do we really need under-eye patches to do a gym class

One of my new years resolutions for 2025 was to try and make some new friends in the wild. Not trying to mould my current friendships into something new, not following someone on Instagram and DMing them a laughing emoji every few stories - doing things that I like, and finding people that were in those spaces doing them too.

I believed this would be easy peasy. I’d think about the activities I like, search up clubs in Surrey/London on TikTok, go along, share a few of my sure fire remarks that get people to think I’m mildly interesting and BAM. Instantly click with these new mateys in seconds. New friendship group completed. Bosh. ONTO THE NEXT GOAL !!!!!

However ~ like the 57 other of my resolutions ~ that one went right up the shitter.

I can go into the friendship side in more detail on another post (this is me asking subtly if you’re interested in that, and if so, please let me know in the comments & subscribe!!), but for now I thought I’d focus on the spaces us women have to ‘meet new people’, and how diabolical they feel at the minute.

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In short, everything feels like one big performance.

The consumerism, sorry, communities at my disposal look like absolute arse.

I get invited to a padel event thats being put on to encourage women to get into the sport (yipee!), the event details cover the most important things, those being:

• plenty of photo opportunities! (of course, none of these images are of you actually playing. Just a nice wall. A spare court & a racket that no one playing on, so you can squat on the floor whilst-pretending-you-don’t-know-someone’s-taking-your-picture-squatting-on-the-floor to get an aEsTheTiC picture for Instagram.)

• a cute outfit! (cue an ‘on-trend’ - whatever that is - piece that is so technically poor for a sport like padel, it doesn’t even have any pockets to store a ball ?? Where are we putting it then?? Between my arse cheeks or yours??)

• goodie bags! (is this a kids party? Why do I need a micellar water to learn how to ace a serve?)

Ok, so padel went a miss - however good news! There’s a reformer pilates class on with an hour to mingle afterwards, sounds ideal!!! This is the IG post I’m being served to join it:

• free eye patches to wear whilst working out! (sorry - what on earth is the equivalent of this for men? Are they wearing a blackhead nose stripe whilst playing 5 a side across from Brixton station?)

• bring your content bestie! (this concept will be the end of female friendships. To those that don’t know what it means, it’s a ‘friend’ that will go to things with you to take pictures of you doing things. In reality though, you’re not doing the things. You’re posing as if you are, spending half the class filming yourself from different angles, and desperately waiting for the class to finish so you can scroll and see if you got ‘the shot’.)

It feels heavily like we’re being conditioned to ignore the age old question ‘what would I enjoy doing?’, and we’re instead told to focus more heavily on ‘what does my life look like when I do xyz?’

And look - this is not me saying either a) I’m above it, or b) I think poorly of the people that do these things. I just want to bring the question why are we doing them? I am almost certain the answer is consumerism.

Consumerism thrives on this low effort, low stakes community facade. It can over-promise and underdeliver on all the things that make a community, just through giving us a goodie bag of shit that - quite frankly- IS ALSO PLAYING OFF OF OUR INSECURITIES.

These spaces feel like they just want us to focus on what we look like, or what we want others to think we look like - and more than anything, it is so. Fucking. Boring.

There’s just no grit - real communities doing cool shit are equal parts focussed & messy. Honed in on working on a craft, sport, language, dance routine etc and elated by effort & improvement. These ‘communities’ don’t want you to get distracted by enjoyment, they just want you to buy, and if you’re not doing that, at least do us a story and tag us will you?

There’s no progression - they don’t care if you go back week-on-week and improve. Luckily you’ve posted the location on your story, and a girl you met on holiday 7 years ago is now going to take your spot, so she can film that Sunday Reset vlog too.

And my biggest bugbear, there’s no real community being built. Creating real teams or friendships is highly inefficient, repetitive, hard work and ~most importantly~ incredibly difficult to be monetised or made legible to an audience. Genuine close connections are an AWFUL sales funnel.

I hate to say it - and I hope you take this with nuance - but I want a slice of what men have in this realm. They have their regular 5-a-side team, mates from school they spend their saturdays at the driving range with, no matter how shit they are, they quickly rally groups together to play Padel, each week getting better and better, and the group getting larger and larger.

‘Tom, we’ve got a space, is your brother interested?’

‘Sorry mate, I can’t play today - but my uncle would love to. He’s 98 - but did play a bit when he went off to Kenya for his national service.’

‘Nice. Send him in’

They’re still wearing the same shorts they got at uni (they’re 35), the Calvin Klein pants their mum bought them for their 18th (still 35), and a football top of a random team their mates, cousin’s, uncle played for 10 years ago.

It’s as if we’ve both been given different handbooks. Men are just told to just play, and maybe how to get a bit better at it. Women are told how they should look when they play, how they’re coming across as someone who’s playing and how to be the most desirable and likeable thing on planet earth whilst pretending to be playing.

Of course, this not universal. I have a wonderful friend called Amy that has a netball team she’s devoted to, and is devoted to her too. Come rain or shine they’re on that outdoor court screaming at each other to pass or squeezing each other with elation of a last minute point. They’re then bundling into the car, the windows steaming up with the laughter & camaraderie that is impossible for consumerism to EVER penetrate. That took grit, progress & real community.

I would like to stress AGAIN this is a fight against consumerism, not against us. I also just want to play some fucking sport and feel FREE whilst I do it. I want to be able to play competitively in the sport, not in the fight for the most liked IG story. I want to say ‘shit, sorry’ for accidentally hurtling a smash at my opponent, not for getting in the way of their tripod. I want to have a drink and a laugh after, and find out more about these incredibly interesting individuals around me, and mean it when I say I hope they’re coming back next week too.

If only I wasn’t so shit at netball