No Men Allowed
The Age
Tuesday June 6, 1995
Jane Hutchinson surveys the gym scene and finds might exercise more regularly if they did not have to run the gauntlet of male sweat, grunts and leers.
A LITTLE more than a year ago, I joined a gym, a really serious gym.
You could tell it was serious from the moment you walked in by the smell a pungent melange of underarm sweat, old socks and cleaning chemicals.
And then there was the noise a haunting chorus of grunts and groans and crashing steel, that fell somewhere between gothic horror and farmyard.
Inside, among the gleaming rows of weight machines, were the men.
Not the sort of men you generally see walking down the street, but big men with big arms and thick necks, gleaming with sweat.
As a woman, I was outnumbered 10 to one by these burly creatures. I might have felt intimidated, had I not realised early on that they were far too busy studying their own bulges in the wall-to-wall mirrors to pay any attention to me.
Now I am assured by friends and gym operators that my gym is not the typical fitness centre of the '90s. The typical '90s version, they say, is a much more egalitarian place, where men and women mix easily in equal numbers in airy, pastel-hued rooms, with top-40 hits playing in the background.
Still the image of the gym as a smelly, sweaty, noisy place where neanderthal men grunt deep primal messages to themselves is one many Australian women believe.
Some in the fitness industry argue this negative perception could account for the low number of women participating in higher levels of exercise relative to men 11.2 per cent compared with 19.7 per cent, according to the latest National Health Survey.
The argument goes that if women were offered a female-only alternative where they knew they would not have to put up with the sweat and the grunts and the groans, where they would not be intimidated or leered at, or have to compete with men for time on the weight machines - those who would not dream of going to a mixed gym might be encouraged to exercise on a regular basis.
Two fitness centre operators have taken the argument to state and federal equal opportunity authorities, seeking exemption from anti- discrimination laws to operate their respective chains of women-only gyms. Apparently the argument was convincing - the authorities have given the operators the green light, opening the way for what looks like the next big fitness industry trend.
Fernwood Female Fitness Centres already has four female-only gyms operating in country Victoria and is fitting out another 10, including six in metropolitan Melbourne. New Zealand-owned Contours Exclusive has three centres in Sydney with two more on the way, and plans to open five in Melbourne before the end of the year. Clearly, the operators believe they are on to something big.
``It is an untapped niche - women who have never been to a mixed gym or, if they have been, they didn't like it," says Contours spokesman and lawyer, Stuart Raward. Whatever their reasons, Mr Raward says there is simply a large section of the community who would never walk into a mixed-sex gym. He argues that where there are no women-only facilities, a significant section of the community is effectively excluded from fitness centres.
One woman who has no doubts about the need for women only fitness centres is 25-year-old law clerk Melinda Haughton. Ms Haughton thought she would never return to a gym after she was ``abused and humiliated" by a group of men at a mixed fitness centre several years ago. ``I was working out on the machines when these guys just came up to me and said `what are you doing here, get out of the way'.
Basically the message was that if you weren't a perfect size 10 and you didn't have the right colored lycra leotard, you had no right to be there."
Rather than complain, Ms Haughton fled feeling humiliated. ``I just gave up on going to the gym." Several years passed without exercise before she noticed a sign for a Fernwood fitness centre next door to where she was working. She was intrigued by the logo a drawing of a ``realistic looking woman who was not a perfect size 10". She joined up three months ago, and says she is losing weight, feeling terrific and loving her workouts. ``The fact that it's all women means there's a lot of camaraderie. You can feel relaxed without having to worry about men watching you."
Fernwood is the brainchild of Diana Williams, an energetic Bendigo woman who attended gyms for years to help her manage a weight problem.
Ms Williams opened the first of her female-only chain in Bendigo in December 1990, more or less as a part-time interest. ``I thought a lot of women feel a bit funny about going to a gym," she says. ``They feel self-conscious.
``Generally women decide to go to gym because they're not happy about some aspect their bodies. Yet a lot of gyms have a competitive aura, you feel like you've got to look right, to have the right body and have all the right gear. It can all be very intimidating. But when you have a room with just one sex, it doesn't matter whether it's men or women, the barriers come down and people feel more relaxed."
Ms Williams's hunch seems to have struck a chord. Within months, the centre had to move to larger premises, which enabled it to offer facilities such as child care. Then came franchise operations in Ballarat, Warrnambool and Werribee.
Today Fernwood's four green and blue-toned centres have 4100 members between them, including 1600 at the original Bendigo centre. Ms Williams says many members have defected from mixed gyms; they like the relaxed, non-competitive environment and the little extras: bowls of lemon-scented washers for cooling down, vases of flowers, hairdryers and hairsprays in the change room, irons and ironing boards, and child-care facilities.
But the core of the business, she says, are the older women, the unfit, the painfully shy who wouldn't contemplate joining a mixed gym.
``We got our equal opportunity exemption on the grounds that 80 per cent of the women who come to us wouldn't go to a mixed centre, even if there wasn't another option. And there are mixed centres around every corner."
The concept of women-only gyms is nothing new. Margaret Bennett ran a ``ladies' " gym 18 years ago in the days when most women were ``terrified at the thought of lifting a dumbell for fear they'd end up looking like a body-builder."
Ms Bennett took a break to raise a family. But, at the urging of several former members, she opened the quaint boutique-style Gym and Tonic For Ladies gym in a converted terrace house in Prahran early in 1991.
She says her 200-plus members like the relaxed, informal atmosphere - with homey feminine touches such as paintings on the walls, ornaments above the fireplace, and flowers everywhere - as much as they like the absence of men. But she agrees many women just don't want to exercise with men around.
Ms Bennett and the others get little argument from mixed-sex operators who agree that, although many people enjoy the friendly competition and social aspects of mixed gyms, there is a real market niche for women-only facilities. They concede the advent of all-female centres will expand the overall fitness market.
However some in the industry are wary about the size of the women- only niche and the capacity of the new chains to survive in what is a ruthless business. They point to the United States, where women-only centres underwent a boom in the late 1980s, that is now starting to bust. It seems many female-only centres there found it just too hard to make money when they eliminated 50 per cent of the potential market.
In Australia, the business is no less tough. The past 15 years has seen a litany of fitness centre failures. Ominously perhaps, the latest casualty is The Bottom Line, a Melbourne-based, all-female centre that went into liquidation last week.
© 1995 The Age