If You Don’t Want Men Looking at You, You Probably Shouldn’t Dress Like This at the Gym

Pick a lane already

There are these fantastic lyrics in Eminem’s song The Monster that read:

I wanted the fame but not the cover of Newsweek.

Oh well, guess beggars can't be choosey.

Wanted to receive attention for my music.

Wanted to be left alone in public, excuse me.

For wantin' my cake, and eat it too, and wantin' it both ways.

That is just brilliant all the way around. The way he rhymed it, the words he chose, the way he referred to his well-known struggles with being famous, and his admission that yes, he’s being a little hypocritical. You don’t get to be one of the most successful rappers on earth and not get overloaded with attention. You don’t get to have fame and anonymity at the same time. You have to pick a lane.

That brings me to a video that has gotten an enormous amount of attention on Twitter over the last few days:

Joey Swoll @TheJoeySwoll

Women are harassed in gyms and it needs to stop, but you are not one of them. An act of kindness or a glance does not make you a victim.

John Hawkins @johnhawkinsrwn

@DelusionPosting Why does it always seem like the sort of women that complain about the, "amount of sexualization" they're receiving are always wearing the skimpiest outfits they can find and then complain when men look at them? Pick a lane...

Essentially, this woman (who is an OnlyFans model by the way) is dressed in body-hugging, skin-tight clothes, has a camera set up, and is muttering loudly to herself. She got extremely agitated and upset by this guy who glanced over at her a few times. It’s worth noting that he’s not just standing there staring at her the whole time. Additionally, in the part of the gym he’s working in, she happens to be in his peripheral vision. So, given the situation, it would have been a surprise if he HADN’T GLANCED her way a few times over the course of several minutes.

At the end of the clip, after she struggles a bit putting plates on the bar, the guy walks over and politely offers to help her put some weight on it. She declines and he walks away. Maybe he wanted to hit on her, didn’t get good vibes, and left or maybe he genuinely was just being helpful. Anyone who has worked with those bars when they’re on the ground can tell you from experience that it can sometimes be kind of a pain to put weight on them.

Well, not only did she put the clip above out for all to see, trying to smear this poor guy, but she has this up:

Castrate him! Take him out! Send him to jail. For… what? Nothing bad happened to her. She wasn’t assaulted, raped, threatened, or put in danger. After she engaged in all sorts of behavior designed to draw attention, he GLANCED AT HER a few times. Ironically, she then took that video and chose to put it online as part of an effort to….get more men to look at her.

Women Posting Their L’s Online (Cult Leader) @WomenPostingLs

This woman. Ugh.

First of all, before we get into this, I want to note that I have been lifting weights on and off since high school. I’ve probably worked out at a dozen+ different gyms over the course of my life and personally, despite the impression you may get from occasional social media clips like this, I think gym culture is one of the healthiest cultures in America. The people there are trying to improve themselves, they’re generally polite and in my experience, people, including the biggest and fittest guys at the gym, are usually friendly and helpful.

As to the dress that’s appropriate for the gym, off the top of my head, I don’t ever recall anyone (Including this woman) that was dressed “inappropriately” for the gym. It’s usually muscle shirts for the guys and skin-tight clothing for the women or baggy clothes for either.

This is fine. Let me repeat that: THIS IS FINE.

The only “but” is an attractive woman with a great body wearing skin-tight clothes is going to have more guys checking her out than an attractive woman with a great body wearing baggy clothes. This is the case whether you’re talking about the gym or anywhere else in public. Whether this is a “bug,” or a “feature” depends on the woman, but either way, it’s life and there’s nothing wrong with it.

If you want to blend into the background, blend into the background. But, if you wear clothing designed to draw the human eye to your body, you shouldn’t complain when it draws the human eye to your body. In other words, don’t wear an outfit that says, “look at me” and then try to play the victim when people do.

In this case, not only is she NOT a victim, but she is also the “bad guy” in this situation. In fact, they should kick her out of the gym for videotaping that guy without his consent, putting it online, and trying to convince people that he’s some kind of horrible person for glancing at her a few times.  

At the end of the day, men naturally like looking at attractive women and they REALLY LIKE looking at women wearing sexy, revealing outfits. That is as natural, normal and unsurprising as the sun coming up in the morning and the sky being blue. If you’re a woman and that’s intolerable to you (or you’re just pretending that it is for online clout), then you are not a victim, you just have a personal problem that you need to overcome.   

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