Ann Jaimi Alexander is a Tamil Canadian educator and artist living in Vancouver, B.C. She is an avid traveller who has explored 39 countries in search of cultural identity and belonging. She is passionate about food, social justice, mental health and healing through the sharing of stories.
Ann Jaimi Alexander
Corey Minor Smith
Chrissy Gruninger
varied by region, depending on COVID state regulations for gym openings and capacities. But, needless to say, the biggest takeaway and observation I had about the year and our industry was that those who continued to find ways to stay active did so because of mental health. The physical benefits were a plus, but I’ve seen a material change in how people look at exercising and moving. I hope the wellness industry sees this as a market correction and stops marketing diet culture nonsense that profits off of people’s shame.
SD: How has Society Nine’s business strategy had to adapt during the wake of the coronavirus this year? Any particular low moments or unexpected joys that you can share?
LL: The low moments often had more to do with my own personal mental health around what was happening with communities all around us than the business itself. As a Vietnamese American woman, I struggled to deal with the influx of news and data regarding racism and hate crimes towards Asian Americans across the country and feared for my parents going to the grocery store, for example. I also felt deep empathy, pain and anger for Black Americans. As a community, they have suffered so much loss, trauma and murder at the hands of institutions that are funded by taxpayers. I had the same feelings for essential workers who were given no protections or reprieve; for health care workers who are literally our soldiers fighting an invisible war; for migrant workers who fed our nation despite a pandemic, supply chain issues, risks to their own safety and less than zero semblance of security.
SD: Your website says: “Health and Wellness is a right, not a privilege” - how does your team continue to uphold that ethos now, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic where we see certain populations hit harder during the pandemic?
LL: I hope we can do more of this in the future, but we allocate donation quotas on a quarterly basis to provide gear to low income youth boxing programs and self defense programs. It’s really important that those who typically could never afford the tools and equipment needed to access the activity have an opportunity, a gateway, to unlocking their strength and power in ways they never could before. Tools are that gateway, and we happen to make tools.
One program we’ve been supporting for over a year now for instance is The Bloc Chicago, which has been doing incredible mutual aid, providing a community food pantry AND maintaining a safe virtual learning environment for students so that they had a stable learning environment to study and do their school work, and a COVID safe boxing training environment for their students during a pandemic.
SD: Can you speak about female empowerment as it relates to fitness and boxing in particular?
LL: The fitness industry has historically profited through shame, and putting people in boxes based on their gender, ethnicity, body size, body type, etc. Empowerment, regardless of any of those qualifiers, starts with simply saying, “I deserve to do this and no one will stop me.”
However, in saying that, I realize it’s not actually simple for most. I have deep empathy for those who are not cis-heterosexual people. It’s easy for me, as a cisgender, heterosexual woman with inherent body privilege (the industry would probably describe me as petite in size, clothing generally caters to me in fashion and in fitness) to sit here and say “Empowerment’s easy! Just claim it! It’s 2021!” All media, whether fitness, fashion, or pop culture, caters largely to cis-heterosexual people of particular body shapes and sizes. A sense of empowerment, therefore, could be seen as a privilege, which is incredibly problematic. Because it shouldn’t be!
Empowerment can be hard to find, when we, as consumers, have been inundated with messages - especially self-identified women consumers - that tell us that we simply aren’t enough. It’s that shame I’m referring to. Shame of EVERYTHING - from our body shapes, muscle or no muscle, booty or no booty, not eating “clean” enough or too much of X and not enough of Y - but how is this sensical when bodies are all genetically different? Layered in that shame is deep trauma caused by everything around us, directly and indirectly. Pop culture media, friends and family, high school, gym culture and diet culture - it hits everyone. I suffered from my own eating disorder in 2018 and because my closest loved ones understood me well, they started identifying patterns and helped me break some destructive habits and cycles. I still have those demons come out from time to time, and they amplify when I’m in bouts of anxiety.