Were Gymshark right to delete this photo?
Engaging with "fitness influencers" can be a minefield for anyone who just wants to be a bit more active.
I’m not sure how I came to follow Gymshark on Instagram. I have always found their brand of activewear a little too bumcrack-centric for my life stage, but maybe I thought one day I’d buy some socks from there or something.
You would expect the Gymshark feed to be all bronzed, bulging, Gen Z biceps and it is, often with captions like “Put in the work” and “Embrace your potential”. But the other day, I thought they took it too far, then I felt bad for being judgy about someone’s body, then vindicated because they ended up deleting the post in question — presumably in response to thousands of people also being judgy.
This photo that they shared to their 7.2 million followers looked so far removed from most people’s reality that all the comments — and it was getting dozens every minute — were accusing them of using AI. Not just Photoshop, but AI. Like this wasn’t even a real person at all. But it was.
The fitness influencer, trainer and Gymshark ambassador they shared the above photo of — before deleting it a couple of hours later — is called Lauren Johnson, she has more than 670,000 followers of her own, and the comments on the many similar photos that she’s posted to her feed are generally a mixture of awe and anger. She’s well aware of the controversy too, with one caption reading that she’s “Training for AI allegations”. Lol?
I know that seeing the photo of Lauren triggered a visceral reaction for me; the reason I have a screenshot of it is because I sent it to my friend saying “God it’s irresponsible for such a big company to post someone with a body as unattainable as this surely?”
I sound judgy and like I’m doing that faux-concerned-but-actually-jealous thing. But my Instagram feed mostly serves me school uniform doorstep photos, running memes and ADHD Reels, so Gymshark took me by surprise with this image. As well as having naturally extreme proportions, Lauren clearly works hard to get a body so other-worldly looking. Did she also use editing tools on this photo? Maybe. Should Gymshark share potentially edited bodies to their followers, especially when they have previously made a big song and dance about how body-inclusive they are? Probably not.
Gymshark have famously got into a pickle with their social media content in the past, but for using models that were too real. Yep, only a few years ago, during a high-profile and very 2020 ride on the body positivity bandwagon, they were slated for working with an influencer with a soft stomach because people said it promoted an unhealthy lifestyle. They hit back at the time, saying that Gymshark is for everyone, but it’s noticeable that in the last couple of years they have reverted to predominantly using very, very ripped models to promote their gear.
Almost all of these models have bodies that would be hard to attain for the average person trying to fit in a run or a gym class around work and life. When it comes to high fashion, we accept that models aren’t average people though, don’t we? They’re there for inspiration, not replication. So does that mean it’s OK for Gymshark to promote the fitness equivalent? Oh god I just don’t know! And this is why these conversations about body image and social media are so complicated. We want to be kind (Lauren is a real person! And she seems sweet!) but we also want to protect ourselves, and anyone impressionable and vulnerable around us.
At first glance, a lot of the exceedingly ripped models on Gymshark’s feed don’t look that different from Lauren, but this image just crossed the line because her proportions are so cartoonishly extreme that she could be a Marvel character. Is it down to good genes, an intense training regime, strict nutrition, photo tweakery or all of the above? Who knows.
Like Lauren, I have prominent hips and a (relatively) small waist but… I don’t look like that. Do I have the ingredients to look like that if I worked out constantly and drank a lot of protein shakes? Who fucking knows — I probably needed to devote my life to it at least 20 years ago. And yet, at the same time, Lauren is all the things we’re told a woman should be: strong, but pretty and feminine too!
Why does any of it matter, why don’t I just unfollow and disengage? Well, because I need ideas for Substack posts — and because this country (and plenty of others) has a fitness problem. Our activity levels are dismal, which is not great for anyone’s physical or mental health. It’s quite likely that if you’re a youngish person considering getting a bit more active, you’ll head to Gymshark — it’s one of the coolest and best-known activewear brands out there, after all — but if you see imagery like this, it’s probably not going to make you think that fitness is for you. It makes exercise look extreme and intimidating (PUT IN THE WORK!), rather than something you can dabble with and enjoy. Maybe Gymshark have decided they don’t care, they’re not actually interested in empowering people to train who aren’t already ripped AF? And maybe they’re so conditioned to seeing AI-esque fitness influencers that normal people gross them out now?
Over the past few years I’ve trained (and despite exercising at least five times a week and having a shit-ton of running medals, I still feel uncomfortable using the word “train” because it sounds like something someone really fit would do) in a budget gym chain, a bodybuilding gym, a boxing club, a local leisure centre, a couple of high-end health clubs and several boutique fitness studios, and I don’t think I have ever seen a body quite like Lauren’s in the wild. I’ve certainly seen people who are visibly very fit and muscular and, yes, many of them have been wearing Gymshark, but they’re generally fit in a “oh, you look like you work out” way, not a “you look like you might be a cyborg from the planet Gluto” way. So when I see a photo like the one of Lauren, I’m torn between “that is fucking irresponsible, nobody can look like that without literally devoting their life to fitness, which is arguably as unhealthy as an eating disorder” and “pfft, just let fitness influencers do their thing”.
Even if the second one is right, big brands should probably be a little more cautious with their collabs. I just know that when I think of my daughter, who’s six and quite interested in wearing short shorts, potentially looking at a body like Lauren’s and thinking it’s aspirational and attainable, I feel very uncomfortable. I’d much rather she watched this brilliant video from poet Georgie Jones. Coincidentally, a friend shared this on Stories shortly after I saw the Gymshark post, and it felt like the perfect palate cleanser.
It comes as no surprise that Gymshark’s sizing is pretty limited too. I just put my measurements into the sports bra size calculator on their site and the suggestion it came up with was four inches too big around the band and four cup sizes too small. Ouch. If that is what I had worn when I gingerly first started Couch to 5K in 2020 (during the body positivity craze … probably not a coincidence), I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. And, knowing what I know now about how exercise has transformed my life and my relationship with my body, that would be a real shame.
Speaking of which … let’s segue into OTHER RELEVANT STUFF THAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING IN MY LIFE RECENTLY!
Two weekends ago, I went to the Paralympics in Paris. Unbelievably, we won a family trip there via a Cheerios packet! We watched the athletics and the swimming and it was absolutely incredible. Our schedule was jam-packed (we left the house at 4am on Saturday morning and got home at 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning and I would like to big up my children for dealing with this heroically, while I moaned about the heat and the wasps and being tired) but I still managed to live out all of my Emily In Paris fantasies with a very short but very scenic (Seine-ic, you might say) early morning run.
Don’t worry, two dads on Instagram already made the joke about me having a lovely time in Blackpool
Last week I was embarrassingly excited to be invited to parkrun’s 20th anniversary party on a swanky rooftop near Waterloo, where I drank some lovely free wine, listened to some interesting talks from a few parkrun legends and got my hands, by which I mean feet, on the special edition parkrun x Brooks trainers that they’re releasing in a few weeks to celebrate.
Yeah I wore this dress again I’m normally an Asics girl but I bloody love these shoes and think I might now be a Brooks convert. Look at me LITERALLY FLYING (what was that about unrealistic fitness imagery?) at Peckham Rye parkrun last weekend. And thank you Nicky for the photo. The advantage of being best pals with someone much better at running than me is that she has always got her breath back in time to capture me doing sprint finishes.
Probably my last time this year wearing the damn shorts. Definitely not my last time wearing the trainers of beauty.
I also did the Teach First Run The River 10K last week which I was actually dreading. I’d had to pull out of The Big Half a few weeks earlier after falling over on a training run and buggering my face and my leg (a nice lady saw me bleeding and crying in the street and took me in! It was all very dramatic). So, 10K felt like a stretch. Except it was fine. Better than fine, in fact — I loved it! My leg felt OK, I clocked a perfectly mediocre time of 1 hour and 6 minutes and realised I don’t actually hate running at night as much as I always think I do. Central London was all gorgeous and vibrant and twinkly, in an “Emily In Paris only I’m called Isabel and it’s London and I live here” way and they gave out digestive biscuits at the end. Plus I’ve realised that 10K is actually my favourite distance, so do tell me about any cool 10K races I should do.
That will be all for today. This is is one of my freebie posts but my next one will be paywalled so if you’ve been on the fence about subscribing, get on with it and pay my speeding penalty for me (yes, I drive faster than I run. Only a bit though - 26mph in a 20 zone. Lock me up and watch me get as ripped as a Gymshark model).
That picture doesn't look fit to me. It looks like the results of the kind of eating disorder that puts people in the hospital. My response, upon seeing it, wasn't envy, it was horror. This is not something we should be promoting.
A very old-school fitness trainer here, and you are spot on.
In 2010 there already was almost no space for recreational exercisers and almost no offers for intermediate level. Whoever came either dropped out, or got into the sport almost fully. Not much changed since.
And there IS professional deformation. Lots of trainers I’ve met just assume their clients have culinary chops of French chefs and then blame pizza deliveries on willpower.
The first question is why someone else’s body (of any proportion) causes such a stir in general.
Someone else’s body does not pose a threat. Soft or ripped or anything in between, it’s not contagious.
Michael Phelps eats LOTS of food, yet we understand that it’s his job and of course we can’t eat this much. It’s not considered a bad influence, even if ANY professional sport is not kind to health.
The second question is why use professionals to inspire exercisers? It's like putting a super light weight amateur boxer against Mike Tyson.
Unattainable is a very poor inspiration.
Third question is not a question. We need more impact bra sizes in varied constructions.