Photography by Drago Xie.
A bowl of tampons and bananas greets me at the door of a dimly-lit hip-hop club-turned-community space in Kreuzberg. The studio hosts FemmeFitness— a workout “combining high-intensity fitness… (a)sexual empowerment and feminist discussions,” led by founder Anisha Müller. Here, for my first class, I don’t know what to expect, but after an hour of sweaty dance-routines interspersed with feminist discussions all set to a mostly femme soundtrack—contextualised by Müller, who advises how best to support the artists—I am exhausted but happy, and even a bit inspired.
Founded by Müller, a former Zumba instructor, a little over a year ago, FemmeFitness, offers a safe(r) and exciting space to exercise in, one which is driven by positivity and well-being. Müller started the class after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the gym industry, and found herself struggling to reconcile her job with her principles. “My problem with the gym runs deeper than the fact that they promote weight loss,” Müller tells me. “It’s that the gym is not a safe-space where everyone can go.” Shortly after she left, FemmeFitness was born. “I realised that I had both the ability and the responsibility, to offer something, a space that was more sensitive to the realities of people’s bodies,” she explains.
The response was both immediate and positive. Within months, Müller was filling her classes, gaining a steady following on social media, and garnering attention from news sources. The success of her class proved that she was right: people craved a less pressurised space to exercise in, free from the expectations and judgement experienced in mainstream gyms lined with immaculate equipment and attendees that can trigger feelings of inadequacy. In contrast, Müller’s classes offer a much-needed environment to exercise shame-free, because as Müller so succinctly puts it, “we are all so sick of people having opinions about other people’s bodies.”
Photography by Janayna Osada, produced by Livia Vasconcellos.
These misplaced and unsolicited viewpoints “nearly always fall down to femme and queer bodies”, says Müller. The goal of FemmeFitness is to offer an antidote to the victims of the guilt and insecurity perpetuated in gym classes. “On an everyday level, what I try to do is make people not feel policed, for even that one hour of coming to my class,” she explains. “It’s really none of my business what you look like. Health cannot be seen and you should not be told how you live your life.”
It would be very easy to position Müller’s work as falling under the umbrella of the ‘body-positive’ movement. In this regard, she understandably treads with caution. “I initially started using ‘body-positive’ to describe FemmeFitness,” Müller explains, “but more and more it is being appropriated by massive corporations.” And Müller is right: like so many snappy buzzwords which pervade the mainstream (think ‘self-care’ as another well-known example) ‘body-positive’ risks losing its original intentions and meaning.
Take American brand Everlane, which despite using a plus-size model on their Instagram and cashing in on the body-positive trend, refused to stock any plus size clothing in their stores. “Body-positivity is no longer about people who are structurally oppressed, it’s about everyone,” warns Müller. That’s not to say she writes-off the term entirely. “I’ve learnt from the fat activist Magda Albrecht that body-positive is OK if the right people are using it in the right way, in the right context.”
"I realised that I had both the ability and the responsibility, to offer something, a space that was more sensitive to the realities of people’s bodies."
Activism and intersectional feminism have long been interests of Müller — and they now also constitute her job. Given how passionate she is about the subject matter, FemmeFitness quickly bleeds into her everyday life, meaning that taking time off can be difficult.
More important, she stresses, is the refusal among people to consider what she does ‘work’. This problem plagues activists, as a narrow and outmoded definition of labour continues to dominate societal perspective. “There are so many people, activists, who are unnoticed,” says Müller, “they are constantly re-sharing, re-posting things on social media, going to events, speaking at events. All of those things take up so much time that people don’t see, and that labour and effort is so exhausting, and so not paid for! It is really unappreciated. People need to understand that labour is much bigger than a 9-to-5 office job.”
Even for Müller, the positive outcome of FemmeFitness has been surprising. “I had always worked towards making a safer space, but I don’t think I had quite anticipated that people would also come here to make friends,” she muses. “One of the things I find so empowering is that feeling of community—a space full of people who are learning, caring and sweating, one where I also in turn feel supported.”