Episode 58: Transcript

Episode: 58: The nerds vs. jocks battle is a lie

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction and everything else. I’m Annalee Newitz. I’m a science journalist who writes about science fiction.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:09] I’m Charlie Jane Anders. I’m a science fiction writer who thinks a lot about science.

Annalee: [00:00:14] We’re going to be talking about something kind of unusual today, which is where does exercise and physical education fit into science fiction? We’ll talk about the geek vs. jock stereotype, crazy exercise scenes in science fiction and fantasy, and best of all, later in the episode, we have special guest Robyn Warren who is a PE teacher and physical trainer, who created a group called Geek Girl Strong, which is a community for nerds who want to get fit. All right, here we go.

[00:00:47] Intro music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:01:14] We actually had the inspiration to do this episode because of a tweet in early April from Jonathan Korman, who's a friend of the show, who wrote about his horrible experiences in PE. And he was responding to someone named Adrian Bott, who was saying who PE teachers can wreck your health because they are so punishingly cruel. And Jonathan wrote: "I have bottomless rage at having been forced to spend about a thousand hours of my life in physical education classes that did not teach me how to stretch, train, or even lift a heavy box properly, but did teach me to hate exercise."

[00:01:57] He got about 20,000 likes, 5,000 retweets, hundreds of responses—

Charlie Jane: [00:02:04] Wow.

Annalee: [00:02:04] —from people who were saying they’d had the same experience. They had just been so turned off by PE class that they just became alienated from their bodies. And I think this is something that’s really common, certainly among all people, but especially in geek and nerd communities, fandom communities, communities of scientists. I mean, certain kinds of scientists.

[00:02:32] And it really fits into this geek vs. jock stereotype which I want to trace back to the early 1980s. And here’s a clip:

Revenge of Nerds: [00:02:41] Anyway, college is a whole new ball game. [Chanting “Ogre!” in the background]

Nerds!

People judge you differently than they did in high school.

Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!

Where are they?

I think they’re talking about us.

No way.

NERDS! Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!

Come on, Lewis, let’s go.

Nerds! Nerds! [chanting continues]

Annalee: [00:03:14] So that’s a clip from Revenge of the Nerds, that documentary about 1980s culture. Which…

Charlie Jane: [00:03:22] That movie is so horrible.

Annalee: [00:03:24] It’s so horrible. It’s replete with every racist stereotype, every gender stereotype, and it also brought us the nerd vs. jock stereotype.

Charlie Jane: [00:03:36] Yeah, that clip of them just screaming, “Nerd! Nerd!” It’s so iconic, and it’s actually still really upsetting to this day. It’s a really upsetting moment. And then that movie goes to some really dark terrible places where women’s privacy has to be violated, and in fact there’s sexual assault in order to prove that nerds are superior. And it’s just… it’s kind of horrific. But that is kind of the root of a lot of these stereotypes, it’s kind of amazing.

Annalee: [00:04:03] Yeah, I mean, it’s probably not the cause, it’s just one of the most iconic expressions of something that really goes back kind of far in our pop culture—

Charlie Jane: [00:04:12] Right.

Annalee: [00:04:12] —which is, this idea that if you’re a smart person who’s really interested in mental pursuits, whether that’s dreaming up star ships, or dreaming up stories about star ships, that you just can’t be physically fit. That you’re just… you’re not able to do physical stuff. And the whole trope of Superman’s character, which comes out in the ‘30s, is that no one could possibly believe that Clark Kent is Superman. Not because they don’t basically look alike, but because Clark Kent is so nerdy and weaking-ish that how could he be this big strong guy with rippling muscles and laser eyes. I guess the laser eyes came later, but you know what I mean.

[00:04:59] So I think that the geek vs. jock showdown in Revenge of the Nerds is really just playing on something that’s been going on for a while, at least in the United States. This kind of nerd / jock split. And you still have shows like Stranger Things, which are, of course, in reference to 1980s shows, and is set in the 1980s, where you really see this kind of reviving of that idea that the people who are the nerds are these kind of dorky people who are not physically fit and have asthma, or they’re overweight. Which is of course coded as bad.

Charlie Jane: [00:05:42] And there’s a lot of fat-phobia in those kinds of stories.

Annalee: [00:05:44] There’s a lot of fatphobia generally, I think, in science fiction and fantasy. A lot of jokes around it, and I think that is also, we have to recognize that that is also part of this whole trope that nerds are fat and being fat means that you’re not in shape, and therefore you’re ugly and bad and a social outcast.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:07] And there’s this idea that you can’t be fat and be in shape and exercise, and that fat people are people who don’t exercise, which we all know is not true.

Annalee: [00:06:15] That’s right. And so, I’m wondering how does this whole trope in superhero stories and a lot of science fiction, of kind of working out and training up for your job. How does that fit into this, Charlie Jane? There’s so many stories like, everything from Hunger Games to The Matrix, where our hero suddenly knows kung fu, or gets really good at shooting stuff.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:44] I was going to say, in reference to superhero stuff, because you mentioned Superman, I feel like a lot of these things, part of why superheros are such crack is because they do really play into that. Both Spider-Man and Captain America start out as these skinny dudes who are really nebbish-y and kind of nerdy. And then they get bitten by a spider or they get super soldier serum, and suddenly they’re really buff and there’s endless fetishization of Chris Evans with his shirt off, showing his rippling muscles, and Thor has his rippling muscles. You know, there’s that whole scene in The Avengers where they take their clothes off and coat each other with oil and then roll around together, and… Maybe that wasn’t in The Avengers, maybe I just imagined it.

Annalee: [00:07:25] Head canon accepted.

Charlie Jane: [00:07:26] [inaudible]

Annalee: [00:07:29] Well, also, I was going to say, riding on top of that, there’s that whole arc where in the movies, Thor gets fat and it’s like…

Charlie Jane: [00:07:39] Oh God, yeah. And it’s played for laughs, right.

Annalee: [00:07:42] It’s played for laughs and it’s also supposed to signal to us that he’s lost it. That he’s hit rock bottom. Not that he’s depressed… I mean, I’m sorry, not that being depressed is hitting rock bottom. No, no, no, being fat is hitting rock bottom. So it’s very clear that this idea… he’s become kind of a nerd, and he in fact is just sitting around and watching TV and stuff like that.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:12] I feel like we could do a whole episode about the fat suit in speculative fiction and how it’s frequently this horrible signifier. Battlestar Galactica did the same thing where in season three, I think, Lee Adama suddenly gets… gains a lot of weight, and it’s like, oh, you know, he’s not the hero anymore because he gained weight. And it’s just like, what the fuck?

Annalee: [00:08:36] Yeah, why is that? Suddenly because you weigh a little bit more, you’re unable to do anything? So it’s very… yeah, it’s a recurring thing. And at the same time, even though superhero stories and science fiction are classified as geek genres, there’s a giant fetishization of working out in the shows, and we have a clip here from Arrow where Arrow is doing… This was recently introduced to me, by the way. Charlie Jane showed me a bunch of clips of workout scenes from Arrow where Arrow is doing something called the salmon ladder.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:19] Yes.

Annalee: [00:09:19] And so, here’s what happens in that scene.

Arrow Clip: [00:09:21] How does he do that?

It’s all in the core!

[Clank! Clank! *grunting* Clank!]

So, Curtis, I’m guessing this wasn’t part of your Olympic training.

[Clank]

Annalee: [00:09:39] What’s going on here, Charlie Jane? You’re the Arrow expert.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:42] So what’s happening in this scene is that a new guy has joined the Arrow superhero team, Curtis, who is a gay, black nerdy dude, who actually was an Olympic athlete. He was an Olympic decathlon athlete. But in that scene we’re finding that he cannot do the salmon ladder that Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, does. And Oliver’s like, it’s all in your core muscles, man!

[00:10:05] And if you just go on YouTube and search for Arrow salmon ladder, there’s a hundred clips of scenes where people can or can’t do the salmon ladder, and also shirtless Oliver Queen doing the salmon ladder. The Flash does the salmon ladder really fast. It’s like, I’ve got super fast salmon ladder skills. And Sara Lance, who becomes the captain on Legends of Tomorrow does the salmon ladder, and she’s like, that wasn’t so hard! And it’s this big test of whether you’re cool or not.

Annalee: [00:10:32] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:32] And it’s like, super weird that it’s this kind of… but yeah, it’s all about, you have to pull yourself up and swing yourself and then go to the next level and it’s really hard to do. You have to have really good core muscle.

Annalee: [00:10:44] It’s like a jumping pull up thing. I have no idea if salmon ladders are real. They probably are.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:51] There’s a bunch of videos of how to do the salmon ladder in real life, now, of course.

Annalee: [00:10:55] Okay, so you’ve checked this out. So in reality, of course, the real geek test is whether you know about the salmon ladder in the context of Arrow, but in the world of Arrow, the geek test is can you do the salmon ladder. So this is the difference between the geek imaginary and the geek reality. But also, again, it kind of goes back to what I would call a weird dualism here where there’s all of this hero worship of jocks, of the kind of Captain Hammers of the world, if you will. And then, this sort of acknowledgment, or maybe not acknowledgment, but demonization of how many geeks aren’t super strong or aren’t super adept at the salmon ladder.

[00:11:44] Maybe not because they couldn’t be but just because they’ve had such terrible experiences in PE and it’s kind of driven them away from PE and from physical activity.

[00:11:55] It’s interesting because I was just reading about a new study that came out of UC San Diego where some researchers looked at how mice responded to physical activity. So they had some mice that were getting lots and lots of running on the wheel and some that didn’t. And the ones that did started producing new neurotransmitters, their neurotransmitters switched over to a different neurotransmitter that promoted neural growth, promoted new connections between neurons. And it wasn’t like your brain suddenly switched over to being a new brain, it was just that the exercise actually promoted brain health and promoted what’s called neuroplasticity, which is just the regrowth of neurons or growing new connections between neurons.

[00:12:39] And so in this case, with this particular study, the neurons that were affected all had to do with motor skills. So the fact was that the more you exercise, the better you get at exercise, and the better you get at physical activity. But they think that it could have a lot of implications for just learning in general and neuroplasticity in general, and that exercise, physical activity of any kind is clearly connected to having a healthier brain.

[00:13:07] We just don’t have any models in pop culture that really give us a sense that that’s true. Even when you have, say someone like Iron Man who’s super smart, the way that he becomes physically badass is by building a suit, not by working out all the time. Like, oh, I did the salmon ladder and now I’ve solved physics or whatever. That clearly doesn’t happen.

[00:13:34] What do you think is going on there, Charlie Jane? Why do we have this dualism?

Charlie Jane: [00:13:37] I mean, I think that dualism is exactly the right word. It does go back to Descartes, it’s this Cartesian dualism between mind and body and this idea that your mind is somehow this separate thing. And really, we’ve talked in other episodes about this fantasy of uploading your brain to the internet or living forever by digitizing your brain, and the idea you could download your brain into a new body, and it’s this idea that your brain is what matters and that your body is just this vehicle that you’re kind of driving around in, which clearly is not true. And studies like the one you mentioned show that that’s not true and it is interesting that nerds are so invested in these superhero stories which are frequently Batman, the whole point of Batman is that he’s a regular guy who just really really worked out super hard until he was the strongest, smartest, best fighter, best detective. He just got really good at everything by just being super driven.

[00:14:37] And I think that that is a thing that… nerds are obsessed with will power in general, I think. It’s a big part of nerd culture. And so, this idea of like, if you could just have strong enough will power, you would be physically and mentally an ideal. Obviously, it’s all bullshit, but this idea that you could be Batman, or whatever is a thing that people really get into. But at the same time, this idea that, well, I could be Tony Stark, I don’t have to work out, I can just build a super suit, and then my super suit will be strong and I can just be inside it.

[00:15:11] And your mind can kind of conquer this. But there’s also the idea that if you have a strong enough will, that’s your mind gettting your body to do things. I think it’s… I don’t know. I think there’s two different kinds of nerd fantasies of power. Obviously, a lot of these things go back to power fantasies and fantasies of being strong in various ways.

Annalee: [00:15:31] Yeah, so it’s sort of the fantasy of mental power, the power of physical power, but we neever see them being integrated. It’s either that you use your mind power to conquer your body in some way, either through training or through having a super suit. Or you’re just this amazing hunk of meat and if you’re an amazing hunk of meat, one of the things that I think is interesting that we see again and again when we have these characters who are the hunk of meat characters, they often have a sidekick who’s the nerd character.

[00:16:02] Like, the show Person of Interest is a perfect example where we kind of have the meathead character and the mad scientist character. Or you have a show like Alias where there’s… many shows like Alias. Let’s just say Alias is the template and there’s always the nerdy dude who sits at a table and all he or she ever does is use a soldering iron, maybe. And you know…

[00:16:30] I mean, actually, it usually is a dude and it’s really only quite recently that we’ve started to have that character be a a girl. 

Charlie Jane: [00:16:37] Mm-hmm, like Felicity.

Annalee: [00:16:38] So occasionally, yeah, or like Warehouse 13 has a female nerd character.

Charlie Jane: [00:16:44] Oh yeah, that’s right, and I love her.

Annalee: [00:16:45] Who basically is exactly the character—the dude character from Alias, but now a cute girl with colorful hair, so… Not that I don’t like that character. I’m super pro that character, but you can always recgnize that person. You can never have that in the same body. I just… I’m racking my brain and I just cannot think of a superhero character or a science fiction hero character who kind of intergrates both. Maybe, like, in the training scenes with Luke and Yoda in Star Wars. That’s kind of what it’s about? It’s about kind of intergrating your mind with your body. I’m down with that.

Charlie Jane: [00:17:26] I think superhero stories are full of people who start out as the nerd sidekick and eventually get to graduate to become kind of a badass in their own right. I think that that’s a common arc in superhero stories. And in fact, Curtis, the character that we heard failing to do the salmon ladder in that clip, he becomes a badass in Arrow and he becomes one of the most badass characters in that show. And he kind of starts out as the nerdy, geeky guy who’s like, oh, this is just like this comic book or whatever. And then he kind of slowly gets there.

[00:17:54] I wanted to bring up another kind of… obviously we’re getting a lot into superhero stuff. But I wanted to bring up one of your favorite characters and my favorite characters, The Incredible Hulk, who is the kind of archetypal skinny nerd who becomes muscly. And when he’s muscly, he can’t be smart, he has to be like, “Hulk smash!” And one of the central concerns of the Hulk comics and recently of the movies, is can the Hulk ever become smart and can he ever be as smart in his big muscly body as he is when he’s skinny. And over and over again in the comics, he gets to be smart and then he loses it somehow. 

[00:18:31] In the Bill Mantlo era, he becomes really smart but then he can feel his intelligence starting to slip away every time he hulks out. And then in the movies, there’s Professor Hulk, who’s like the smart version. But it’s never permanent, and it’s never really stable because there’s this idea, somehow, that you can’t really be the Hulk and be really smart. It’s never going to last.

Annalee: [00:18:53] Yeah, the two things just can’t go together. It comes back to the dualism. 

Charlie Jane: [00:18:59] It really does.

Annalee: [00:18:59] You’re either one or the other, and if they do mix, maybe there’s some kind of danger involved. I feel like there’s a lot of supervillains, who are kind of really smart and really strong at the same time, like Doc Ock is an example. Although he’s only strong because he, kind of like Iron Man, he—

Charlie Jane: [00:19:20] He’s like Iron Man, yeah.

Annalee: [00:19:22] He builds himself an exoarm—set of arms. Perhaps more often, there’s the stereotype of a bad guy who is just a brain in a box, basically, and there’s something wrong with that.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:35] And that’s frequently how you know that they’re the bad guy, is that they’re just a brain in the box, or they’re like a head and no body. There’s so many comic book villains who are just like a head with tiny little limbs. In some other way, their head is huge and everything else is tiny.

Annalee: [00:19:49] Yeah like the Daleks or something like that.

Charlie Jane: [00:19:52] Modoc, the Leader, I don’t know, there’s a bunch.

Annalee: [00:19:54] All right, so, to help us get out of this horrific geek vs. jock dualism, when we come back we’re going to talk to Robyn Warren, who created Geek Girl Strong.

[00:20:05] Segment change music plays. Drums with a bass line including bass drops.

Annalee: [00:20:18] To start out, why don’t you just tell us what you do?

Robyn: [00:20:20] My name is Robyn Warren. I founded the wellness community Geek Girl Strong about five years ago after being a New York City public school PE and Health teacher for five years, and basically with Geek Girl Strong, I take women and non-binary people who feel like they don’t really have a space in fitness and bring them all together through their shared geeky interests to do really cool workouts and generally take care of their wellbeing by eating well and talking a lot about mental health and how we can be our best selves.

Annalee: [00:20:57] That’s awesome.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:57] That’s amazing.

Annalee: [00:20:59] We’ve been talking a lot about how in pop culture, there’s this big geek vs. jock divide which is obviously ridiculous and artificial, but it’s kind of stuck in our heads. A lot of us grew up with it. So how do you bridge that divide? How do we get from thinking about those two things as opposites to kind of integrating them?

Robyn: [00:21:20] I think it’s just realizing that no human actually lives in any one box. It’s something that motivated me to start Geek Girl Strong because I saw it in a lot of my students who were socialized as girls and young women. Where they would make it to about the seventh grade and then it seems like they felt that they had to choose one of three boxes which was to be kind of a tomboy and athletic, and still really good at PE. To be really attractive, and take care of their appearances and their relationships to other kids at school, or they were going to be a geek and a bookworm and to themselves and only worrying about their grades. And I think that just having more examples, for one, always helps. But also just remembering that we’re all geeky about different things. So in the same way that someone dresses up in cosplay for a convention, I look at sports arenas and see lots of people in cosplay of their favorite athletes.

Annalee: [00:22:24] Mm-hmm. And you have to dress up in cosplay to play sports, too, right?

Robyn: [00:22:29] Exactly. Absolutely.

Annalee: [00:22:31] It’s not… I mean, it’s true people do wear football jerseys all over the place. But it’s different from putting on your armor and your helmet and your tooth guard and all that kind of stuff.

Robyn: [00:22:41] Yeah, and you know, I’ve heard a lot of really big physical sports fans who are really confused by e-sports or by gamers who are doing live shows and live tournaments. And I do not actually understand the confusion, because they’re doing things that I can’t do, just with a controller instead of with their entire bodies.

Annalee: [00:23:04] Mm-hmm, and that’s also physical, too, right? There’s a huge component of motor control that goes into that, so it’s not totally just sitting at home. 

Robyn: [00:23:14] No, no, it’s not.

Annalee: [00:23:16] And so what do you find is the biggest obstacle that people who have been geeks, or people who identify as geeks face when they try to take the plunge and get fit?

Robyn: [00:23:28] I think the biggest thing for anyone, and especially for people who grew up as a geek is having moments of success with movement. So this is with anything, but especially if someone was a child who never felt successful or never felt rewarded or recognized for what they did in a PE class, for instance, then why would they have good feelings around moving their bodies and why would they think that’s something that’s open to them. So I always say that giving, kids especially, but anyone a point of entry in which they can succeed at it, especially for a child who is just experiencing certain types of movement for the first time. If they’re not given a space in which they can succeed at it, they’re not going to have any reason to go back and do it again.

Annalee: [00:24:23] Yeah.

Robyn: [00:24:22] And it’s the same exact thing for adults.

Annalee: [00:24:25] So how do they start? What’s an example of how you get people to be like, oh, I can do that. What do you start with, or does it depend on the person?

Robyn: [00:24:33] It totally depends on the person if I’m working with them privately. But even on a larger scale, I’ve found that for one, using fandom as a theme, so, before we were all at home, the last in-person event that we had was a Birds of Prey themed event.

Charlie Jane: [00:24:52] Oh, nice.

Annalee: [00:24:52] Nice.

Robyn: [00:24:53] Yeah, so during the workout, I had them kicking X-ray sheets so it makes a really loud banging noise when they kicked it with their foot, and that was a part of the workout. They were working together, and it didn’t really matter how hard or how high they were kicking, they just had to get their foot on this plastic piece of sheet from an X-ray that anyone can really order. And it made this really cool sound. And then we had other stations where they were swinging what we pretended were bats down at an enemy, or throwing balls at a wall that had targets on it. So all of these things that I do with people, we have what we call as strict movement, which would be the highest level, but then at every single event I make sure that I show at least one modification for every single movement that we’re doing to ensure that every person has a movement that works for them that day.

[00:25:51] And I think it’s really important for people to remember that you do what you can on that day, and don’t worry about what you would like to do later, maybe, at the time. Because you’re working with what you’ve got and sometimes that’s more than enough.

Annalee: [00:26:07] Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about yoga, is that in yoga there’s the position you’re trying for, but then there’s many, many steps along the way.

Robyn: [00:26:16] Absolutely.

Annalee: [00:26:16] And it’s like, today, maybe you just get into one little piece of it, and next time try some more.

Robyn: [00:26:25] Yeah, you try a little bit more.

Annalee: [00:26:27] I feel like one of the big obstacles for geeks in getting interested in physical activity, and this kind of goes back to PE class is that we’re taught about physical activity through competitive sports.

Robyn: [00:26:39] Yes.

Annalee: [00:26:39] And I think this is such a huge hurdle. What do you think about that?

Robyn: [00:26:44] So, I actually… recently, I do this all the time, I go on rants about how when I was a PE teacher, or a Physical Education teacher, people would kind of look down on me in a way. And I found that I get a lot more respect now when I introduce myself and tell people that I’m a wellness professional, or that I have a wellness business and that I run it myself, than I ever did as a PE teacher.

[00:27:13] I think about those kinds of things a lot because I still think that being a school teacher is one of the most difficult jobs you can ever have.

Charlie Jane: [00:27:18] Totally.

Robyn: [00:27:19] Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of people know what the set-up in a PE class is, but typically it’s a lot bigger, in terms of class size than the classroom is. So as a New York City public school teacher, the legal ratio of teacher to student is 1:50. That’s 50. So it’s one adult and 50 children, and you do what you can to keep them safe and moving. And unfortunately, a lot of the time, that ends up being that a teacher is just like, let me just split this big group kids into a couple of teams and get them moving safely. And there are definitely some teachers out there who do it better than others and give it a lot more effort, just like in any profession. But I do think that there is a part of this that is systemic in which we don’t respect physical education, in a way, in the US, at least.

[00:28:27] When a teacher is unable to have an environment in which they can offer lots of different options, it makes it so that maybe both teacher and student are frustrated by the limitations of what they can offer, and then, like you said, we get kids who are just like, I just don’t want to play basketball all the time. Or ever.

Annalee: [00:28:50] Yeah.

Robyn: [00:28:50] I’d rather try a dance class or a yoga class or just something that’s more of an individual movement than kind of on a stage in a way.

Annalee: [00:28:59] Is there some way that we can get out of that conundrum, do you think? Is it we need reform of the school system, or a commitment to non-competittive sports sometimes, or?

Robyn: [00:29:11] I think you’re seeing more of it because of just everything that is in the news and the media with adults struggling with their health, and adults struggling to get moving. So I think it has, in a way, trickled down to schools in which parents, because they’re more likely to listen to parents than the employees of the school, but parents are advocating and saying, my kid hates PE but when they’re at home, maybe they have an interest in something else. And also, because parents are having to pay a buttload of money to send their kids to other physical activity options than they’re able to get at school. So I think you’re right. I think some of it is totally just needing a reform of how we look at Physical Education and how it’s treated, just as a quick add-on for K-6th grade students. So that’s our younger student population, teachers actually no longer need a Physical Education certification to teach PE to kids that are that young.

Annalee: [00:30:21] Wow. So maybe we need a little more training, too?

Charlie Jane: [00:30:25] Yeah.

Robyn: [00:30:26] Absolutely. So my students were surprised when I told them that I had a college degree.

Charlie Jane: [00:30:31] Oh, wow.

Annalee: [00:30:31] Wow.

Robyn: [00:30:33] Because there’s just this attitude about PE, which is understandable because of a lot of our experiences with it, that the people doing it are not experts at what they do. And that in and of itself is obviously really disappointing and disheartening for the professionals and the teachers who are doing that work. So I think it’s a little bit of the whole system needs to be reformed and then a little bit of just having more of these conversations.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:00] So, you’re doing this… it’s called Geek Girl Strong, and you mentioned that you include trans people and non-binary people. And part of what turns a lot of us off exercise, I think, is this idea that we do get from pop culture and science fiction in part, is that it’s this very macho thing. That it’s very tough and it’s manly. It’s for people that are like… it’s got this sort of gendered component to it.

Robyn: [00:31:23] Absolutely.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:24] How do you take Physical Education away from that kind of super macho attitude?

Robyn: [00:31:30] I think, to really get down to it, I think it’s super helpful that I am a Black woman who’s under 5’5”. Because I’m just not, when people see me, they would have never thought that I was a PE teacher. So just in who I am, I think allows for people to see another example of what health, wellness, and fitness can be. And when I share all of my own interests in different kinds of movement, so, when they were open, I was at the gym and lifting really heavy. But I’m also really into pole dancing, and I teach people how to do that as well.

[00:32:11] I just try to tell people that if they can find movement that feels fun to them again, like how we didn’t know or care if we were exercising or not when we were playing tag with our friends. That is movement. And I think a really big component of making sure that people know it doesn’t have to kind of be the meathead at the gym in order to be fitness and healthy, is just to redefine our definition of exercise and realize that it can include so many different things.

Annalee: [00:32:42] It sounds like you’re kind of a movement geek. And so what do you geek out the most about in the world of movement?

Robyn: [00:32:54] So, I’ve been dancing since I was three years old because I’m an only child and my parents wanted me to be socialized like a normal kid, so I was sent into movement classes very early on. Also because I was a child in the early ‘90s when MTV was becoming really big, and my mom was a really big fan, so she always had music videos playing, and I taught myself a lot of the dances from the music videos. So that is a huge geeky thing about me is that I probably still know a lot of music video choreography that I could probably use for something else in my brain.

Annalee: [00:33:37] Now you have to learn all the TikTok dances, that’s like…

Robyn: [00:33:41] You know, I do feel kind of like an old fuddy-duddy that I don’t care about those. 

Annalee: [00:33:49] Yeah, it’s like, I remember when it was just TV.

Robyn: [00:33:55] Yes, I know! Yeah, so I really love movement and dance and I did really love sports, but I tended to excel and enjoy dance. I did cheerleading for a long time, as well, because my school didn’t have a dance program, so I was like, oh, I’ll do that.

[00:34:14] And I really used, and still use, movement as probably my primary coping mechanism. I talk a lot about mental health and how movement is the way, one of the primary ways that I kind of treat my mental health and my mental illness.

Annalee: [00:34:30] Okay, a final geeky question for you. Which is, do you have a favorite scene in science fiction or superhero stories where people are doing exercise and working out?

Robyn: [00:34:43] So, I don’t think I have a favorite one, but any time there is something athletic, I get really excited because it’s just all of my worlds coming togheter. Anything with a training montage. They’re so corny, but I still love them so much.

Annalee: [00:35:01] Yeah. We were talking about the salmon ladder in Arrow.

Robyn: [00:35:07] Oh yeah, that’s so good. So, quidditch would have been my favorite class, without question. I liked The Hunger Games parts where they had to show everyone what they could do. I guess, more recently, like, what just happened was with the Birds of Prey movie. To see it with a group of women and non-binary people and, at the end of it, all of us just walked out like, did you see how they were all fighting? How we would actually fight. Not everyone was a brawler, they were using physics against their opponents in order to take them down because they don’t weigh as much as them. And they were using their lower bodies more often like a lot of people do when they don’t have as much upper body strength as their opponent. And it was just so good and very exciting to me.

Annalee: [00:35:57] Yeah, that was a great movie, and the fight scene was incredible. The final pyrotechnic fight scene, it was just like… yes!

Robyn: [00:36:05] So good.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:06] It was so great.

Robyn: [00:36:06] I’m like, tearing up, I enjoy it so much.

Annalee: [00:36:08] Yeah, it was… that movie needs to be seriously remembered and treasured.

Robyn: [00:36:15] I really hope that it becomes a cult classic or something like that.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:19] It definitely—

Annalee: [00:36:20] I bet it will.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:20] It definitely will.

Robyn: [00:36:21] Yeah.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:21] It’s already going there. It’s already on its way.

Annalee: [00:36:24] All right, well thank you so much for being with us and chatting with us. How can people find out more about you and your classes online?

Robyn: [00:36:32] Sure, they can go to GeekGirlStrong.com or @GeekGirlStrong mostly on Instagram, or really anywhere on social media.

Annalee: [00:36:41] Awesome. All right, well, stay fit and we’ll see you soon.

Charlie Jane: [00:36:43] Yay! Thank you so much. 

Robyn: [00:36:45] See you soon, thanks so much!

Annalee &Charlie Jane: [00:36:46] Bye!

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Annalee: [00:36:52] You’ve been listening to Our Opinions Are Correct. Thanks so much for being here. You can always find us everywhere where fine podcasts are purveyed. Please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts because it helps the overlords sort our bodies out from the bodies of the fallen. And you can find us on Patreon, that’s Patreon.com/OurOpinionsAreCorrect, and if you become a patron, you get lots of awesome extras. There’s audio extras, we post essays, and we post writing prompts and all kinds of other cool things. The contents of our closets, everything you want to know. And you can find us on Twitter at @OOACpod.

[00:37:36] And thank you so much to our amazing producer, Veronica Simonetti, who’s with Women’s Audio Mission in San Francisco, where we record when we can go into the place to record. And thank you to Chris Palmer for the music, and thank you for listening because you’re so awesome. Go out, do some moving around, socially distanced, and feel better. Bye!

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