The White Way to Exercise: The Black Muscular Female

Racial spaces and fitness

Yoga, originally a practice from India has been culturally appropriated to be a white privilege, I step into my HotPod Yoga class I do on Fridays and I am greeted with white faces, all the instructors are white women and although I feel at calm due to my race biases I somehow wonder whether we allow the same spaces to be occupied by non-white women.

I go hiking, and I don’t see any non-white faces.

I go to the gym and I don’t see any non-white faces, especially non-white female faces. It seems as if fitness has been appropriated as a White Only category. If a non-white women was to occupy the same spaces as me, I would notice her because of her apparent difference to me.

I’m gonna hold my hands up and say, “I see colour” I think people who say they don’t are being plain stupid and professing you don’t definitely means you do. I see colour because I am not trying to squish them into my white codes of experience, I understand POC’s have totally different experiences of life than I do, one with less privilege and ease, and these experiences exist multiple spaces, as uncomfortable as I would be going to a african hair salon to get a weave, I can imagine a black girl feeling just as out of place at my friday night yoga class where the tall slender blonde white women is talking about turning your mind off and breathing out your stress.

However how can we get more non-white women to engage in an activity and feel calm and relaxed in a space that is coded as white. Sport has certainly helped, Jessica Ennis for example, a mixed race -white passing (IMO)- female with Gold Olympic Status as an Heptathlete graces our TV every 4 years just to prove to us that she is amazing.

Simone Biles is the 2016 Olympic individual all-around, vault and floor gold medalist, and balance beam bronze medalist. Say that ten times fast. She has a cacophony of medals, been dubbed the female Hercules by other acclaimed gymnasts and created moves that have been deemed lower in score than originally intended. Whenever I think about sport and women, my mind usually goes to black women first because they are fucking brilliant at it.

Kelly Holmes, Fatima Whitbread (although mocked because of her masculine physiqe) and AJ Andrews an American softball player who has also been critisised over her muscular physique, however we have white women who are body builders and crossfitters that don’t seem to attract the same level of negativity in their field.

Most of the Amazon’s in Wonder Women were white models or crossfit athletes, I know of only one black main comic character who has strenght and that is Storm, but even then she is give white codes with platinum hair and light eyes. Her powers also aren’t those of strenght, she has the power to mentally manipulate the weather, where would she practice her skills, would she be doing sets in the gym with Rogue and Wolverine or would she be in the brain lab with professor X and Jean Grey?

So how do we un-code a cultural bias where white women being strong is sexy and black women being strong is disgusting?

There is a colour barrier in sport yet time and time again with disadvantages and blatant racism Black athletes have come to the top of their game. The first black African to win an Olympic gold was Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia in the marathon in Rome in 1960. His equipment outlay was minimal. He ran barefoot. He ran 26.21 miles on his bare feet, that’s something we think is outlandish these days, but the racism was so deep in those days that the simple expense of buying the shoes was enough to curtail Abebe’s efforts. Economic capital has been cut off from black people by means of systematic racism, and therefore the equipment sports have been dominated by whiteness. In Rio, black athletes are winning most of their medals in sports where black athletes have always won medals: those in which the economic obstacles to participation are minimal.

But aside from sport, how do we open up more fitness spaces for women of colour, I know I need to check my privilege when it comes to being active. I don’t have any close black female friends, at university I did. It was a great friendship, we even went to a milkshake place on valentines day when we were both single to cheer ourselves up. She looked like Rhianna, and whenever I wanted to go to the gym she would baulk at the idea because she didn’t like the thought of getting too masculine. Her issue wasn’t the gym, her issue was other peoples criticism of her body being strong compared to mine.

As a white women, I need to follow more black women of colour with muscles and normalise the physique as I do with white women of muscles, so do black women. Once we all get over that muscle is muscle regardless of the colour of skin that envelopes it we might start to appreciate strength is beauty of all colours, white women will be less bitchy when they see strong black females with large glutes (but deep down wishing she had a bigger rounder bum). glute guides on Instagram will be less about appropriating black bodies and more about just getting a stronger arse and I might be at the side of a black women sweating just as much as me at HotPod yoga.

I welcome the day when fitness isn’t just coded as white and a luxury few can afford, I welcome the day when a black athlete competes and wins in something you need capital for such as dressage or sailing instead of winning barefoot (although that is impressive as hell, you show them Abebe) and I want people to stop saying that black women with muscles aren’t as sexy as white women with muscles. Ciara was once called an hermaphrodite because she had the V lines and defined shoulder muscles, Ciara is sexy as hell.

The truth is, I know the White way to Exercise, I’m currently doing it, but by me doing what I’m doing doesn’t mean I am not going to share my fitness space with a woman of colour, in fact, lets get two medicine balls and a plyo box and do a work out together.

I will make you feel as welcome always.