensibilities.) Just, no.
Second, I’m taking full-time grad classes, working a part-time job, and I have a limited amount of “down” time — I’m not going to spend it doing something I hate in a place full of people who hate me.
My partner and I have decided that we want to get a stationary bike (it’s been 106ºF here for the last couple days, so outdoor anything is not happening); I want one with a place to set up a book.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a stationary bike in the privacy of my home with a place where I could read while cycling? And wouldn’t it be awesome if a gym tried an ad where they encouraged just that: reading while exercising? Instead of book hatred and body hatred, we could have something like:
“Reading engages the mind. Come engage your body, too! [And then in small text:] Bring your favorite book to our exercise machines to give your mind, body, and soul a wonderful workout!”
Okay, so it sounds kind of cheesy, but seriously. Or, the gym could do some sort of licensing agreement with Amazon/Kindle or whatever and offer a selection of free audio books to members, so you could listen while you exercise.
I currently have the holy grail of personal trainers. No fat shaming, no body shaming about what my body can’t do, just a great workout tailored to ME.
Gyms have always made me uncomfortable, even when I was thin, because I have RA and even when I looked “fit” I could barely lift the 1 lb weight. Very intimidating. There are **A LOT** of people with physical disabilities who would love to work out but just aren’t treated as potential customers.
Can you imagine how awesome a gym would be to advertise “got a bad back? sore knees? can’t touch your toes? are you very weak? we can help you work around these issues and get stronger! come in today!” That gym would be flooded with members. And I’ll bet they would be loyal too.
@Skada and Ms. M – I’m not a gym member, and if a gym did what either of you said, I would so be there!
I exercise at home and play a team sport, and see this activity as much as the reading/thinking/discussion and activism I do as part of my feminist praxis.
Linking the exercise thing and the reading/thinking thing – FTW!
Such a giant FAIL. It seems that the Gym Industrial Complex has determined that fat-shaming brings in more cash than “do this for your health.”
I used to belong to the very trendy gym Equinox in New York (to be fair, I was grandfathered in after they bought the much less fancy gym I had gone to for years) and it was almost comical how they sold themselves as a gym for people with hot bods. Unlike other gyms I’d been to in NYC, their trainers were all sleek, shiny, and model-gorgeous. I’ve had trainers (esp. for Pilates) who came in all body types, but not at Equinox. It was aspirational all the way. If you weren’t already thin, fit and conventionally attractive you’d never in a million years join Equinox. You’d think that would DECREASE their business because fewer people would want to join, but I guess there are enough thin, vain, self-hating people in NYC that they keep Equinox going (rich, too, b/c that place ain’t cheap).
Now I belong to the employee gym at the big corporation where I work, which is way more egalitarian in terms of age and size. For years I worked out at the YMCA, which was the same. The Y is actually a great place to work out if you hate the lookiness of the Gym Industrial Complex. Old people, young people, fat people, thin people, people with disabilities…they all show up at the Y.
BSC: false dichotomy much? Someone still angry at the smart kids in high school?
If you want an awesome gym, healthworks has all kinds of clients and trainers, and crossfit fenway has a noticeably feminist slant.