Sexism

Some days ago I wrote an entry (in french) about sexism. There I admitted that we are being sexist against women very often without even noticing it, but I wondered to what extent we were also bein sexist against men, in a much more evident (and hence less justifiable) manner, and considering that blatant form of sexism even a cool thing.

In that article, I forgot an obvious example: there's a gym chain called Curvas (curves) only for women. They offer a 30-minute program, purportedly designed for losing weight and "improving" women's shape. They measure their new customers, and those measures are used later to verify progress. In the case of women, progress seems to imply, invariably, achieving a smaller measure (at least, provided that measure is strictly above zero, I hope).

It seems that women are more comfortable doing exercise while there ares no men looking at them, so many of them find this system convenient. I can vaguely understand that, actually. But...

I wonder what would happen if there was some gym chain for men only. Would women accept arguments such as "we feel more comfortable training when there are no women to distract us"? How long could that chain last without appearing on the news as a case of unacceptable sexism?

And if we acknowledge that the case of the women-only gym is different to that of a men-only gym... well, we are in fact being sexist (by definition, at least in Spanish) for adopting such criterion.

In addition, I think that, if women have to worry about evil looks, they should worry mostly about women themselves anyway, so this gym is a poor solution to low self-esteem problems.

Lastly, I consider that, if it's true that the approach of such chain is centered on losing weight, the mere existence of a gym that specifically defines women's health and good shape in terms of thinness and fat percentage measuring is unfortunate. Since losing fat is definitely not what many of them need.