Natalie Wartza was always an athlete, so the gym was like a second home. But as she started to

present as more masculine, the locker room and gym floor, both

became much more complicated. She looked for an inclusive option, couldn't find what she was searching

for, and so she opened her own, the queer gym, the first LGBTQ gym in the country.

I have never been comfortable at the gym,

but I was assumed a lot of that just had to do with the fact that I am not an athlete.

I'm like a theater kid who would futs around on machines trying to figure it out.

Was there ever a time where you felt comfortable at the gym? I felt comfortable the entire time up until I started

looking gay because my background wasn't. It's actually kind of how I got lured into the whole

fitness thing because originally I'd gone to school to study physical therapy

and I wanted to go more like the clinical route. And then I discovered late in my studies that

that's not exactly what I wanted to do. So then I was just graduated with a degree and like didn't

know what to get into at that point. And so the person who hired me at the gym was like, you love it.

You're an athlete.

You grew up in this.

You know, you get to do that in this setting.

So that was actually one of the things that like attracted me about being a trainer is that I

got to spend time in a space that I found safe and enjoyable and comfortable.

However, at this point, I had long hair.

I was feminine presenting. And I would say up until six months, a year after I started training,

I started to present more masculine. And that's when I was like, well, and if I feel like this,

and I'm a trainer and I'm an athlete, I can just imagine what another queer person who is not an athlete who has no idea how this fitness thing works, plus they're queer, yeah, I can understand why they're not coming in here.

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