We were lucky to catch up with Heather Boddy recently and have shared our conversation below.
Heather, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
A lot of people get into fitness from a negative place. There is a desire to change the body with the hopes that it will change all of our problems. However, when we approach fitness from this negative place filled with shame and self-loathing, it doesn’t feel good. We feel crummy and we start punishing ourselves and/or our bodies. Then, fitness becomes less about health and more about shrinking yourself to fit a societal standard.
My approach to fitness is to make it FUN! I also strive to make it feel like a safe space for people who feel like they don’t “belong” at the gym, whether that is people in larger bodies, people who feel uncomfortable in gym settings, and people who were bullied by “jocks” or the “gym goers” growing up.
The way I do this is by merging fitness with pop culture an fandom. I like to immerse my clients into their workouts so that it feels less like punishment and trying to change your body and more like empowering yourself to emulate your favorite characters.
This approach allows people to play while also doing their workout. It is with playfulness that we take the super serious fitness culture and flip it on its head.
I also try to keep a body neutral approach in my workouts. I don’t motivate with before/after photos or measurements but rather by how you feel (although I encourage my clients to track in ways that work for them). The goal is to gamify fitness in a way that almost feels like you forget you’re working out but where you also look forward to the next time you get to channel your favorite characters in your workout,
It’s almost like channeling an alter ego to make the workout more stimulating and fun. This is a unique approach compared to the aesthetic focus of fitness these days. It’s not about LOOKING like your favorite characters, it’s about feeling like them!
Heather, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I, myself, got into fitness from that negative place I mentioned previously. I moved to NYC eleven years ago to pursue a career in acting and I was slapped in the face with a slew of body image issues. I had grown up in a larger body but I had grown to accept it. I was lucky to grow up in communities that, for the most part, never shamed me for the way I looked. However, when I moved to NYC I was quickly hit with the reality that the world wasn’t as accepting as my midwest communities and upbringing.
I also realized that while acting in High School and College, I had rarely ever played a role that was age appropriate for me. I was always playing grandmas and nurses and very matronly characters because fat = matronly.
When I started auditioning in NYC, I quickly found that I was in an “in between” – I wasn’t thin enough to play ingenues and I wasn’t fat enough to be the “Melissa McCarthy” type. I was even told by a casting director that I was talented but that she had never seen a casting breakdown that I would be appropriate for… which, to me, meant that I was uncastable.
It was then that I decided to pursue weight loss. I wanted to kickstart my career in acting and that seemed like the way to do it. I was pushing myself at the gym, no idea what I was doing, forcing myself to run on the treadmill and lift weights. I was approaching it from that place of shame and self hate that made me feel miserable. The only thing that kept me going were the comments I’d get from people about how “great I looked” even though I felt like crap.
Fast forward a few months – I decided I wanted to do something different. I wanted to challenge my core strength and flexibility so I started an at-home workout program. At the same time as starting this program, I also started reading a new run of the She-Hulk comic books (Law & Disorder by Charles Soule).
Reading about She-Hulk changed everything. For those who don’t know, the special thing about She-Hulk is that, unlike her cousin Bruce (The Hulk) she actually has control over her power to become She-Hulk. She can choose when to become She-Hulk and when she shifts back to her human form, Jennifer Walters. Plus, when she’s She-Hulk, she maintains her full intellectual capabilities so, no running around like a toddler smashing things. The thing that really struck me was that Jen chose to stay in her She-Hulk form at almost all times. She felt more empowered as a large green Hulk than she did in her human form. It was the first time I had seen a woman in media CHOOSE to exist out of society’s expectations of her… and I LOVED IT.
I quickly adopted the same mentality as She-Hulk and embraced who I was at my core: different. My workouts became less about changing my body to become smaller and more about empowering myself to embody She-Hulk. It changed the way I felt about my body and about fitness in general.
This was the moment I decided to become a fitness professional. I wanted to help people realize that fitness could be fun and empowering and that you could channel characters you love while exercising!
This is also why I decided to create my own workout program called Geeknasium – it’s an online workout library filled with workout videos themed in pop culture and fandom. The workouts immerse you into the worlds of the characters you love so that it feels less like working out and more like play. However, the workouts are also challenging so it’s not just a walk in the park. It’s play that also helps you feel strong and challenges what you are capable of.
I am so proud of the little community I’ve built with Geeknasium. My goal now is to grow the community so that other like-minded self-proclaimed nerds feel less alone in the fitness space and can totally geek out while they work out.
I’ve been taking Geeknasium to conventions all over the country, It’s virtual so you can do the workouts anywhere but I do love having live workouts at cons. Special shoutout to anyone who has done one of my workouts in cosplay – it’s not easy!
If anyone is interested in finding out more about Geeknasium, you can find me on instagram @geeknasium or @heatherboddy – I’ll also be listing out the cons I’ll be attending in 2024 on my instagram too, if you’d like to try and catch a workout in person. If you’re in NYC, you’re in luck! I have a couple of live Geeknasium workouts planned for 2024 in the city.
You can also feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I love connecting with people. DM me on Instagram! You can also check out the library and find a 14-day-free trial of Geeknasium on my website: www.heather-boddy.com
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning of diet culture and fatphobia in all of my industries: fitness, acting, and cosplay. These industries (and society as a whole, really) value thinness and teach us that thin equals good and fat equals bad. We are conditioned to believe that someone in a smaller body or with tone muscles is automatically healthy, which is simply not the case. Society often rewards and values disordered behavior in pursuit of thinness and I have had to unlearn everything we’ve been conditioned to believe. I am an advocate for inclusivity in all settings, that bodies of all shapes and sizes belong in fitness, in cosplay, and in acting. It’s not easy work, and they way I work might not be for everyone, but I no longer promote my business by posting before and after photos and I no longer encourage my clients to weigh themselves or take measurements (although I do encourage them to use any tools that they find helpful). Theres still so much deconditioning to do when it comes to what society views as “healthy” and also that health isn’t a moral obligation, health isn’t as accessible for marginalized groups, etc.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I could share so many stories that demonstrate my resilience. I think the example I shared earlier about discovering She-Hulk is a good example. I didn’t give up on myself and I found a way to make fitness work for me that actually felt good! I also have many stories about resilience when it comes to being a business owner. When it comes to running Geeknasium specifically, I have a funny story about applying to conventions to present panels and programming.
I applied to host a panel at New York Comic Con on a whim. NYCC is my “home con” and I had been going for years. One of my biggest goals was to become someone who speaks on panels at conventions so in 2021, their first convention back after the pandemic, I applied to host a “Cospositivity” Panel. I called it “Cospositivity: Fitness and Body Love in the Cosplay Community.” I put together a diverse panel of incredible people from all types of backgrounds, sizes, genders, etc. I also made sure to have an equal mix of cosplayers and fitness professionals. It was a HIT. And I soon became addicted. The following year I added Awesome Con and C2E2 to the list of cosplay panel presentations.
The more I applied, the more people started to say “no” or “not right now” or, the worst response, no response. I was starting to get a little discouraged until I realized that is just part of the process. I’m putting myself out there more, of course I am going to see more rejection. So, I didn’t let the rejections keep me from applying.
In 2023, I presented at 5 conventions, the most I have ever done. I met my goal of not only attending but also presenting at Dragon Con and my name was on the same guest list as Paul Bettany!
It’s about following the dream, no matter how big it seems, no matter how far out of reach, and also about believing that you have what it takes once you get there. I kept going. I bounced back from rejection. And my goal is to keep adding conventions every year until I find a flow and make connections that really work for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.heather-boddy.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/heatherboddy
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/482957442471972
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mentalhealthmultiverse
Image Credits
Katie Fink, Jacob Moats