“What does it mean to live in an unruly body?” asked Gay in a prompt to writers for her 2018 pop-up magazine with Medium. It qualifies as #fitspo, but Gay’s version refuses to conform to influencer banalities. “34:33 cardio,” a recent caption read, her face glistening and joyless beneath a hot-pink head wrap.
It’s “all horrible,” the writer explains by phone, her tone as blank as her post-workout selfies on Instagram Stories.
Roxane Gay has nothing good to say about her exercise bike.
