Access to Exercise and Scottish Money
Yep, Scottish £20 notes have squirrels on them, and £10 notes have otters! Even though they are unequivocally awesome, taking Scottish notes into England can be a headache even though they are both pounds sterling.
We don’t all have the same opportunities to exercise, and those who struggle to access exercise can often assume they are the problem.
If you’ve been struggling to find ways to move that work for you, I have news for you: You are NOT the problem.
METAPHOR INCOMING - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Let’s picture two people, Abbey and Betty. Abbey and Betty both do the same job in a small English town, and it takes them the same length of time to earn £20. They both have a £20 note in their pocket and they both want to use that to buy £20 worth of fuel.
Abbey fills her car up, heads into the petrol station, and pays with no problem. Job done, and she’s on with her day.
Betty fills her car up, heads into the petrol station, and they refuse to take her money. She tells them it’s the only money she has, they um-and-ah, and call head office. Head office tells them to check the note isn’t a forgery and then they accept her money. Job done, but that was confusing right?
Betty calls Abbey and the conversation goes like this:
Betty: "The weirdest thing happened at the garage…”
*a few minutes later*
Abbey: ”…Oh, they took my money no problem.”
Betty starts to wonder what on earth is going on, but carries on without giving a second thought. Maybe it was a strange one-off?
But then it happens again. And again. And eventually Betty is so stressed about filling her car up with petrol it becomes a significant struggle in her life. She has to find the few garages that accept her money, and even then she worries that they too will try and turn her away. Abbey is just filling her car up and heading off without a care in the world - “Oh, that’s never happened to me!”.
This is privilege in action.
Abbey and Betty both work the same hours to earn the same money to spend on the same thing, but Betty has all of these extra barriers between her and actually spending the money she has earned.
Abbey still works hard for her money, but her privilege protects her from the extra effort and stress Betty is facing.
Eventually, Abbey and Betty sit down for lunch, and Betty tells everyone it’s still happening.
Cathie overhears and says, “oh, let me look at your £20? Yeah, that’s a Scottish note. They can be funny about those sometimes.”.
On an eye-opening internet search she learns that English businesses quite often turn away Scottish notes due to their low levels of circulation. All of a sudden Betty can understand why she’s had a problem with spending her money. It’s not her, it’s because she is using a Scottish £20 note in England!
Now she knows what the problem is she can manage it, she can look up places to exchange the note. She can ask her boss to only give her English notes. She can go to shops and garages where she knows they’ll accept her £20 note.
And most importantly, she knows she is not the problem.
We can’t always change the hand we are dealt, but once we know what’s going on we can seek the right support for our circumstances. We still have to put in effort that other people don’t (wouldn’t it be easier to just have English notes?), but it’s no longer a mystery why some things are harder than they ‘should’ be.
This is the power of naming differences.
And how does this relate to exercise?
To access exercise we need time, money, energy, support, facilities, transport, knowledge, and a whole host of other things to come into play so we can move and move regularly… and we don’t all have that in equal measure.
We all have a mix of English and Scottish £20 notes in our pockets. Having a lot of hassle-free English notes frees you up to supplement your Scottish £20s and overcome the faff factor. For those with more Scottish £20s, or fewer notes overall, it’s harder to leverage areas of privilege over areas of struggle.
With less privilege, it is just harder to do the same things as other people.
More privilege doesn’t mean you don’t work hard, it just means you don’t face some struggles that other people do.
When we don’t understand these differences in circumstance it becomes personal - I’m a bad person because I can’t stick to anything. I’m lazy because I skipped my classes and then quit the gym. I’m not good enough because they do it all, but I can’t? - but as soon as we understand why that struggle exists we can start being a whole lot kinder to ourselves.
Naming differences (or labelling them) allows people to access support and camaraderie.
I’m a healthy, white, straight, cis-person with a great family and awesome friends - I have my fair share of English £20s.
Winter runs are daytime only for me - but I can run and I do have the flexibility to make that fit with my schedule. Other people will have different struggles and different options available to them.
But as a woman I worry about my safety travelling to and from venues. I limit the way I travel and the times I attend classes and go to the gym based on my safety. In winter in Scotland a run after work is absolutely not on the menu, while my male friends carry on that routine year round. Here, I’m carrying a Scottish £20 because gender differences still influence our access to exercise.
As a neurodivergent woman, I carry Scottish £20s around my emotions, energy levels, ability to ‘just do it’, and the support I need to stay consistent.
Race, gender identity, sexuality, illness, disability, injury, socioeconomic backgrounds, location, and so many other things can change the number of Scottish £20 notes in our pockets.
All this to say, we can look the same on paper but have vastly different experiences and struggles in the world.
If something is hard for you it’s because it is hard - no one else needs to certify that for it to be valid. And you get to decide when, where, and how you ask for help to make it easier.
I don’t have a solution for tackling privilege, but I do want to acknowledge its role in exercise disparity. Accessing exercise isn’t always an exercise problem, sometimes it’s a making-exercise-possible problem… and it’s OK to need help at any stage along the way.
