by Ruby Tugeau
I have a confession to make: I used to plan my days around the gym.
Not because I was training for anything, or because I particularly liked it, but because it made me feel in control. I believed if I could quantify my choices, I could control the restlessness that came with being nineteen and uncertain. For me, control was the most socially acceptable cure for anxiety. I knew exactly how long I’d stay, what I’d listen to, and how many sets I’d complete. I liked the predictability of the gym— the numbers, the routines, the illusion of progress. It was one of the few places where effort always seemed to equal results. Such certainty is rare in college.
But certainty is a seductive liar.
Certainty dictates that what is put in must be poured out. For a while, I believed it. I worshipped at the altar of progress: heavier weights, longer workouts, cleaner habits. I needed only to open my workout summary for the day and say: See? I’m getting somewhere. The numbers were proof that I wasn’t wasting time; proof that I was doing something right; proof that all this effort meant something. I enjoyed being a person who had a routine and got results.
But along the way, something shifted.
At first, it was a skipped gym session here and there. I realized that I felt better— more relieved, more at-ease— when I didn’t go. So I started walking more, stretching before bed. I wanted to feel my body exist without my demanding anything from it. After making these adjustments, I began to notice just how much of my self-worth I had outsourced to the gym. I wasn’t moving to feel better, I was moving to prove I was doing enough.
Lately, I’ve noticed I’m not alone in this drift. Women who once curated instagrammable gym routines now post about morning walks, stretching, or yoga. The hashtags have softened, the playlists have slowed. The shift from high-intensity discipline to gentler, more intuitive forms of movement feels less like a trend and more like a collective exhale. Women have not lost interest in “strength” or “health”, but they have started questioning what those words mean to them.
Wellness cultures, particularly for women, have always blurred the line between care and correction. The gym isn’t a just the place where you work out: it’s a socially acceptable arena for control and self-surveillance. Within that context, we can push ourselves, sculpt ourselves, contain ourselves, and call it strength. “Strong is the new skinny” didn’t liberate women from body ideals; it simply updated them for a new era. It told women to stop being small, but not to stop being managed. In a world that demands that women be both personally ambitious and physically attractive, the gym becomes a kind of moral economy: effort equals worth. Sweat and soreness prove not just commitment but character. Self-surveillance becomes acceptable, even admirable.
For me, gentle movement was a revelation: that “wellness” as it’s marketed to women demands the same thing patriarchy always has: self-discipline disguised as self-love. In my health journey, choosing gentler, slower forms of exercise was not laziness, but a quiet recalibration of values. Women are expected to balance everything— to work hard, look good, stay calm, and be healthy (read: thin). With the commercialization of self-care, even rest has become performative. When we resist measurement— no heart rate monitors, no step goals, no “calories burned” — we’re not just changing how we work out. We’re exiting an oppressive system of self-surveillance and domination.
That shift feels especially generational, the purview of the digital age. While millennials had Britney Spears at the VMAs and “scary-skinny” Lindsay Lohan, Gen-Z, had “that girl”: A hyper-productive, aesthetically balanced woman with an aspirational— and exhausting— routine. She woke up at six, went to Pilates, journaled, and drank a plethora of green juices. Her skin was clear and wrinkle-free, her body lean and toned. She was fictional, but her ethos loomed large: control is the price of belonging. “That girl” taught me that the body is there to be optimized, not lived in.
None of this is to say that going to the gym is inherently misguided, or that working out makes one a tool for the patriarchy. For some women, the gym provides a vital outlet, even a lifeline. For them, working out is an act of self-love and self-empowerment. And yet, looking at the broader cultural pattern, I see that every repetition, every data point, every improvement can be sold back to us in the form of a new product, app, or routine. These products promise the same thing: become better, stronger, prettier, and peace will follow. The gym has been captured, not only by patriarchy, but by capitalism. In order to reclaim it, we must make the gym a site for self-care as well as self-improvement.
I still work out sometimes, although not as often, and not as hard. I no longer chase progress; Instead, I prioritize peace. I listen to my body. I ask: Where does it hurt? What would feel good today? and go from there. No calories, no numbers, no goal in mind. For me, that’s where the pipeline leads: not to giving up, but to giving in. The body, I’ve learned, is not proof of anything. The body simply is. Nurturing, rather than conquering it, might be the strongest thing of all.