Breaking up with the treadmill, making dates with weights

Background Noise: True crime: cruel but educational

My favorite iPhone app is Podcasts. I had no idea it existed until a few months ago, mostly because I throw all the useless default apps (Stocks, Tips, etc.) into a folder on a screen I never swipe to. However, now that I am 21 and quasi-mature (I mean, I used the word quasi!), I’ve become more sensible, more learned. You know, the Podcasts type.
A quick background: I’ve always had a hard time falling asleep. I’ve tested and rejected numerous sleep-inducing solutions with little success. Then, a few months ago, I opened Podcasts by accident and found my fix.
The problem is I don’t like just any podcast. I like a story. Thus, I quickly found my way to true crime. In case you’re unfamiliar, true crime is a nonfiction literary and film (and podcast!) genre in which authors examine actual cases. It sounds geekier than it is—sort of.
I go back and forth debating whether my interest in murder investigations is psychotic or uber-empathetic. I fall asleep to horror stories and play them at the gym. I admit, my curiosity has morphed to fascination through a simple progression: first the podcasts, then the podcasts about the podcasts (yes, these exist), then the Netflix documentaries and the CBS mini-series—you see what I mean.
It’s a good time to be a true crime addict, because everyone with cash and a camera seems intent on following homicide court cases. Over the past few years, true crime has saturated the media via Netflix (“Making a Murderer,” “Amanda Knox”), HBO (“The Jinx”) and, of course, podcasts (“Serial” etc.). There’s also been a rise in realistic crime fiction. For example, HBO’s “The Night Of.” I could also mention the fascination with crime novels such as “Gone Girl,” “The Girl on the Train,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” or “The Woman in Cabin 10” (crazy girls!), but I’d rather wear a bionator again (think: retainer but less glamorous).
There is no lack of media frenzy. The internet seethes with opinionated viewers, equally uninformed and passionate. “Amanda Knox” is “your next TV obsession,” “Making a Murderer” “arrived at the perfect time.” The blend of entertainment and crime has become so complex and problematic—but I still want to listen.
It turns out a lot of professionals have studied the emerging fixation on true crime. First, there’s the whole Freudian interpretation of “schadenfreude,” the pleasure derived from other people’s suffering. I don’t particularly love this one. Then there’s Dr. Howard Forman’s explanation that the trend is “rooted in empathy.” Forman, a psychiatrist at Montefiore Medical Center, links his reasoning to the overwhelming popularity of true crime amongst young women, and data seems to agree with him. For example, the popular true crime podcast “Sword and Scale” has a 70 percent female audience. The lure of popular true crime only intensifies with women suspects—as seen in the case of Amanda Knox—a young woman convicted of murdering her roommate. The shock of the female killer who may or may not have been the “mastermind behind group sex orgies” grabbed attention. Journalist Nick Pisa admits to covering Knox far more than others accused because “there was no interest” in the male suspects.
Associate Professor of Criminology Scott Bonn of Drew University claims that “serial killers tantalize people much like traffic accidents, train wrecks or natural disasters.” He adds that true crime “allows us to experience fear and horror in a controlled environment where the threat is exciting but not real.”
So we like rubbernecking, indulging in guilty pleasures at the expense of other people. Real people—because that’s what’s easy to forget. The “characters” seen and heard from are not characters at all. The cases we puzzle over are not invented. We have dramatized crime into a performance—a strange blend of fiction and reality.
Of course, media coverage is not always detrimental. Many of the documentaries have worked to free suspects who were subjected to mistreatment and wrongful convictions. Adnan Syed was granted a new trial after podcasts reviewed crucial findings in his case. The directors of “Amanda Knox” claim the film aims to “understand from a human point of view what it would feel like … to be caught up in these events and circumstances.” Still, I have the privilege of listening to someone else’s tragedy for entertainment, which is pretty horrifying. I am aware of the monster I’m feeding. In some ways, true crime is cruel—in others, it’s educational. It’s also terrifying, because there is always the fear that it could happen to you.
It’s a lot to think about. Maybe if you can’t fall asleep, try a podcast and decide for yourself.

Background Noise

Breaking up with the treadmill, making dates with weights

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

September 30, 2016

Here is a fact: there are some environments in which I feel less comfortable than others, on and beyond campus. Some of this discomfort is based in reality, while some, I admit, is due to my underlying insecurities and/or narcissism. Over the past three years, I have accumulated a catalog of places I take extra care to avoid—for example, Baxter House. Until last year, the weight room of Buck Fitness Center topped my list, forbidden for countless reasons, most of which related to my gender and athletic ability.

By the time I was a first year at Bowdoin, I had fostered a lengthy and destructive relationship with the treadmill (it’s complicated). Four years of cross country and food-based anxiety had inspired an unhealthy devotion to cardio. College meant trying something new. At the time, something new meant wearing eyeliner and having guy friends and also—if I summoned the audacity—picking up a dumbbell.

I tried on multiple occasions to visit the basement of Buck. Once or twice, I made it halfway down the stairs before freezing and turning around (there is a particular step where you can survey the space and retreat to the elliptical before anyone at the squat rack sees you). Dismayed, I spent the next two years familiarizing myself with the main floor: rekindling my cardio flame, sprawling on the blue mats and the foam rollers when I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid of weight lifting and how it would shape my body, but I was also afraid of walking into the room.

I gave lifting a second chance the summer after my sophomore year. That spring a Crossfit box had opened up in my town. I knew enough about Crossfit to laugh at it every time I drove by, but I was also secretly interested. My dad decided to sign up because he was athletic and because he felt like it. I also signed up because I felt like it, though I assured everyone outside of my family that I had joined against my will. I spent the summer learning how to throw weights over my head without breaking my shoulders. I also met a variety of kind, strong women who could clean more than their bodyweight (I was just using the bar).

At Bowdoin, my anxiety with Buck sometimes feels silly. Female athletes are abundant, brilliant and respected—yet for someone who is not an athlete, the weight room can feel off-limits. These insecurities may seem like petty “me” problems—and of course to an extent they are—but gender does play a role in the gym. According to psychologists from Amherst College and Swarthmore College, weight lifting is a “form of exercise that is specifically beneficial for women but often avoided by them.” Even today, the perceived “masculine body ideals prescribe strength, while feminine body ideals prescribe thinness. These divergent gendered body ideals demand divergent exercise regimens…Weight lifting seems to be highly gendered.”

As an adolescent, I saw weight rooms packed with men. I saw rows of women reading magazines on the elliptical. Of course there were and are exceptions, but the overwhelming implications from my surroundings and the media seemed to scream “you don’t belong in the weight room!”

Growing up, I developed warped notions of what it meant to be fit. My high school cross country team spent a total of one hour in the weight room over a span of four years. We worked with a nutritionist who told us 1,200 calories a day could sustain us. We didn’t know the benefits of strength training, how lifting weights improved not only metabolism and bone mass but also mental health. Studies show that only seven percent of women use free weights as part of their exercise routine. Studies also show that fears of “bulking up” through weightlifting are “largely unfounded.” But even if they weren’t, why should women fear strength?

It is impossible to know what is healthy and realistic when fitness trends change arbitrarily. I am not certified to give anyone advice about anything, but neither are most people on the Internet. According to Gwyneth Paltrow’s trainer, women should never lift more than three pounds. By this logic, a woman should avoid lifting her own child for fear of bulking up.

I don’t know what is right or wrong when it comes to exercise, but I do know that it should be enjoyable. I also know that discomfort should not prevent me, or anyone, from trying something new. We spend time and energy at war with our bodies when they simply need us to love them. In the basement, I feign confidence; I play my music loudly and remind myself to be kind to my body, to be patient and satisfied. These are small things, but sometimes small things are important.

If you are even considering branching out at the gym, I suggest you do it. I have learned that people are much more focused on themselves than anyone else. Maybe you will drop a weight on your foot or stare at a machine for 15 minutes before you understand how to use it. Maybe your phone will fall off the elliptical and your neighbors will watch as you maneuver your way back to it. This is all fine. Make mistakes, loud mistakes. I guarantee the person next to you will be more concerned with her cameltoe or how much his back is sweating.

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