I keep waiting for the social media trend to fizzle.  I keep thinking this will happen because it feels about as meaningful as jam shorts and snap bracelets and both of those faded within a school year, even though I kept wearing jam shorts for about three years after they were no longer cool.   If I’d been betting on the demise of Twitter and Facebook I’d have lost a considerable fortune but no lack of success in betting against these two trends would have discouraged me from betting against another recent trend;  female-only exercise classes in public places.

It used to be, way back in the early 2000’s, that women were embarrassed to go to the gym, and generally sat around talking about they hated going to the gym where they’d be ogled by “meat head” guys.   My wife, and every other woman I’ve ever talked to about the gym before 2010, professed the fact that she was “grossed out” by working out in the sight of men.

In fact, this sentiment was so pervasive, that no less than three national companies were started devoted to providing women with their own, female-only gym experience.  This new breed of gym was about 400% more expensive than the comparable coed gym,  was free from “sketchy grunting men”, and offered most of the same equipment, though nobody really ever knew because their wife or girlfriend would say “do they have that machine at your gym that does those thingies” and when you’d say “your lats?”, they’d say “I have no idea, are lats in your legs? I don’t think we have that one.  Is yours purple?”.

 If you’re a member of a gym, or live near a park, you’ve probably already become acquainted with this new phenomenon whereby large groups of middle aged women, who in years past, wouldn’t have been caught dead on a beach, or wearing anything that showed any skin, have taken to engaging (apparently by their own free will) in very large, very loud, group workouts, in public, usually under the strict command of a very large and often tattoo covered man who (if you happen to get close to them because one of your dogs ran into their circle at the water fountain) they proudly proclaim “totally kicked our ass”.

Near our house the women mostly run around carrying tree stumps and paint cans and tires and one another with the trainer walking slowly behind and yelling at them.  Then they gather at the most visible point in the park and do some kind of modified push-ups.

Initially I thought it must be specific to my park that women were paying $30 per session to wear tights in public while being screamed at but I recently witness 13 or so similarly clad women doing jumping jacks on the roof of the neighboring building as I and three hundred other people looked out from our desks.   This week, I was floored  when I arrived at my gym (full of admittedly sketchy, grunting men) to salsa music blaring over the speakers upon a crowd of women ranging in age from 19 to 72, who were proudly prancing around in the middle of the gym, at rush hour, engaging in various forms of borderline erotic dance moves, about 85 feet away from a large room generally dedicated to such shenanigans.

I generally fancy myself a person who is at least partially aware of what is going on in the world but will be the first to admit that I’ve been sleeping on this apparent feminist uprising.  Even though I’m late to the party I’m glad to see it.   I assume like most exercise phenomena it won’t last, but my hope is that it will remove the stigma of co-ed gyms, at least long enough for us to cut our family gym budget by about 80% and allow us a chance to figure out if the blue machine at my gym is the same as the purple one at hers.