How to return to the real world from social media
ASK A SWOLE WOMAN
This is the paid Sunday Ask A Swole Woman edition of She’s a Beast, a newsletter about being strong mentally/emotionally/physically.
The Question
Hi Casey,
I'm now five weeks into Phase 3 of Liftoff and I love lifting. Lifting makes me feel good and I love the feeling of being strong and gaining strength. I'm fat and I've been fat for most of my life and I've spent a long time cultivating body neutrality and learning about the ways in which anti-fatness is systematically present throughout our society. I can track my food intake and weigh myself and feel morally neutral about those pieces of information because of this inner work.
As many people do when they find a new thing they're into, I've started seeking out even more information regarding lifting: following weightlifters on Instagram, watching videos about strength training and related subjects on Youtube, and even trying out some relevant podcasts. (And, of course, I've continued to read She's A Beast and Ask a Swole Woman!) However, what started as watching (silly) videos critiquing celebrity training regimes and watching (useful) ones about the correct way to grip a barbell, I ended up with an algorithm that began showing me so much content about losing weight and getting and staying lean and "stop being obese right now or you'll die of a heart attack".
I ended up watching a video today called "Is obesity a choice?". At one point I realized what I was watching and proceeded to click "do not recommend channel" on every video recommended to me by Youtube regarding fitness and strength training.
My question is twofold:
1.) How do you maintain the line between being in the "fitness world"(e.g. lifting, learning and writing about body science and nutrition, interacting with other people doing the same thing) and not fall into the bullshit trappings of the "fitness world" (e.g. anti-fatness, body shame, rampant individualism, toxic masculinity)?
2.) Who are the people you'd recommend—preferably women, people of color, fat people, and/or queer people—who are lifting and educating about the science of strength training and/or nutrition without weight stigma that I could pay attention to instead?
Thank you for your newsletter, Liftoff, and your time! —B.
The Answer
Unfortunately my best answer to both of your questions would be linked, and you might not like it, but here it is: Don’t look to social media if your goal is to maintain a line between being in the fitness world but not falling into its bullshit trappings. Social media as it exists today is purpose-built to get you to fall into bullshit trappings. Even if you try to set yourself up as best you can to have a veritable echo chamber of only things you want to hear, algorithms place content in your feed that you didn’t subscribe to.
This means two things: One, you don’t and can’t actually control what you see. Two, there are a great many studies that demonstrate how social media algorithms tend to feed people radicalizing, polarizing, controversial content, because that content gets the best engagement and keeps people scrolling, looking for validation that they are right and other people are wrong. It’s not only destructive to, you know, society, but destructive to your individual sanity.
I hate to say this all, because in my life, I’ve had a grand old time on social media. I’ve met many friends online, I love to post, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve written columns in the past with lists of people to follow about lifting. My whole @swolewoman Instagram account started out just to give me a place to have a feed of exclusively good, validating, empowering, and smart people posting about lifting.
But social media was very different when I was coming up. I don’t spend time on it anymore. I could tell you good people who do good posts to follow, but like--you wouldn't see them. And that's inherent and by design. Now, I can open the swolewoman feed and the very first post I scroll to is some garbage about the carnivore diet (or worse, the millionth takedown of the carnivore diet). Even most well-intentioned social media posts that you will actually see are only there, only get bubbled up in your feed, because firstly they adhere to the basic structure demanded by those algorithms. This means lots of “don’t forgets,” “reminders that,” content that always leaves you feeling like you aren’t quite measuring up or can never do enough.
There is an inherent conservatism to the content the algorithms favor, and it’s partly because the people who tend to have time to post on social media tend to have some form of unusual wealth that affords them that time, which means they are particularly ill-suited to giving the rest of us advice on how to use the same 24 hours a day as Beyoncé has. It’s also because the algorithms' creators are horrible people.
I also hate to say this because I know that if you are of a marginalized identity in your real life, the breadth of the internet means it feels easier to find likeminded people who you don’t have access to otherwise. However, I would say that it’s a bad thing that we’ve come to rely on algorithmic social media for this purpose—it’s not better that we have this thing that connects us, but only superficially.
Connection is important, but connection as it happens online co-opted and wrung within an inch of its life for its cheapest and most marketable essence. Worse, it has caused us to self-select out of engaging with the real world. I don’t think it is actually our only option, and I think it’s time to stop looking to social media to gratify our totally correct instincts that we feel overwhelmed with bullshit, because social media is one of the chief bullshit engines.
Know that I already hear you saying “but I just want to LEARN about LIFTING (slash body politics etc.), and all of this seems like a very not-straightforward way of doing that!” Here is the thing: We have come to expect to be able to sort and parse people based on their projected brands and keywords and hit subscribe and the notification bell and grade their contribution with a certain number of comments and likes. Not only is that not natural, and not great mentally for either you or the branded person in question, but it assumes that people in general have nothing to offer if they are not wearing a sandwich board hawking their services.[^1] This is not how people work, nor is it how should they work. But slowing things down and finding resources in and through real people, at this point, will likely benefit your experience much more than we tend to think.
The “less straightforward” way of, say, joining a hiking group that gathers Sunday mornings, where you meet an amateur pole dancer who also does Crossfit, whose fellow Crossfitter also knows about a black iron gym that isn’t even on Google Maps—yeah, that is less immediately rewarding than finding a powerlifting influencer and scrolling their feed and blasting your eyeballs with “reminders” and “tips” and “do this, not that”s and “ten easy ideas”es until they dry up and fall out. But I don’t want your eyeballs to fall out.
If you want to learn from people, you have to first put yourself where the people are. Of course, you want to make smart choices to give yourself the best chance you can at finding likeminded folks, versus standing in the mall parking lot and yelling “MUSCLES! MUSCLES! MUSCLES!” over and over until someone helps you.
Let’s start with one that will sound obvious, but bear with me for one second: Join a gym, even if it’s kind of far away from you. At gyms I’ve been a member of, it wasn’t unheard of at all for there to be members who commuted occasionally from a longer distance (let’s say once a week, or a couple times a month), just because they enjoyed the company of their fellow members. You might be able to pay a day rate instead of a monthly membership to enable this kind of participation. If there are coaches or trainers at that gym (or local ones who can meet you there), even occasional training can be super-helpful for your lifting education.
A search for “inclusive gym [your nearest town]” can get you started in the right direction. An inclusive gym near where I live, Everybody, offers in-person classes as well as an on-demand library that anyone anywhere can access. Collective Strength is a member-owned and operated gym in Philadelphia. Solcana Fitness is a queer, woman-owned gym in Minneapolis. There are more such places than ever these days. You might not have a gym right in town with people who you feel like you fit in with, but maybe there’s a slightly larger city a little further away with one.
Likewise, you can seek out classes. More and more gyms are offering intro-to-lifting classes, clinics, and workshops. Odds are you will learn so much more from a class where an instructor can see and help you personally than a YouTube video.
Likewise, you could check out activity groups, even if they are not lifting-themed, depending on what activities you are open to: dance, hiking, biking. If you put yourself where physically active people generally are, it’s more and more likely every day that there will be some fellow lifters mixed in there who can help connect you to resources. I recently learned about Radical Adventure Riders, an inclusive group with chapters in multiple cities in the US that organizes outdoorsy cycling events.
Remember, the goal here is to be open to where the road might take you. Manifesting and the “law of attraction” type stuff sounds stupid on its face, but all they are is intentionality: If you don’t know at least roughly what you are looking for, you won’t recognize an opportunity even when it is standing right in front of you.
And this is everyone’s least favorite advice, but I used to hear it much more often as a child of the nineties than I do now, and no one ever says it anymore, so I will: If there are no like-minded-feeling groups where you are, consider trying to start one! You might be able to arrange a group of people to lift together at an otherwise unremarkable gym, or to gather for perhaps a little mutual-aid heart chore activity, like distributing food or picking up trash or constructing a community garden. Sure, not everything you might think of will be directly lifting-themed, but that’s okay. Most importantly, I want to say: It doesn’t matter if you, as the organizer, are not also the thought-leader. It is okay to gather a group you’d like to learn from!
But what if you truly live at the top of a mountain, on an island, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a barren wasteland, in the middle of an ocean?
First: Books. Books are a much better source of information than anything you’ll find on social media or online. Books: There are no ads! Books: There are no algorithms! Books: They are almost certain to have passed through multiple hands to ensure their overall quality and legibility! Books: Most of what you hear on social media actually originated in them!
I know books are expensive, but most of the books below are old enough and not-buzzy enough that your library will have them. Reading up on the politics of bodies, race, and gender will go a long way to letting you filter what you need from the fitness world, messy as it can be.
Same for podcasts: Longer form is better. I don’t like podcasts, for the most part, and don’t learn well from them, but have learned of some good ones from this esteemed community.
I know you just said YouTube is part of the problem, but I am still inclined to give a pass to YouTube. Algorithmically-driven though it is, video just is one of the best ways of learning about lifting stuff (and there are few other sources for longform informative video, which is key to communicating about… really anything; short form video is not great for learning). To YouTube’s very limited credit, it doesn’t frontload engagement or maintaining one’s own profile. That doesn’t mean there’s not bullshit on there, or that YouTube won’t try to drag you down some toxic rabbit holes. But just by virtue of its structure, it doesn’t reward hyper-reactivity like the others (well, as long as you avoid “Shorts”). Obviously, as you’ve found, you should exercise caution on letting the algorithm do its thing. But browsing within certain channels should be fine. I’ve made a list below.
I can’t swear that all of the below will have perfect, or perfectly coherent, politics all of the time. Most people and places and things won’t. This is also not exhaustive, more like a bunch of good places to start, off of which you can branch.
(If you have more suggestions of good and similar resources, please share in the comments of this post!)
And then, if you learn something: Share it! Bring it out into one of the aforementioned groups. Consider even just starting a book club around these topics. Even if it quickly turns into just drinking coffee or wine and chattering with each other, you’ve found some people.
Syllabus
Books
Culture:
Becoming Safely Embodied: A Guide to Organize Your Mind, Body and Heart to Feel Secure in the World, Deirdre Fay and Janina Fisher
The Body is Not An Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor
Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks
Gender Trouble and Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler
Hunger, Roxane Gay
Sick Enough, Jennifer Gaudiani
Unshrinking, Kate Manne
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, Susan Bordo
Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman
Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere, Kate Harding
Landwhale, Jes Baker
Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts
Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
No Logo, Naomi Klein
Lifting:
LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell, by Me
The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Nutrition and Training
Renaissance Woman, Dr. Jen Case (there is a lot about body composition changes in here, but also great information about just maintaining/fueling lifting)
Maybe the only book about both of these things:
Lifting Heavy Things, Laura Khoudari
YouTube channels/websites
Culture:
Lifting:
Podcasts
[F1] To nitpick the wording of your letter, this is also why I'd rather recommend resources rather than "people"; people are fallible and that's a difficult premium to place on content (one that social media also extremely encourages in a harmful way, I'd venture).
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