This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity
Julz Darroch: My name's Julz Darroch. I am a gay woman. I have been Wellington born and bred. I grew up in Newlands, which is a fairly small dormitory suburb. 1972 was the year I was born.
I think I was very lucky in that my housewife mother was raising three daughters; I was the middle child. And I have a recollection of her at some stage in my childhood, somehow – and she swears as an adult she had no concept that I was gay – actually letting us know that to be unmarried, not have children, or to be lesbian was not a bad thing. So, that was how I grew up; so while it was in a conservative suburb I always had that feminist awareness, which just meant I had the groundwork to be me, no matter what that was.
Gareth: Where do you think that came from when your mother was saying that?
Julz: She has her own issues of being an only child raised very quietly, and although she identifies as straight she's not such a fan of the oppression of men. She's a good, old-fashioned feminist, so I think she was trying to undo the damage that had been done to her by just giving us options.
And in fact, I was married to a man and I had two children, and the hardest thing I've ever had to do was tell her that I had gotten married because that would be the greatest disappointment, I felt at that time. So, she went the opposite way: you either carry on what your parents do or you do the opposite, meanwhile living a very conservative, middle-class New Zealand existence.
Gareth: So, can you recall as a child how you felt when you heard something like that?
Julz: No, I can't. I only remember it as an adult, and context. I remember that she did consciousness raising in the '70s, and rebirthing and women's groups and all that sort of stuff. So I think it was just something that was always part of our lives. There were the Sheila Kissinger books and the feminist books around, so it was just part of the landscape rather than one moment.
So, I don't think I ever knew it was going on until a little bit later, probably in intermediate. Because we were in Newlands we were told we had to go to Newlands, they'd brought in zoning, and my mother took on the school board to send us to Wellington Girls', not because she wanted us to go to Wellington Girls' but because she wanted to get us out of Newlands. So you can see a little phobia there that she had, of us turning into middle-aged housewives stuck in the suburbs like she was and is. I think her mission was to prevent the evil that she perceived had happened to her happening to her daughters, which is quite interesting. She's still there; she's still married and living in the suburbs, but we're not. [laughs] So from then on I went to Wellington Girls' and got on with my life.
So far as fitness goes I have always been a complete couch potato. So I went off and went to college. I wanted to be a journalist or a writer, interestingly enough, which comes a bit later in the story. And then I just left school and did a whole lot of odd jobs.
I had a couple of casual relationships with women and then ended up quite early... at 18 I met my husband. We got married when I was 23, and had two children who are now 12 and 10. He knew I was bisexual or gay or not straight. While I was with him I identified very much as his partner. I didn't like the idea of straight, but out of respect to him essentially I was his monogamous partner, so that was my identity.
Gareth: Can I just take you back just a wee bit, because when you were going through college that would have been over the period of the Homosexual Law Reform in the mid '80s in New Zealand. Can you recall anything from that period in terms of the Homosexual Law Reform?
Julz: I think it was something that I was aware of because while my mother was doing housewife feminism, lesbian feminism was very much part of that, so there would have been a crossover. I do remember being surprised that it was illegal. That had just never occurred to me that it was. There were gay people and it was very odd. [laughs] We didn't seem to be wrong. My parents never told me it was illegal, it just never occurred to me, so I was quite surprised.
I think from that pre-adolescent girl, it seemed like a very man thing – older men, I think – probably, though, all of 25 or 30, but from age 10... [laughs]. So, that was my experience of that.
Gareth: When did you first start realizing that you liked women?
Julz: Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I saw Grease when I was four and I fell in love with Rizzo, and it was actually only about three years ago that I saw her in a program and went: Oh my goodness! I've always really respected Stockard Channing, a great actress.
And just for some reason I was watching her and went: I was five. I don't think we were assigned, because once again, being one of three daughters there were no boys in my family except for my very quiet father, so gender roles weren't huge, so I don't think I ever had to consciously make that... it was never presented as a choice, not because the choice was you had to be straight, but I think it was just fairly fluid. And at 17 – that was 15 and 17, too – I was kicking over the traces a little bit. I had a big old blue Mohawk and studs everywhere, so that group of people were fairly fluid anyway, so it wasn't like I was really even making a choice at that stage. It was just part of people you went out with and slept with.
Gareth: So, around that time how were those fluid people seen in the wider society?
Julz: Probably as reasonably rough, although we're all well-behaved middle age, we were on the edge of little Goths and punk rockers, try-hards in our little first flats sort of thing, so it was all very harmless. I hate to think what it appeared from the outside. In fact, my mother used to get terrible grief in Newlands because she let her daughter walk around like that. She was of the opinion that really your core values weren't determined by the color of your hair. So, as a teenager I don't think I really saw the world from any position other than my own, and we just did what we did and that was fine.
And then I met my husband and it was really easy, even at the time. And I actually think there were probably a lot of adults in my life who went: Phew! Oh, she's got herself a man; she's straight. So maybe they noticed something that I hadn't told them and just went: Oh, that's nice. She's got herself a nice man. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.
And then we had babies, and I left him when I was 30 because I decided I... It wasn't a terribly unhappy marriage at all, but I just decided I didn't want to face never being with another woman, and it was a monogamous relationship and I didn't want to change that. So for me it was all or nothing, so I chose nothing.
I also had a three year old and a four year old, and I think the ultimate decision was based on that I would be raising these children into adulthood, and if I couldn't make a choice that wasn't easy, then how was I going to teach them to make the same choice if they needed to? They may be gay. They may make choices that society doesn't like, whatever they are, and as their parent I would be going: You should do whatever makes you happy.
If I'd stayed in a marriage, then I would be contradicting that, and I couldn't do that to my children. I had to be honest, so I left. Luckily enough, I had the most awesome husband who, while was devastated that I was leaving him, actually had no... He said I was leaving him; it didn't really matter who I left him for, whether I left him for a man or a woman. He knew my history, so that's never been an issue and never been an issue with the kids, as well.
So, speaking to other women who have left partners and become gay, I think that's a battle I never had to fight, which is brilliant.
Gareth: When you look back do you wish you had explored the lesbian side more before you got into marriage?
Julz: No. Too much gained – far too much gained. I've got kids and my ex-husband is the dearest person in my life. I've had partners since him who I would have thought I would end up with the same relationship with them as I did, but it's different.
Would my life have been easier? Possibly. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten depressed or maybe I could have been stronger if I had identified, but I think it's water under the bridge. You've just got to go with what happened. And when it became strong enough that I needed to go back and reexamine it, I did. So that was the important thing; I think if I'd stayed there that would have been different. That would have been a regret. But when I needed to investigate it I did the honest thing, so no, absolutely not.
Gareth: At secondary school, can you recall if there were any out lesbians or gay people?
Julz: No. I had an English teacher, actually, who claimed that she'd gone through a period of her life being a misterogynist, which she claimed to be the female equivalent of a misogynist. So, that would be interesting to see where she came in. I do recall in my 6th form year she couldn't come to a production because she was going on a date, and I remember the disgust we all had that she chose a... so, she was obviously straight at that point, but maybe not. [laughs]
So, no. Statistics say in a school of 1,000 girls that there was probably one or two. I know now that in my year, which would have been 120 girls, I was friends with two other gay women. I wouldn't have picked it at the time, which makes me think maybe there were definitely some others. No, not even mentioned; I don't think it really even existed as a subject.
Gareth: It's interesting as a term you use "gay women." How would you identify yourself?
Julz: Lesbian or gay woman. I think lesbian is a very female term whereas gay is an umbrella term for a male and female community, so it's more inclusive. So, lesbian is the female experience, gay is the universal experience, so I'm quite comfortable with either.
Gareth: What about words like queer?
Julz: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's more modern, for me. That's like a cool new modern word, so yes, I use that and feel particularly hip, like a 20 year old, like the queer youth, so I'm quite comfortable with that and all the other terms, thank you to The L Word, I think, giving us all these special terms, and probably Queer as Folk before that. I don't think any of the words really worry me so far as what we call ourselves, so yeah, gay woman or lesbian.
Gareth: Interesting that you'd talk about The L Word as a TV series. I'm wondering, growing up can you recall anything gay or lesbian on TV or in the media?
Julz: No, not at all. I think probably like all New Zealand women, there were the Topp Twins. And the interesting thing about TV and things like that, that while there were no gay role models, in my childhood there were an abundance of strong, unattached women. So, there was Laverne and Shirley. I'm thinking of another one, Mary Tyler Moore. So, there were actually these asexual, strong female friendships that, when you think about them, the men were.... They went on dates with men, but they weren't part of the story, and they had the two male friends, as well. So, not specifically gay at all, but strong, independent women, which I think in the absence of actual role models was quite helpful.
Gareth: What was it like going to an all-girls' school?
Julz: I loved it. I thought it was great. I had been raised in a household with three women and Newlands was not an exciting experience for me growing up. I had a distrust for.... And I think I've always been a chameleon. The fact that you go to play center at three years old, and then you go to school with the same people at five, and then you go to intermediate with the same people and some more people, and then you go to college with the same people, and that can put you very much in a box. So to me, the girls' school was an escape. I don't think I had an option of going to a coed school unless I went to Newlands College. I found it a really, really positive, empowering experience just because all the resources and everything could be women-centered, which worked for me.
My mother, interestingly enough, went to Wellington Girls' however many years earlier, left the minute she could and swore she'd never send her daughters there, ever, which she did in the end. But no, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Gareth: Do you know why she didn't want to send you?
Julz: Because she had a hideous experience and thought it was outdated, and she just didn't enjoy school, so didn't want us to be repeating the experience that she'd had, which I think I have to give her huge credit for because despite spending most of our childhood saying she'd never send us to that school, we then were allowed to go... actually, no; each of us decided to go there and she let us. I don't know if I'd be so accommodating to my children [laughs] these days if they don't get an option.
So yeah, I've always enjoyed the company of women, so for me it just took away the.... I don't actually think it's boys I had an issue with. I think it was the hierarchy, and Newlands College at the time was very sporting and very boy-sie, and I think I had a distrust of that, that they valued sportiness and keeping girls under control, so I just wanted to escape from that, so anything else was better than that – whether it was true or not at the time or that was my perception. It would be interesting to go back.
Gareth: So, as a teenager did you ever have a kind of coming out experience or a realization or coming out to parents?
Julz: I didn't come out to my parents at all. It's not that I was in. I think my parents weren't part of my life, and it actually wasn't a big deal. It wasn't like this great moment that I'd slept with a woman, and it wasn't an amazing discovery. It wasn't an issue. I think probably I would have come out, but then the husband, or the partner at 18, really negated the need to do that so I didn't.
And it wasn't until I left my husband when I decided I should really come out. That seemed like the appropriate thing to do, so I rang my family and said that I was leaving my husband and I wouldn't be with another man, that my next partner would be a woman. And they were like, "Oh, that's nice dear." My mother – you really can't do anything to horrify my mother [laughs], so even that was very low-key.
So I didn't have to do the great coming out, although you don't come out once, do you? You come out every time someone presumes you've got a male partner, or as a woman with children there is an assumption that you must be straight because you've got children, because people just don't think beyond that. So, coming out is something you have to do quite a lot. But no, no one great moment, although I did ring them just so I could actually tell my parents. It was a great moment even if they didn't respond with the wringing of hands and crying that one would have imagined. It was all very low-key.
Gareth: Did you find it confusing when you fell in love with your husband?
Julz: No. I don't know whether I'd actually made a decision on whether I was... I don't think I'd gone as far as going I was gay or straight. The presumption is that you're straight. I think in the world the presumption is that you're straight until you're otherwise, and I don't think I went as far as that, I just fell in love with him. He's gentle. He was, in fact, in some ways a lot less manly than my first partner after him. [laughs] Ironic. So no, it didn't surprise me at all.
I think it was a little bit comfortable. I think probably at 19, at 20, I could see the world is definitely a little bit easier as a straight woman or being seen as a straight woman. And my journey through having a male husband and then safely a year after you get married having two very safe children, the world really likes that; it's a really comfortable place to be, safely married with lovely babies. The world loves it. You don't have to explain yourself. As soon as you mention you've got a husband and there's a cute baby there, you're taken care of. I guess they can put you in a box and they trust you and you're safe and not going to be up to anything deviant or illegal. Who knows what they think? But it is very comfortable, and I think I probably enjoyed that, to an extent. Especially when you're not as confident in yourself, it just means you know that no one is going to be asking the hard questions.
Gareth: That must be a really fascinating place to be where you can actually see both sides of the coin.
Julz: Very much so, yeah. It's quite interesting. It's disappointing, in a way, but it's also interesting how it's such a fight to be visible as a gay person that it can be quite lonely, I think, and I've found I've had periods of my life.... I've actually always been partnered, but having a partner who travels away, and I imagine it's the same if you're single for a long time, that your straightness is never questioned and it's affirmed in everything you see, whereas you can quite happily just disappear as a gay person. It's really easy to disappear, depending on where you work.
You've got to fight to have people around you and experiences. It's not like you can turn the TV on and see gay characters or walk down the street and have a chat with the woman in the dairy about the gay experience, so I can see it could be quite lonely, whereas when you're straight, whether your husband or partner is there, you're always visible. Your choices are always being confirmed by everything around you.
So, it's a more conscious way of living. I like it. I like it because it's more conscious because you, yourself, have to be affirming your choices, which I think is something that all of us should be doing on a more regular basis.
Gareth: You mentioned very briefly before about depression. Where does that come into your story?
Julz: The great unanswered question is whether it's something genetic or situational. I have always struggled. I've never identified it because I was the killer mother with the husband and two children, and we don't go there, you know? We're too busy baking cakes.
In my 30s it came to a head so I sought help for that. I would say that a lot of my feelings of depression are probably based on feeling invisible, and then if you go back to what I've just said, actually, about being invisible, that that's probably got a lot to do with it.
And maybe, in hindsight, being married and choosing that life didn't necessarily assist, in the long term, my mental health. Having said that, it was before I got married that I was depressed and I still suffer from it now, so I guess it's just part of who I am. So, I function, just occasionally I elect not to get out of bed, basically.
Gareth: Did you know at the time you were 17 or 18? Could you name what it was?
Julz: Depression? No. I've always had a sadness at times in my life. I think because my mother suffered from post-natal depression when I was five, and has had a huge battle all her life, I don't think it's something I ever chose to explore because once you start exploring it I might have identified something that was the same in me that was in my mother. So, I would just be sad sometimes, and more sad other times, and not sad at all and completely manic at other times [laughs]. Luckily I fall quite nicely in the middle-ish of the spectrum, so I don't ever get so down that I can't live, and I don't ever get so high that I'm jumping off buildings, so it's manageable. And I live, very much consciously, a life that looks after who I am, so I don't work full-time and I just look after myself.
Gareth: And does this tie in with your experience with fitness and kind of getting active?
Julz: Later on. I still question how on earth I ended up in fitness. It makes sense to me now, 17 years later, but at the time, me being a perky, jump-up-and-down aerobics instructor was the complete antithesis of who I thought I was. So, I just got into it because it was a great way of getting thin and jumping up and down in front of other people.
Over the past few years, partly after having kids, in the last five or six years, realizing that fitness – fitness is a funny word – exercise and wellness is a whole lot more holistic; but also that the fitness industry has a lot to offer, but it's got huge shortfalls. And because I'm not attached to a brand or have any great aspirations to get incredibly successful within a company, I've had the opportunity to be able to study and investigate depression and exercise and things like that, that you wouldn't necessarily get rich off. So yes, that was very much where my interest has come.
And I also work with what I call gay fitness emergencies. Someone very interestingly the other day said, "Is there really a difference between gay and straight people in fitness," and the answer is absolutely not, but just working on that visibility.
So these days I do a combination. Behind the scenes I train up people who work in fitness – instructors and personal trainers – just putting in my version that the world is not square; it's not one shape.
And then the other half I work in the community working with what I call everyday people, which would be LGBT, depressed people, overweight people, non-exercisers. My assumption being anyone who's perky and jumping up and down in the gym is actually the minority, so everyone the conventional fitness industry doesn't work with or identify with.
Gareth: I'm just going to ask you to rewind a wee bit because I'm interested that earlier on you were saying that you were a bit of a couch potato going through school. What happened to suddenly push you into fitness? Was it because you wanted to do the body-beautiful thing? Was it to get exercise? What was the moment where you suddenly thought: I want or need to get into fitness.
Julz: I think it probably was an aesthetic thing. I started off, because of course I couldn't have gone out in public because I was very shy in those days, I got the old Jane Fonda, and it was Jane Fonda – yeah, it was, [laughs] I'm that old – and I did it in my lounge, actually. And then decided that I would join a gym and do some classes there, and then decided that I might train up as an aerobics instructor. So it started off very much from there.
I didn't have a strong career. I was doing odd jobs, so it was like, well maybe I could make some money out of this. As you discover soon after starting to teach aerobics, as we called it in those days, your body actually can't keep up with doing that for a living, so I thought, well, I'm in this fitness thing, I may as well go and train and become a... they didn't even have personal trainers in those days. So it grew from there.
And I've always worked in what I call commercial fitness, which is in membership gyms, and then ended up working through there and ended up managing and owning a club. So I went right through and eventually got my nice, real job. I'm sitting behind a desk, as you do when you work in fitness. So I fell into it, I think by accident, because I wanted to get fit and then it just grew from there.
Gareth: Is the fitness industry, in your experience, kind of open, liberal, or conservative?
Julz: I would say it's actually really conservative. I wouldn't say it's at all homophobic or anything like that, I just think as a commercial industry a lot of businesses, be they people or big gyms, are focusing on the masses, and I think there is a definite belief that if you specialize too much that you're cutting off. As soon as you advertise yourself as being the gym for a certain type of person then everyone who's not that certain type of person will obviously run a mile and never come in. So I think there's a conservativeness there, probably like every other industry, but I see it as quite conservative.
There's not a lot of people taking on great political acts or anything like that. It's a very commercial industry, I think, and with personal trainers and things like that you haven't got people signed up for the rest of their life. People don't need gym memberships; they don't need personal trainers in the same way that they need food or to pay the rent, so it's commercial, and people very much being the one-size-fits-all. That's generalizing, but yeah, quite conservative. I'm a stranger. I'm very odd. I'm a freak in my industry. [laughs]
Gareth: Over the time that you've been working in fitness, have you seen any change in attitude towards the way that both men and women perceive their own bodies? I'm thinking that over the last 20 or so years it seems to be that the imperative for having a beautiful body has grown more and more. What are your thoughts on that?
Julz: Very much. The interesting thing is, and I've been in fitness for 18 years, that it's actually become – and that contradicts what I've said before – more embracing of.... It's like the body beautiful has become more invasive, but on the other side the less fit – and I've always worked in women's fitness – 15 years ago, we do weights and measures, anyone over sort of 100 kilos wouldn't be anywhere near a gym, whereas now there are people who are very injured, very overweight, now coming into gyms. So, I think it's gone in both directions.
The bodybuilding side of things has reduced. I think every second person was a bodybuilder 20 years ago, and that's gone, but I think it's just been replaced by something a little bit different, that's just a different aesthetic. So the concept of perfection has got harder to attain to, but the people at the other end being fed into the machine are a lot more diverse so far as weight and injury and things like that.
Gareth: Do you think there's more pressure on queer people to go to gyms and to go for that body-beautiful image nowadays?
Julz: Yes I would. I work quite a bit with gay men and it seems to be stronger with gay men. It's the perfect butt, very much; the tightest little pert tushie, so I think yes, it is. There is that perfection.
The interesting thing about the media is that we as a general population haven't necessarily changed, but the images we're getting presented have, so I think it's probably not just a gay thing. I think gay men have got more pressure than straight men – I would say, definitely. Women are a little bit different. I think there's more gender fluidness, so for every woman that's trying to be androgynous there are equally women who are trying to be curvy, so there's not one choice of perfection. So, you can choose between two.
But it's gotten more difficult. If you think about in the '80s for women, if you think of Cindy Crawford or even Arnold Schwarzenegger, when you look at pictures of them now, how flawed they are compared to today's standards: how much heavier women were allowed to be, how less toned, whereas if you compare to the images now. So I think yes, it is a lot harder.
I don't necessarily think that's all a gay thing. I think that's a general population thing, for women especially. I think there's probably a fair bit of politics in my experiences, obviously, as a woman, behind the women's movement that there is a percentage of feminist lesbian women who part of their self-identity is being against all those images. So I think that's quite a strong thing coming through, not all groups. So, I think for women that counterbalances it.
Gareth: So, as a fitness instructor, when somebody comes to you and says, I want to look like that, what are your thoughts? Do you push them into that image or do you say no, you need to have the confidence of being yourself?
Julz: If someone comes to me and says they want a particular body type, I would tend to actually send them to another trainer because I don't work full-time, and where I work best is with people who can't or aren't interested in attaining perfection. There are thousands of personal trainers and people working in fitness who can tell you to exercise more and eat less, and give you perfection.
So if I do get a person who has an image in mind, then I tend to actually talk them through what the reality of that is – that yes, it is attainable, but I think we're not taught, as general people, actually what the investment and the cost is of that perfection; that in order to be, for example in the media, the size zero woman, actually how many calories, how much you eat to actually maintain that figure, and how much exercise you have to do, and yes, it's possible, but what you're signing up for, because I think we get told a lot that all we have to do is eat less and exercise more and we will attain perfection.
And the reality is that you're trading, potentially, for a lot of the looks, especially the very lean look and also the big muscly look, you're trading a fair bit of health to get that perfection. When your business is being famous and you're making large quantities out of making movies and being in the media then it's a fair trade. Stop eating and make hundreds of thousands of dollars; that's a perfectly reasonable choice to make.
For the average person it's a question of whether it's worth the investment. It's like All Blacks and high-level sports people; their bodies generally are ruined by being competitive sports people, but that's okay because you get paid a good amount of money and you can pay for the surgery later [laughs]. If you're not getting that pay packet, then perhaps do a cost to benefit analysis of what osteoporosis is going to cost you, or knee reconstructions and things like that. I'm a bit of a realist when it comes to that sort of stuff. Sure you can have it! Sure you can look like Cameron Diaz, just give up food.
Gareth: I'm wondering if we could just cover if you had some advice for queer people, and maybe we should break it into age groups like young, middle-aged, and older people who have never done a lot of exercise before. What would be the advice that you would impart?
Julz: I think for all age groups, for everyone, is that when you're not exercising and you start exercising it feels like crap. And that's not because you're completely feeble and unfit, that's just because that's what happens when you exercise. I think, once again, we get fed those lines that you just run around the block five times; we run around half a block and it feels so terrible. So, just expect that it's not necessarily easy. That doesn't mean it's not worth it.
So far as aesthetics and looking at the perfect body, what is marketed as perfection can be quite difficult, and our brains are really, really smart things that work independently and can affect the way we see ourselves. With media we could see people that look like us, they could be exactly us, and we would judge them less harshly than we would ourselves. And I think depending with gender identity, as well as sexuality, there's a whole different set of standards that we aspire to, and just being a little bit realistic about it. It's about improving your life rather than looking perfect. Exercise on its own is good fun, but it you're only doing it to look perfect, that's the only motivation, it's really difficult to keep it up.
Gareth: In your experience, why do people do it? What are the main motivations?
Julz: I think most people start exercising, if they're not starting young for sporting reasons or it's been a natural part of their life, it's to make up for an inadequacy in themselves, be that too wobbly, too skinny, too fat, too red in the face when they walk up the stairs.
People stay exercising because it contributes positively to their lives.
The trouble is, is that being in a headspace of starting to exercise because of an inadequacy in yourself is not a good motivator to keep going. I think that's one of the biggest shames of the fitness industry is that it is or has been based on people feeling bad about themselves and having to fix it, when really we should be focusing on how good we are, and therefore we deserve to live a little bit longer and have an easier life by exercising. So, I think it's a little bit mixed up like that.
That's something I work with a lot myself. I work with home-program people who aren't confident, wouldn't set foot or find exercise outside, but they'll do it in their own homes because they're not confident enough – they don't deserve to go to gyms. And I think that's a huge shame that that's how we've set ourselves up. So the way you start is not necessarily the way to continue.
Gareth: So, you were managing a gym, but now you're doing personal training. What happened there?
Julz: I ended up behind a desk doing purely office work, which was not that much fun. I was part owner of a business and I got another person in to help me out, and this person made it more and more difficult for me to exist in the workplace. Basically my options of remaining in the business became more and more limited. It came to a head when I got offered an amazing opportunity, which was based in part on my personality. They identified it as my quirkiness, because I did ask, "Why have I got this thing?" "We think you're really quirky!"
And this woman took me aside and suggested, very firmly, that I was not a good role model, my way of being was not appropriate, that I represented something other than what I should represent. It became very clear that she had issues with my sexuality; not something I'd ever come across that directly. I think we kind of can live in a bubble and that a lot of people who are homophobic will stay out of our way, which is quite nice actually. So I had to make some decisions to save myself. That was the defining moment: that essentially, apparently, members were fairly disgusted about my sexuality and people had been making comments, and I don't know, I had a funny haircut that was inappropriate and apparently tattoos are not a good representative.
I had to question her at the time, because I did ask her what it was about a 35 year old woman with two young children; what was not average about that? But it did turn out that it was my sexuality. I did call her on it; I chose not to take on a legal battle out of misplaced loyalty to the other people involved. You know, you earn a living, you've got children to protect, and I actually didn't trust what the outcome would be. I was also, having been bullied for the six months prior to this, I was not in a good state, so I had to leave.
And I think from that point I still had my family, but career-wise I was a clean slate. I was sitting in my lounge with no income, and a huge disappointment, I think, at the complacency of the people that had let that happen. They weren't in the room, but everyone knew what was going on, but protected themselves. And while you can see how that happens and I don't blame anyone, I think it left me pretty disappointed about being part of a big machine.
So I made a couple of decisions. I decided that the way I was was to be celebrated. It's not something I'd ever had to question. No one in my life had ever had an issue with my sexuality. I'd never come across that at all. So, suddenly I saw that people potentially had issues, and I had two options. One was to go into a closet and the other was to say, actually, this is not how I want to live. So I decided to not work for a brand again because when you're responsible for a brand then you have to kind of shut up, potentially, for the good of the brand.
And I was going to have my sexuality written on my website, so anywhere I worked or any work I chose to take on or anyone who chose to employ me or contract me was doing so in the knowledge that my sexuality and my individuality were something they were choosing. So then they had to choose to have me. It wasn't that they could accidentally get all my parts: my depression, my sexuality. And it's not just sexuality, but they actually had to jump over that hoop before I would invite them into my working life.
So that was a huge discipline, but through doing that I've had amazing opportunities and done some cool stuff, and that's why I've ended up working with depression and things like that, because just as you take sexuality as something that is "other," that in the world, most of the world is "other." There are the happy people and then there are the other people who are mentally ill and depressed and anxious. And then there is the dominant culture, and then there are the people of other ethnicities and other colors. So, I reversed it and went: I'm only going to work with "other," and that's worked out so far. So, [I'm] not rich, but very much in exercise I was lucky I had a partner who was able to support me for a time. Obviously you wonder [about] living in a car on the edge of the street, so I could still have a house. But that was a really good experience.
And having the fact that, because of the experience with this woman, I had pretty much hit rock-bottom, having to actually claw my way out of that at the same time, I had some amazing opportunities that came up. One of the core issues with this person in my workplace was that I got a job working on the Good Morning show. That was what she had an issue with, because I was going to be on the TV. I don't think she thought that gay people should be allowed on the TV or anywhere in public. So, that was brilliant, too.
So I had things like that that kept me going, and then picking up clients and personal trainings. Actually, I've ended up doing very little personal training these days; I do quite a bit of writing on non-traditional fitness. So instead of writing for fitness magazines I write for all the magazines people who aren't fit read. And I do some work with training other trainers, which is just me behind the scenes actually educating the people in the industry about the fact that most of the people they're dealing with are potentially "other," as well.
Gareth: Speaking of celebrations and pride, we've got the Outgames coming to Wellington next year in March. What does the Outgames, and also the conference and everything around the Outgames, mean to you personally?
Julz: I think it's awesome. Wellington, and I know the team that are running the Outgames have been working towards it. It's been really interesting being in Wellington and watching, because every January, February, we've got the Out in the Square and that has been getting bigger every year, with the Outgames being the jewel in the crown. I think it takes it away from just being a party and just being a social event, which is absolutely awesome, but adds a whole different level to it. It's international so that will bring in a whole lot more people.
And I think also, being sporting, it's really easy for people to go that's just those so far as visibility; that it's like the Mardi Gras factor: Ooh! Let's go see all of the colorful queer people in the Square. We don't need to go to the museum this week; we can just go and pick up some local culture. I think it takes it out of that and puts a new angle, not that we need to prove ourselves to the outside world, but I think any visibility is good,
And I think having sports events that are queer friendly is huge, because I've worked a little bit with gay men who have struggled with the macho images, and their experience of exercise and sport has been defined by feeling like the 98 pound weakling. So, I think this gives an opportunity for perhaps the next generation to see that and not be defined by that. And it's also not just very competitive with things; there are the non-competitive things as well, which is not very much a feature of big sporting events like that – it's all about being the best. It's good that there's that mix of the two. So I think it's amazing.
They're doing such a good job; it's all over the place. And the fact that they've got my photo, and my partner's, on the front page of the website also adds to the... you know... [laughs].
Gareth: Hey, just finally I'm wondering what you think in terms of health, well-being and fitness, what are the biggest issues facing queers today?
Julz: I think for a section of, let's start with women, going back to what I said before about the anti-aesthetic in segments of the lesbian community, I think that can be potentially a hindrance to the positive aspects of fitness. Things like cancers, and I think once again the experience of perhaps older women not wanting to go and get health checks makes you more prone, if you're concerned that your doctor is homophobic then you're not going to necessarily be as honest.
And I can imagine for gay men, so far as more disease prevention and things like that, that if you're not comfortable talking to your doctor then things can be missed.
Other than that I think it's the general issues that we all face so far as health, which is the fact that we can buy anything we need food-wise, so there's far too much good food in the world and far too many cars and things like that and sedentary jobs, and I think that's universal.
Transcript by cyberscrivener.com