The Joy of Movement
Outside, the world is overheating, people are busily doom scrolling, and there’s a pervasive sense of summer malaise that can’t seem to break. Inside, the sounds of the Bee Gees pump into an old art deco pool in the middle of Bed-Stuy and a room full of people get ready to dance.
There is not a human being on the planet who looks good in a swim cap. Nobody in here gives a shit.
As someone who generally runs to try to quiet some of the noise in her brain, I found my way to the dilapidated oasis that is the YMCA swimming pool after a particularly stupid ankle injury. Looking for an activity that didn’t require any functioning ligaments, I wandered into “Aqua Aerobics” one day with exactly the wrong kind of swimsuit and a decent-sized case of nerves.
I was immediately beamed at by an elderly man named Leonard, resplendent with a beard dyed bright turquoise, who said “Girl, WELCOME. There’s no right way to do this. We just try to move and have fun and do our best.”
And that was that. I was deeply smitten with the experience & have been oddly dedicated to showing up to the pool, and the myriad of different bodies it contains – young, Black, elderly, trans, pregnant, disabled, tattooed, sculpted, scarred, gold-toothed & frail – twice a week, without fail, for many months now.
My calendar is blocked. I now own several utilitarian Speedos and am no longer the hussy of water aerobics class. Clients, friends & colleagues sweetly troll me about my coastal grandmother lifestyle.
And so for this issue of Bones, I got to thinking about what it is about hopping into the deep end of a lukewarm swimming pool to lift weights & sing along to Gloria Gaynor that’s been lighting me and my body up so much.
In the book “The Age of Fitness”, Jurgen Martschukat argues that our cultural obsession with fitness emerged as part of the contemporary neoliberal era, which urges individuals to incessantly work on and optimize themselves. To endlessly strive to cultivate strong, results-oriented bodies and minds, in a society that emphasizes self-responsibility, performance, market & competition.
The vitamin and supplements market is flourishing. I see ads for nootropics all around New York City. Everyone I know is counting their daily steps & desperately trying to achieve the elusive 15,000. Pounds are being closely monitored and dropped, often with the help of an injection these days. Even sleep has been app-ified, with an eye on maximizing it, so that the obedient worker in the age of the quantified self can maximize their productivity during the next workday.
I’m all for fitness and holistic wellness. I think moving our bodies in a way that makes us feel present, happy & comfortable in them is one of the greatest privileges we have.
But it feels like fitness *culture* has gotten exceedingly unfun, overly focused on optimization and almost war-like. That we’ve lost a lot of the joy of movement & happiness of feeling present and active by burying ourselves in a workout culture that focuses on things like boot camps, weight loss, Tough Mudders & endless “training”.
Call me a candyass, but I don’t want to roll a tire around a CrossFit gym, as someone yells at me, as my little bit of allotted daily movement when not tethered to a laptop full of Zoom meetings.
Youth sports have become a hyper-competitive, all-year-round, anxiety-inducing grim march toward athletic scholarships and NIL deals. I’ve interviewed multiple young athletes who have picked up a “sport for fun” on the side, because their main one leaves them so deeply unhappy and stressed out.
And I’ve become rather obsessed with water aerobics this summer because it’s the exact opposite of all that.
It’s genuinely *fun*. It’s loose. There’s a deep sense of community, and people checking in on each other. There are no perfectly matching workout sets. I’m not getting incredibly hot & sculpted from doing jumping jacks in the deep end, but everyone in the pool is smiling and that seems to be a thing that matters to me quite a bit at the moment.
Bodies that don’t necessarily feel free & happy in everyday life get an hour of respite, hope & the feeling of floating.
Everyone gets to feel weightless for a little bit, during a time in history where everything feels quite heavy.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s something to the idea of listening to Leonard, shrugging off societal expectations of productivity & perfect bodies and just moving and having fun and doing our best.
-Megan Weisenberger