The hashtag ‘gym creep’ now has more than 37.3 million views on TikTok. Honestly, I’ve watched hundreds of these videos and the only weird behaviour I can spot in any of the clips is from the women recording the unsuspecting men while they work out. ‘Watch this creep,’ the lady will say as a confused male just happens to glance at the camera that’s been shoved in front of him. Scandalous!
Gina Love is one of these women. The TikTokker, whose feed mainly consists of her trying on different shades of lipgloss, went viral after posting a video of her doing deadlifts, supposedly catching out one of these so-called #gymcreeps. ‘Watch this creep come over to my personal bubble while doing Romanian deadlifts,’ Love wrote. She added: ‘The gym was practically empty, and so many corners to be in and he chose this one.’ The Guardian wrote that ‘in the clip, the man stands directly behind Love as she lifts dumbbells before deciding to leave’.
Perhaps I’m naive, but in this clip all I can see is a man working out five feet away from somebody else. How big does Love need her personal bubble to be? The space between them is bigger than my flat. If he is looking at her, which we can’t see, as his face has been conveniently covered by the creator of the video, it’s probably because she’s decided to film him during a sweaty workout without his consent. But like everything on TikTok, the trend of filming unsuspecting gym bros has caught on quickly. In the court of public opinion this man is now a creepy predator, and the accuser gained a large following because of it. Now you can bet that every member of the Sweaty-Betty-TikTok-gang won’t enter a gym without their tripods, ready to find their latest victim for a viral video.
When asked how the man standing five feet away from her lifting weights made her feel, Love claimed: ‘It’s like they’re trying to undress you in their heads.’ First, how hot do these women think they are? Second, we are now in the post-#MeToo era that means a male looking at a female in the gym is sexual harassment. Let’s bear the double standard in mind: if a man surreptitiously filmed his time in the gym and his interactions with others, he would be branded a predator or a pick-up artist. A woman does it and it’s Instagram fodder: she’s casting herself as the main character among a supporting cast of slavering perverts.
It won’t be long until a social media influencer gets crushed by a heavy weight on livestream because the men surrounding her will be too scared to offer help for fear of being labelled predators. You may think I’m exaggerating, but it’s almost happened already. Last month Jessica Fernandez, a lifestyle content creator – whatever that is – posted a video on Twitter where she wrote: ‘This guy kept making me extremely uncomfortable at the gym.’ Fernandez said: ‘This is why I’ll end up crying on stream [because] I feel so grossed out at times with the amount of sexualisation I experience. Hopefully, this spreads awareness for girls who experience this type of treatment at the gym.’
If a man surreptitiously filmed his time in the gym and his interactions with others, he would be branded a predator or a pick-up artist. A woman does it and it’s Instagram fodder
The clip shows Fernandez lifting weights, while a man in the background glances over at her. ‘I hate this. I hate when there’s weirdos. Gets me so uncomfortable. Feral, feral, feral, feral,’ she says on the video. The man then approaches her and offers to help put the weight on her bar.
In fairness to Fernandez, she apologised later. She wrote on Twitter: ‘He didn’t do anything wrong to me and I blew our interaction out of proportion’ – but these admittances of guilt are rare.
Now, I’m not an expert. I fall into a gym maybe three times a year, but when I do the gym bros that frequent the place are nothing but nice to me. They’re always on hand to show how the equipment works, or to help put some weights on the bar. Unlike the TikTok and Instagram-obsessed influencers they are there for the sole purpose of exercising. For the women of TikTok, though, the gym is the latest backdrop for a fashion shoot. It used to be one of those cafés with a flower wall and £10 matcha lattes.
The toxicity of gym-Tok has also led to plain old bullying. In a now deleted video, an account under the name @gwinie_the_pooh triggered a backlash after making fun of an elderly man for simply exercising. In the video, the TikToker recorded herself doing a workout at a gym that zoomed on the man behind her who was kicking a punching bag. After spotting him, she turned the camera on herself, and while grimacing said: ‘What was that?’
There is also the other thing that nobody wants to say. Online influencers have sexualised workouts. Why else would you wear see-through mini shorts, a bra and a full face of make-up to the gym? Can you really blame somebody for glancing over at you when you’re dressed fit for a nightclub? This fact is so overwhelmingly obvious that some fitness companies are cashing in on it: British fitness company Gymbox recently announced a collaboration with the adult content app OnlyFans. Fabletics, the gymwear company, sells fitness leggings that show your entire bum.
If I listened to the warnings, I could never go anywhere. I couldn’t get in a cab, or walk down an alleyway. Car parks are off limits too. Dive bars? Forget it, you’ll get groped. In fact, anywhere after 9 p.m. you pretty much can’t move for the fear that you’ll end up being chopped into tiny pieces and put into plastic bags. Now, add gyms to that list.
As women we are indoctrinated to be scared. We are told that whatever we do, whatever we wear, wherever we go, there will be some kind of Jack-the-Ripper figure lurking in the shadows. It’s no surprise that the #gymcreep trend has picked up, because as women we are always looking for the worst in men. But ladies, next time you go to the gym, please bear in mind that the person most focused on you… is you.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s World edition.
Comments