Participaciones puestas en equivalencia

The gym is a space dedicated to the improvement of physical fitness in a controlled environment with specialized equipment, health and safety legislations and qualified instructors (Sassatelli, 2010). Moreover, it is also a space which many individuals who acquired their impairments are familiar with as gym work is a key part of their rehabilitation. As such, individuals may feel confident in this exercise space due to this past experience and be aware of the potential therapeutic benefits exercising in this space can provide. Day and Wadey (2016) also identified this space as key for individuals’ transition to long-term physical activity adoption after injury. Problematically, despite the gym being a potential space for health promotion and improvement, there are very few disabled people who utilize this space.

One reason for this may be the perceived dominance of ableism in the gym. Ableism is about, knowingly or unknowingly, the framing of images, policy, discourses and practices as if all people are able bodied (Campbell, 2009). As such, ableism casts disability as a diminished state of being human (Goodley, 2016) and rejects variation from this fully human form (Wolbring, 2008). Thus, ableism becomes another form of discrimination which

marginalizes disabled individuals who have a different physicality to the ableist ‘norm’ (Loja, Costa, Hughes, & Menezes, 2013). Consequently, ableism can lead to exclusory practices which denigrate a disabled person’s psychological well-being and sense of self (Wolbring, 2008).

42 The reproduction and dominance of ableism is arguably achieved through the

promotion of a particular type of body. Increasingly fitness institutions, such as the gym, have become synonymous as places where the ‘fit body’ can be achieved (Crossley, 2008). This ‘fit body’ is strong, muscular and aesthetically pleasing, and has become tantamount as the normative physical state (Neville & Gorman, 2016; Sassatelli, 2010). Due to the

embedded ableism in the gym, individuals who do not align to this ideal are cast as other and may be subject to discriminatory behaviors (Miller et al., 2004). As such, although the gym is a space which promotes fit bodies, it also marginalizes people whose bodies are deemed to be ‘unfit’ (Crossley, 2006).

Indeed, the social construction of the body has been instrumental in the exclusion of marginalized groups in sport and physical activity (DePauw, 2000). Marginality has been described as a process whereby one group’s dominance in dictating what is valued results in discrimination and estrangement for those who do not adopt the characteristics of the

dominant culture (DePauw, 1997). In the context of the gym, the hegemonic characteristics of strength and physical aesthetic have marginalized those who do not adopt these valued

characteristics (Loja et al., 2013). Early conceptualizations of marginality focused on three basic aspects (i) cultural marginality (as described above) (ii) social role marginality which examines the inability of some groups to become full participants of a group (i.e. the

dominant group) and (iii) structural marginality regarding political, social and economic sources of marginalization which prevent an individual achieving their full potential through consequences of, for example, poverty and disenfranchisement. Although this

conceptualization of marginality provides an understanding which helps explain individual consequences of being a marginalized member of society, these three basis aspects do not consider the marginalized person in the context of cultural and social structures. As such, a reconceptualization of marginality was required.

43 This reconceptualization was proposed by DePauw, Karwas, Wharton, Bird and Broad (1993). These authors posited marginality was (a) socially constructed and not about ‘essential characteristics’ of marginalized groups (b) a dynamic process and not a static condition and (c) in the context of power relations and resistance rather than assimilation. With this reconceptualization of marginality, there is room to resist and fight against

oppressive social inequalities which stop people from realizing their full potential. Moreover, by reflecting on dominant social values and how they reproduce social inequality and

oppression, physical activity contexts can also provide a basis for resistance and be a site for social change (DePauw, 1997). As such, the purpose of the next section of the literature review is to present how the gym reproduces inequality and ableism with regards to disability.

2.4.1 Role of gym instructors in reproducing ableism.

One key way in which ableism is reproduced in the gym is through gym instructors. Gym instructors hold a great deal of power in the gym as they are deemed to possess

knowledge which would enable clients to reach their fitness goals (Lloyd, 2005), are a crucial element for the satisfaction of the client and her or his sense of identity (Smith Maguire, 2001) and are perceived to be representatives of the gym and it’s values (Sassatelli, 2006). Indeed, for gym instructors and their role in the gym, there is an emphasis on customer interaction as Smith Maguire (2001) stated gym instructors are essentially frontline service, visual,

interactional representations of gym values:

“Frontline service workers deliver particular information to the customer while providing an impression of the company and a connection – an invitation – to other consumption opportunities. That is, the purpose of services is not just with the immediate customer interaction, but also with the representation of the employer or

44 company, and the implication of the customer, via the service provider, in the broader needs of customer goods and sources” (p.386).

In other words, gym instructors are a key means by which disabled people can feel either included or marginalized in the gym as they are relational representatives of the gym. This may be problematic as Tulle and Dorrer (2012) concluded that gym instructors are themselves influenced by ableism and understand fitness to mean physicality and aesthetic. In their study, the authors noted that instructors’ knowledge mainly aligned to shaping the body in a way which aligned to the expectations and ableist norms of the gym and lacked

knowledge when clients had different fitness goals. As instructors are deemed to represent the gym, not recognising or having the knowledge base to enable clients to reach their fitness goals may then send an exclusory message to the clients that they do not belong in the gym and they cannot be helped. Moreover, as gym instructors hold this relational power, but also shoulder the pressure to align to the gym’s ideal way of being, they are also arguably a key source of disablism. For example, how they value health is influenced by the ableist norms of the gym which can result in isolating individuals who value health a different way (Harvey, Vacchani & Williams, 2014).

Considering the literature regarding the marginalization of disabled people in the gym and the expectation of a particular way of being as a gym instructor, disabled people wanting to become gym instructors are making a choice which is highly unconventional. The fact that disabled people have elected and wanted to be a gym instructor is therefore an area which is worth investigating. The purpose of this research is to broadly investigate these individuals, thus I sought to explore their journey from gym clients to gym instructors. Specifically, I sought to explore their own experiences in the gym, their motivations for becoming gym

45 instructors, their experiences becoming these individuals and what impact they believed they had on the gym. To explore this, I used narrative inquiry.