by Erin Moore
Trainers
In which America and England are shown to be among the world’s fattest countries, despite their apparent dedication to fitness.
As countries with obesity rates of 34 percent and 25 percent, respectively, the United States and the United Kingdom might be supposed to be less than obsessed with fitness. But the sad truth is that two of the top five fat-ass nations worldwide have fitness industries worth more than thirty-two billion dollars combined. About half of adults in England and America “take exercise,” as the English say, making it sound like doctor’s orders. (And in many cases, it is.) But some people actually really enjoy it. And it’s those people I’m going to talk about here, since I’m sure they are sick of hearing how slothful their nations are when they are out there lacing up their sneakers—for fun—every day.
In England, sneakers or running shoes are called trainers. A fact I am never allowed to forget, because my four-year-old is bilingual. The other day I heard her say to a friend, “I am putting on my trainers. My mummy calls them sneakers, because she is American.” (At least she has stopped correcting my English to my face, which is the last thing I want to hear when we’re trying to get out the door in the morning.) In America, trainers are private fitness instructors who bludgeon you into shape with your consent. England has private fitness coaches, too, though most people who can afford them are still more likely to spend on a good bottle of wine or a haircut than an hour in the gym.
Gyms are less popular in England than they are in America. Although, as Emma Sinclair wrote in the Telegraph, some American boutique gyms are moving into the English market with “responsive customer service . . . and faultless facilities that create customer loyalty and . . . leave a wake of grey UK gyms in their trail.” Not all the gyms in England are gray and uninspiring, but many of them do feel like a time warp to 1998. Step aerobics is still a going concern. SoulCycle arrived in London in 2014—eight years after it first caught on in New York. Ballet barre classes and Pilates are still a bit rarefied, and haven’t reached saturation point in gyms around the country. CrossFit is gaining in reputation, but it will take years to build the following it enjoys in America. When I first moved to London, a Google search for “yoga London” turned up fewer than five dedicated studios. The small New Hampshire town where my in-laws live has seven.
Americans are very faddish about exercise—so much so that it’s easy to forget that the American obsession with fitness is fairly new. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that strenuous exercise became something ordinary people—not just “health nuts”—did. It’s telling that Americans often speak of exercise in terms that other cultures reserve for their spiritual practices. They flock to exercise “gurus” who promise enlightenment along with a high calorie burn. They are “religious” about their workouts. Some fitness classes or instructors acquire a “cultlike” following and are spoken of with reverence not usually accorded to people who get paid by the hour. Americans love their gyms—and not just because extreme weather and unwalkable suburbs make outside exercise difficult in many places. They are joiners and appreciate the social aspects of a shared workout experience.
The English are more likely to head outside for their exercise. Whether they love or hate it, outdoor exercise is a huge part of childhood in England. While schools in America are canceling recess and dropping their PE programs, English schools are fanatical about games, and about getting children outside in all weather. A rhyme often repeated to young children in shorts, as their knees turn blue, is “Whether the weather be fine, Or whether the weather be not / Whether the weather be cold, Or whether the weather be hot / We’ll weather the weather / Whatever the weather / Whether we like it or not!” There is pride in stoicism when it comes to outdoor exercise—it’s one of the last vestiges of the English stiff upper lip. Even if it has been raining for three consecutive days and the playing fields are knee-deep in mud, the football (soccer) practice won’t be canceled. It would be a bad precedent to set. When would the lads ever play? Parents huddle on the sidelines with flasks of tea (maybe something stronger) and wait it out.
As adults, the English remain far more willing than Americans to exercise in the muck. Witness the popularity of British Military Fitness—the UK’s ubiquitous outdoor fitness classes: “the best way to get fitter, faster, stronger and have fun whilst doing so.” (Am I the only one who finds the priggish “whilst” hilarious in this context?) Any day of the year, in parks across the country you will see people in multicolored bibs—blue for beginners, red for intermediates, and green for advanced—huffing and puffing through press-ups (push-ups), burpees, and shuttle runs, while being shouted at by buff former soldiers. America has “boot camp” style workouts, too, but they usually take place inside temperature-controlled gyms.
Fit or not, most people in England share a love of their unspoiled countryside. Green Belt legislation has restricted urban sprawl, so that within minutes by car or train of any town or city (even London) one can reach—instead of strip malls and big-box stores as far as the eye can see—unbroken stretches of walkable land. Even where homes and farms exist, rights of way—paths where members of the public have a legal right to pass—are protected. The Ordnance Survey, which maintains the definitive record of every geographical feature in Great Britain, publishes 650 different maps of every corner of the country. Although customizable maps are available free on their website www.ordnance survey.co.uk, they still sell around 2.5 million paper maps each year—a testament to England’s devotion to country walking.
Combining this love of the countryside with a certain masochistic pleasure is the sport of fell running, or trail running, which originated in the mountainous regions of northern England. Basically, it is running straight up and down mountains. In an interview with the Telegraph, Richard Askwith, author of Feet in the Clouds: A Tale of Fell-Running and Obsession, said the sport “reconnects you with the most basic of your instincts: the survival instinct, for example. Running down a rocky mountain at speed is dangerous, but that is what is so attractive: the chance to throw off the caution most of us live with most of the time and feel free again.” Askwith completed the Bob Graham Round, a fell run comprising ascents and descents of forty-two peaks, in twenty-four hours—a distance of seventy miles and total climbs of twenty-seven thousand feet, saying that “there would be no sense of satisfaction without the pain.” He considers himself an amateur, by the way.
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Tough Mudder races were invented by two Englishmen—Will Dean and Guy Livingstone. Their first races were held in America, where it took them just three years to find one million people willing to leave their gyms behind, if only for a day, and put themselves through their punishing, British Special Forces–designed obstacle courses, which are ten to twelve miles long and include freezing swims (the “arctic enema”), narrow pipes full of mud (the “boa constrictor”), and electric shocks, in case the course isn’t harrowing enough. The races have since expanded internationally, including to England. Participants get the satisfaction of a race completed, but they also raise money for veterans charities.
The English are far more willing to take on a physical challenge if they have a charity fund-raising goal in mind. I have never met an English person who planned to run a marathon, jump out of an airplane, or take part in a 150-mile footrace through the Sahara Desert in one-hundred-degree heat without first asking friends and family to pony up for a cause. There is a sense that taking on a grueling training schedule is rather selfish and solipsistic and that one needs to offset that somehow. Needless to say, pushy slogans and lifestyle branding are not their thing. Americans also raise money for charity by performing feats of athletic prowess, but they are more ego-driven and likely to see training for such events as virtuous in itself.
For a sense of how much individualism and self-actualization motivates Americans, look no further than the US Army’s recent recruitment slogans. For years it was “Be all
that you can be”—emphasizing the individual over the group, even though there are not many jobs more communal and team-oriented than being a soldier. Recent army slogans have taken the theme even further: “An army of one” and “Defy expectations.” The British Army’s slogan, “Be the best,” doesn’t address the individual at all, and the Royal Navy’s is simply “This team works.” The desire to do something like run a marathon purely for the sake of achieving a “personal best” time or proving to themselves that they can do it doesn’t embarrass Americans. Neither does being told by a clothing company to “Do one thing every day that scares you!” For the English, listening to an American talk about his health and fitness regimen just might qualify.
Sorry
In which we find out why the English refuse to apologize for their overuse of sorry.
A recent survey concluded that the average English person will say sorry more than 1.9 million times in his lifetime. This may strike some as a conservative estimate. From this, one could deduce that the English are especially polite. This might be true if sorry were always, or even usually, a straightforward apology. It isn’t. The reason they stay on the sorry-go-round is that the word, in their English, is so very versatile. A. A. Gill, writing for the benefit of visitors to the London Olympics, bragged, “Londoners are just permanently petulant, irritated. I think we wake up taking offense. All those English teacup manners, the exaggerated please and thank yous, are really the muzzle we put on our short tempers. There are, for instance, a dozen inflections of the word sorry. Only one of them means ‘I’m sorry.’”
Here are just a few of the many moods and meanings these two syllables can convey:
“Sorry!” (I stepped on your foot.)
“Sorry.” (You stepped on my foot.)
“Sorry?” (I didn’t catch what you just said.)
“SOrry.” (You are an idiot.)
“SORRY.” (Get out of my way.)
“SorRY.” (The nerve of some people!)
“I’m sorry but . . .” (Actually I’m not at all.)
“Sorry . . .” (I can’t help you.)
It’s all in the tone, of course, and this is where sorry becomes permanently lost in translation. An American friend will never forget when she finally figured out that sorry can be a tool of passive aggression in England’s hierarchical social system—a form of dismissal. When she was a college kid in England and people gave her an apology that was not sincere, but meant to put her in her place, she would respond earnestly, “Oh, no, it’s okay! Don’t worry!” Why wouldn’t she? There are times when luck favors the ignorant.
The English have a reputation for being passive-aggressive because they seem not to be saying what they mean—at least, not with words. In English culture, an anodyne word like sorry takes on shades of meaning that someone from outside will not be able to discern with any degree of sophistication, especially if he is from a culture that is more comfortable with confrontation, or one that condones a wider range of small talk among strangers. The English use sorry to protest, to ask you to repeat yourself, to soothe, and to smooth over social awkwardness as much as—if not more than—they use it to apologize. But most of the time, their object is politeness of a particularly English kind, to wit: politeness as refusal.
English courtesy often takes the form of what sociolinguists Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson have called “negative politeness”—which depends on keeping a respectful distance from others and not imposing on them. Its opposite, positive politeness, is inclusive and assumes others’ desire for our approval.
Only the Japanese—masters of negative politeness—have anything even approaching the English sorry reflex. No wonder visiting Americans are so often caught off guard, and so often feel they’ve been the objects of passive aggression or dismissal instead of politeness. Their misunderstanding of what constitutes politeness in England is not surprising, since Americans epitomize positive politeness.
When Americans say sorry, they mostly mean it. But, at least to English ears, they don’t necessarily mean anything else they say. Americans repeat seemingly empty phrases like “Have a nice day!” They also give and receive compliments easily, even among strangers. The English find this behavior highly suspect.Hence, the American reputation for insincerity.
The English novelist Patricia Finney has said that she loves Americans because “it doesn’t matter whether people actually respect me or not, so long as they treat me with courtesy and respect . . . I really don’t mind if nice American check-out guys tell me to have a nice day and are really thinking, ‘hope you have a terrible day, you snotty Brit,’ so long as I don’t know about it. I think sincerity is over-rated in any case.” Americans don’t. Americans prize sincerity above most qualities. (How else are they going to ensure that the Great Pumpkin picks their patch?) An American friend of Finney’s accordingly defended the practice, saying Americans “. . . do respect people. It’s not faked.”
It could be that Americans have stopped hearing themselves. Just like the English with their sorries, they have certainly stopped expecting a response. Imagine the shock of a salesman who said, “Have a nice day!” to the grandfather of a friend, who answered, “Thank you, but I have other plans.”
Americans are sociable and approval-seeking. They look for common ground with others and genuinely want to connect. This often takes the form of compliments—especially to complete strangers. (“I really like your wapdoodle!” “What a great snockticker!”) This is because American society’s fluidity can lead to insecurity. Your place in the hierarchy is based not on who you are, but what you do (and how much you make). Therefore, Americans incessantly seek reassurance that they are doing all right. But the marvelous thing is that they also seek to give reassurance. That may be the quality that Finney was responding to.
In English culture, you’re assumed to be secure in your place, to know where you stand. But in real life, who does? Practically no one. Sorry and American compliments serve similar social purposes. When there’s nothing to say, we can avoid social awkwardness and either deflect (UK) or connect (USA)—all in the name of politeness. Sorry simultaneously avoids confrontation and, when used sincerely, allows people to show how lovely they are, really, despite their minor transgressions. American compliments allow for a little connection, and reinforce your belonging on a level that’s comfortable—at least if you’re American.
Either way, you’re left with something to say, and on that note, Jane Austen will have the last word on sorry. Here she is in a letter to her elder sister:
My dearest Cassandra
My expectation of having nothing to say to you after the conclusion of my last, seems nearer Truth than I thought it would be, for I feel to have but little . . . you may accordingly prepare for my ringing the Changes of the Glads and Sorrys for the rest of the page.—Unluckily, however, I see nothing to be glad of, unless I make it a matter of Joy that Mrs. Wylmot has another son and that Lord Lucan has taken a Mistress, both of which Events are of course joyful to the Actors;—but to be sorry I find many occasions, the first is that your return is to be delayed, & whether I ever get beyond the first is doubtful. It is no use to lament.—I never heard that even Queen Mary’s Lamentation did her any good, & I could not therefore expect benefit from mine.—We are all sorry, & now that subject is exhausted.
Toilet
In which we attempt to bring back a useful old word (while simultaneously discouraging the use of a vulgar one).
Everyone has a private list of least-favorite words. Words that we shrink from using, and cringe to hear. They are like dog whistles, emitting a high and excruciating frequency audible only to us, while others go blissfully about their business. The renowned American gastronome M. F. K. Fisher, writing about her own opinions, prejudices, and aversions, used the antiquated Scottish noun scunner. Where has this useful word gone? Certainly the human race has only become less tolerant since her essay �
��As the Lingo Languishes” was published in 1980. These days, we take scunners against people, places, and things all the time. There ought to be a meme.
Fisher held scunners against the words yummy and scrumptious because, she said, “there is no dignity in such infantile evasions of plain words like good.” Just because a scunner can be explained doesn’t mean it is rational. There is something a bit primal, or at least involuntary, about these antipathies. The word succulent makes me want to go hide in a closet and never come out. No idea why.
Scunners can be highly personal, even secret to all but the closest of friends. Scunners can also be ferociously tribal. A shared scunner can unite individuals like little else. If you doubt it, dare to Google a word such as moist, which may, to you, seem entirely innocent. Or you may just have flung this book to the floor in disgust. Either way, you might be interested to know that several pieces of fairly serious journalism are dedicated to explaining the scunner against the m word, which is apparently widespread. Its haters have their own Facebook group.
It’s rare that a scunner crosses nationalities, but we have a winner in toilet. It is generally, though by no means universally, unloved on both sides of the moist, moist Atlantic. Neither the Americans nor the English like to say the word toilet, and not just because of the diphthong it shares with the m word: oi. (Oy.)
Americans, who love to accuse the English of prissiness, are a bit prissy themselves. No less an authority than The Economist has pointed out that “bodily functions . . . seem to embarrass Americans especially: one can ask for the ‘loo’ in a British restaurant without budging an eyebrow; don’t try that in New York.” In America, euphemism is such big business that even doctors and nurses will say someone “passed” instead of “died.” Roosters are rarely cocks. American trash goes to a landfill. Its elderly (never “old”) pets are “put to sleep.” And Americans use the “bathroom” at home or “restroom” when out in public. Even “restroom” is too much for the sensibilities of some Americans, who instead go to the “powder room” to “wash their hands.”