Recently, on Facebook, I posted how my high school gym class had traumatized me. Over 100 soaked-in-misery, me-too kinds of responses popped up soon after, and I began to wonder, why and how had a class meant to generate a love of physical exercise and a respect for our bodies turned out to do just the opposite for so many? Because it had been designed that way.
Right from the start, our gym teachers made it clear that there was a great divide between us. They doted on the athletic and popular girls, mocking the overweight, the skinny, the graceless, with monikers like Fatty Patty, Skinny Minnie or Cow on Ice. That latter group, of course, included me.
We had no choices. We had to play volleyball and touch football in fall, basketball in winter, baseball in spring, the unathletic and the clumsy up against the agile stars. There was never any talk of discovering what activity you might succeed at, of experiencing how good that might make you feel.
Instead, the teachers wanted you to play to win, no matter what that took, which meant dodgeballs slammed deliberately toward your head or your being shoved to the floor. The most dangerous times were when the gym was filled with apparatus that even the gym teachers had no real idea how to use. Uneven parallel bars. Rings. Horses. Ambulances were called four times to cart away injured girls, one of whom, to our terror, broke her neck and didn’t come back to school. But no one, not even our parents, protested.
How could I possibly feel good about my body in that situation? How could I like gym? The ugly, sallow blue uniforms didn’t help. Neither did having to take showers with dividers covering only our torsos, providing more cruel opportunity for body-shaming. The gym teachers as well as the popular girls stood on tiptoes, judging our bodies. One of the head cheerleaders who always picked on me because I was so skinny even encouraged other girls to do the same.
But if gym showers made me hate my body, there was something far worse, a scandalous practice that was not stopped until 1995: posture pictures. Girls had to strip down to their panties to have photos taken, ostensibly to show any physical weakness that might call for specific exercises. The gym teachers took the photos while we all stood in line, waiting our turn, humiliated except for the lucky, confident ones with lusher bodies and lacier bras. When the photos were developed into silhouettes meant to hide our identity, everyone got a chance to look at them. There was no anonymity because our hair, noses and body shapes always gave us away. There were no special exercises, no talks about better posture. Instead, there was just the shame.
I couldn’t wait to go to college, to get out of a high school where most of the kids in my town either entered the service or got married and popped out babies. Two thoughts filled my head at graduation: I was going to be someone—and I would never have to take gym again.