Dear Planet Fitness, Why Don’t You Care About The Safety And Privacy of Women?

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Matt Walsh:

Dear Planet Fitness,

I went to your website today looking to cancel my membership, but it says I have to do it in writing. I hope this letter will satisfy that requirement.

Now, because you need this written down like it’s a divorce filing, I thought I should tell you why our relationship isn’t working out (pun very intended). You might call it “irreconcilable differences.” Or you might just say I was utterly disgusted and perplexed when I read this story about a woman named Yvette Cormier, who quite reasonably felt intimidated and uncomfortable when she encountered a man in a Planet Fitness women’s locker room. She expressed her concerns to your staff, and then to your corporate office, but she was informed that because the man “identifies as a woman,” he is free to use the bathrooms and changing facilities of actual women.

And as if so profoundly violating the privacy of your female customers wasn’t enough, you then proceeded to ban Ms. Cormier as punishment for complaining. If that lady has the audacity to feel threatened by a man who waltzes into the locker room while she’s potentially exposed, she isn’t welcome in your place of business, you announced.

I find this policy and your decision idiotic, repulsive, asinine, irresponsible, backward, and insane. I couldn’t possibly continue giving you my money after something like this, but, in all honesty, I should have broken up with with you long before. You guys are just so cheap, and I’m such a tightwad that the marriage seemed destined to be.

But I was mistaken.

Indeed, I realized during my first workout at your gym that you are the undoubtedly one of the biggest frauds and worst false advertisers in the country. And when I say “false advertiser,” I’m not just referring to the “women” sign on the door to the female locker room.

Your slogan is “no judgment,” yet you are probably the only health club in the nation that centers its entire business model around being judgmental. Rather than sell your product based on its merits (a flimsy foundation, that), your commercials make fun of fitness enthusiasts, painting them with all of the familiar stereotypes. You even have a giant alarm positioned near your paltry collection of dumbbells, designed to blare out anytime someone makes the mistake of grunting or otherwise exhibiting signs of physical exertion, because those sounds might interfere with the normal folks who came to the gym to stand around the ellipticals for 45 minutes gabbing with their friends before heading to Starbucks for a muffin and a venti mocha frappucino.

You have signs on the walls singling out those of us who drink out of gallon jugs or wear sleeveless shirts.You prohibit your customers from doing any exercise that might frighten the sort of people who think “deadlift” means bench pressing corpses. Your mantra is that you don’t want “lunkheads,” and then you define lunkhead as, essentially, anyone (well, any man) who wants to build muscle.

I get it, though. It’s a clever trick. You market yourself towards people who aren’t interested in fitness, charge $10 a month, and then give out free pizza and bagels; you do everything in your power to repel anyone who might be intent on getting stronger and healthier, while going to great lengths to entice the kinds who come once and never return but keep paying membership fees anyway, and now you have a business built to basically service nobody. You get people to buy a membership, but then discourage them from getting in shape, and the result has made you millions.

Well done, you shameless con artists.

Anyway, that’s beside the point, but since we’re on the subject of you, I thought it bears mentioning that you were already terrible before this whole “transgender” fiasco. I mean, come on, you’re a gym that serves pizza.

You’re a joke.

And now you’re a danger to women.

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Wow!
Our gym is getting a few new members over this, too.
My ”Silver Sneakers” equals a free (out of pocket) membership anywhere.
So, a close place with whirlpools, pools, saunas and steam rooms was an easy choice.
I can’t imagine them serving pizza!