A new you, or just the old stereotypes?

Along with the New Year comes an announcement that Cosmopolitan Body, Cosmopolitan’s health and fitness spin-off magazine, has been researching what scares people about the gym.

You might think the scariest thing about the gym is the cost, or the time it takes, but apparently you’d be wrong. Cos Body has labelled the phenomenon of being self conscious in the gym “gymtimidation”. Its findings include the following.

•Women are more self-conscious than men
With all the media pressure for women to look a certain way, up to the point where they pay huge sums of money to have bits cut off them or chemical substances inserted into them, it is hardly surprising that women feel intimidated.

•Men’s biggest fear is not knowing what they are doing
Again, this plays up to that old stereotype: if a man can’t immediately master a piece of machinery, he is somehow inferior and not a true man.

Further findings are that men also worry about what other men will think about them and women worry about how men and other women will judge them. There doesn’t seem to be a finding for men worrying about how women will judge them. 

Both sexes are worried about the lack of privacy in the changing rooms.  Only 27% of men and 3% of women are completely comfortable walking around naked in the changing rooms: leaving a vast majority of gym users unhappy with the facilities, one assumes. The survey began by looking into use of the gym as a place to get fit and healthy, but here it is equating fitness with body image, like so much of the media. The next question asked respondents to vote for the “hottest celebrity bodies”.

Perhaps it is hard for gyms to get money off people by just promoting themselves as places where you can get fit. Perhaps it’s easier for them to pray on people’s insecurities about not measuring up to media images of what looks good, or acceptable, and get people to part with their dosh in the hope of looking a bit better physically.  Indeed, just over a third of women in the survey admitted that they were mainly using the gym to lose weight.

“It’s frustrating that having made the effort to get to the gym women then beat themselves up once they get there. They need to apply the same mental toughness they use in everyday life and break free of their limiting self-belief,” said Louise Court, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan Body, in a welcome admission that women are under too much media pressure. She went on to stress the health benefits of the gym, saying, “Everyone has insecurities, but they shouldn’t stop anyone from what they want to achieve. Exercise is challenging, it’s all about putting your mind to it. By thinking positively and focusing on the end result, you can ultimately get to a place where you feel better about yourself and make 2014 your healthiest year yet.”

•The full results appear in the new issue of Cosmopolitan Body.

PS: Just to underline how other parts of the media are pushing body image as a way of selling products, “beauty brand” Cocoa Brown remarks that, “With January upon us, the inevitable post-Christmas dieting misery is back with vengeance.” Don’t worry, readers, help is at hand. You can buy Cocoa Brown’s one hour tan mousse and “tan yourself slim”. You couldn’t make it up.