Am I working out or working something out?
I dare you to show me a queer person who doesn't have a complicated relationship with exercise
I’ve had a turbulent relationship with exercise for as long as I can remember. For most of my adult life, I just… didn’t do it.
Which is strange, because when I was a kid, I was always moving. I climbed trees with my brothers, played cricket at the field opposite our house. As a child whose parents strictly controlled internet access and when we could watch TV, it was a true 90s kid existence. I didn’t feel self-conscious in my body back then. I liked what it could do.
There was a family holiday to Spain where I forgot my swimming costume at a water park, so my mum told me to wear my brother’s spare trunks. I remember pretending to be “Keith” for the day (a name I chose without any shred of irony aged ten). It was freeing, actually – not just the toplessness of it all, but the brief liberation of stepping outside of girlhood.
Of course, when I hit puberty, things changed.
The changing rooms at school became unbearable. Part of it was the usual adolescent fear of our changing bodies, but part of it was queerer than that. As I wrote in the last issue, I’d started to realise I fancied girls. And the changing rooms were full of pretty, semi-naked girls, and I didn’t want to be seen as pervy, or weird, or to be talked about the way our gay PE teachers were behind their backs. So, I started trying to disappear.
I had piano lessons, just because they got me out of PE. I hid in toilet cubicles. I forged sick notes. I lingered at the edge of rounders games with other outsiders in my year group. I didn’t want to move, because moving meant being seen. And being seen meant being scrutinised – or worse, suspected.
At home, my mum would gently suggest I do something physical, like go on a run – probably because she’d seen the empty Doritos packets and Rubicon cans in my bedroom bin. So I started running in the dark, shuttling back and forth on Fulwood road, hoodie up, music on, praying I wouldn’t bump into anyone I knew.
By the time I got to university, without a parent to guilt me into it I’d pretty much stopped exercising altogether. My relationship with food was weird in that unremarkable way it often is at uni: I skipped meals to drink more, or binged beige food after nights out. My only health goal was to keep my calories low enough to justify the drinks – as I couldn’t afford both food and alcohol.
In third year, sleep stopped coming. I’d lie awake replaying things I’d said in seminars, wracked with imposter syndrome. My GP suggested I try running, because even if my mind was awake, I could try and override it with physical exhaustion. I was sceptical, but I did it anyway – loops around the block, in the dead of night. And slowly, very slowly, it started to help a little… well, in the “I slept for four hours instead of two” sense.
After university I was in a relationship, working as a supervisor in an Italian restaurant while studying part-time for my journalism qualification, and perhaps unsurprisingly given I was spinning so many plates, running fell away again.
When I eventually made it back to the gym, I stayed on the treadmill – mostly because the rest of the gym felt like a boys’ club I hadn’t been invited to join.
It wasn’t until lockdown that I started running again; largely to get out of the flat I shared with my then-partner, who needed space to play Rocket League or FIFA with his mates. I wasn’t running to get fit or lose weight; I was running to not be inside. I ran by the canal, enjoying the eerie silence of it all. The city was quiet and cold and mine, at least for an hour or so.
In 2021, I moved back to Sheffield after a breakup and fell in love with walking again. Just me and my headphones, and the grey slush of a Yorkshire winter. It felt good, but I felt too unfit to run, still wrapped in layers of relationship weight.
Shortly after moving home, I entered another relationship where once again, fitness wasn’t part of our dynamic. I threw back pints and ate cheeseboards like it was an Olympic sport, and the scales crept up and up and up…
Eventually, I bought a treadmill after my then partner objected to me running outside late at night (I’d always been aware of the female safety concern, but after Sarah Everard’s murder it was hard to argue with). So I compromised. I ran after dinner mainly, in the spare room, late at night. Big elephant footsteps, making our little terraced house shake.
It was only after that relationship ended that I started running outdoors again with any consistency. I don’t think it was a revenge arc, or a self-improvement story – more like a quiet reclaiming of something I’d lost. A promise to myself that I wouldn’t disappear again.
Later in 2023, I started going to the gym with my friend Lauren, though in hindsight I think we mostly used the leg press as a place to catch up on gossip. Still, it helped a little. I felt better stood under fluroescent changing room lights than I had done.
Dating a personal trainer obviously helped a lot with gym confidence; although I’d like to stress that Jack never pushed me to work out or follow his plan, particularly in the early months of us dating. In fact, I asked him to help me after injuring myself by overtraining for the Dubrovnik Half Marathon in May last year. So began a healthier and more mutually encouraging relationship than any I’d ever been in before.
Lifting weights changed something. Maybe it’s a cliché to say that, but it did. Ironically for someone who had lost over 15kg as of last summer, it stopped being about shrinking myself and started being about taking up space – and making it, even.
I even started a run club, after feeling like there needed to be a social opportunity for people who weren’t naturally fast or gifted runners. It was nice to see the group continue for a while after I left for Asia last September. Having someone else to show up for definitely helped me on the days when I couldn’t be bothered.
One of my biggest struggles while in Asia was the lack of pavement infrastructure or temperatures to facilitate a long run outdoors. They say you only know what you have when it’s gone, and it’s safe to say I missed the mental health benefits that running gave me a lot when on the road.
Of course, now I’m home again, and I have been pounding the pavement in broad daylight thanks to the flexibility that my new freelance schedule affords me. But, with daytime running comes a newfound uneasiness that I didn’t necessarily expect. It’s a discomfort that catapults me back to the experience in the changing room as a teenager, keenly aware of women’s bodies as sexual entities.
At the age of 28, for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m punishing my body, hiding it, or bargaining with it. I’m moving because it helps me manage my mental health, helps me sleep, and makes me feel strong. As it gets warmer and I’ve headed out the door in a sports bra and shorts, I’ve had white van drivers beep their horns or shout at me, as well as dads in parks pushing their kids on swings nearly give themselves whiplash turning to get a glimpse of bouncing boobs.
No woman deserves to be leered at when she’s just trying to be healthy – but particularly as someone who is currently interrogating their relationship with men, it’s especially unwelcome attention. Sure, I could put a t-shirt or leggings on. But then I’d be too hot. If men can run topless, I should be able to run in sportswear without getting wolf-whistled. I don’t want to be invisible. I want to be neutral. I want to exist in public without being sexualised, objectified, or categorised by strangers. I want to run without thinking about how my thighs look, or if my sports bra has enough support.
And maybe that’s what I enjoyed when I became Keith for a day. Not maleness, exactly. Not even masculinity. Just the freedom of not being read. Of not being a girl to be looked at, talked about, or claimed. Of moving through the world without commentary, without implication.
In many ways, I miss the invisibility cloak that being bigger used to give me. But I don’t want to go back to that version of myself – not really. I’ve worked hard to get to this point. I’ve fought for my strength, my softness, my space. And right now, I’m not trying to disappear. I’m just trying to exist – in motion, in public, and on my own terms.
What is your relationship with exercise, and how has it changed over the years? Let me know if you can relate to any of the above! @BettyKirkers