A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

• 1 in every 4 health clubs in the country is a Curves for Women, and another 1,400 are under construction;
• After being thrown in jail for being a deadbeat dad, Gary Heavin, founder, realized that he had lost everything: his first marriage, custody of his two children, his livelihood, even his freedom.
• In 2003, the couple gave away $10 million—10 percent of their company's gross revenues and 80 percent of Gary's net income—to charities.
• In 2003 alone, clients donated 4.25 million pounds of groceries for local food banks.

These are all good works. I see this as a success story. This guy hit rock bottom and decided to make a change. He calls it, "finding God" or something like that. Cynics might perceive this as him putting his life in the hands of something external to him, and therefore not taking responsibility of his own life, but I would say that this is clearly not the case. I will assume that he took care of the child that he couldn't pay for before although I realize that the article makes no mention of this. So if he finds God and is able to turn his life around, good for him, and good for those that benefit. (I think that Liz should write a piece on those that turn their lives around after rejecting God. I think that might be interesting.) I am concerned with the apparent shoddy equipment and lack of trained personnel (I think).

But being the person I am, I can't be satisfied with this, because the fact is, I can't go to this club if I want to, because of my gender. Not because of any other reason such as having a medical problem, or anything like that. It's because I am a guy. This goes against some of my principles. A whole movement was created because people were tired of being treated differently due to their race. Another one was created for those whose gender was unfairly used to bar them from entry. And yet another was made for those who have different sexualities than the majority. And what did we learn from these things? Not that discrimination is wrong, surely.

Yet I can completely understand why it is necessary for these women. Regular fitness centres are very much "like nightclubs, catering to the sculpted bodies of affluent 17- to 32-year-old fitness buffs." If I were a middle-aged unathletic woman, there's no way I would set foot in these places. I would go to a supportive place where I could work at my own pace and be myself, and Curves seems to work for millions of women.

What I do not believe, though, is that women are the only group that needs to exclude others from its walls to feel comfortable. I see no reason why there shouldn't be other groups that do the same things. Ethnic groups let in people who are not of that ethnic group. The "outsiders" simply follow the rules of that group and everyone is happy. No one is threatened.

We already have discrimination in private groups anyway. Country clubs are for the rich and rich only. Rich usually means white, doesn't it? In any case, I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be men's only health clubs, or social clubs. Or black-only church groups. Perhaps it should be left up to the community to decide whether or not they want peaceful whites-only clubs, though. Any of these groups should be fine as long as they demonstrate that they do not promote hatred or violence.

But there's the rub, isn't it? This is very hard to prove in some cases, I would think. Imagine a convenience store where blacks and women pay more, or can't work there, or can't even enter. That might piss me off. And of course I see no useful social purpose in such a place, not like with Curves. But perhaps that is the true price of freedom, allowing the offensive to be offensive. Maybe we as free people do not adequately pay for it. Some say that freedom is not free and therefore we must fight and die. I think that paying for freedom should be done by allowing everyone to have it. It's a lot tougher than it sounds.