Woman speaks out after accusing man of being a 'weirdo' at the gym
A woman has issued a public apology after she accused a stranger at the gym of being a 'weirdo'.
In a now deleted TikTok, Jessica Fernandez said that her video showed a man 'staring' at her from behind as she worked out.
In the clip, Fernandez counts how many times the man apparently stared at her, before he comes over to assist her in placing one of the weights on the barbell.
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"This is what women mean by staring at them like a piece of meat... Why is walking over?" she wrote on the video.
"You don't have to do that it's okay," she said as he attempted to lift the weight onto the bar for her.
She added: "This is ridiculous. I gotta' be careful - Adjusting my shorts because I think I am the problem and blaming myself because of the deep rooted misogyny I was brought up with."
After Fernandez uploaded the video to TikTok, she was met with some criticism in the comment section.
"Any possibility to him looking at the camera recording him?" one person wrote.
While a second added: "I don’t think you know the definition of 'staring' he occasionally glanced in your direction like every human does."
The allegations were also dismissed by fitness influencer Joey Swoll, who said: "There are women harassed in gyms. You're not one of them. You need to do better."
Now, Fernandez has issued a public apology titled: 'My Gross Mistake: Addressing The Gym Video'.
She began by apologising to the man involved, stating that this was 'the most serious thing I have ever posted'.
She said: "He didn’t do anything wrong to me and I blew our interaction out of proportion.
"I know many people think that I'm only apologising because I got called out from the video I posted and this is half right.
"If I wasn’t called out for this video I wouldn’t have had the chance to learn from this mistake or even realise I made a mistake to begin with."
She further explained: "When I first posted the video I felt I was completely in the right and I felt I was making a good attempt to connect and relate to my female audience who may have dealt with uncomfortable situations at the gym.
"Now after reading literally thousands of comments about me, the situation and the man in question it truly opened my eyes to how damaging this could have been for him.
"Men and women deal with very different problems in the realm of the opposite sex and after looking through the lens of an innocent man put in a situation like that."
Fernandez also claimed that she has been sexually abused and harassed prior to this incident, adding that those events 'were extremely damaging to [her]'.
The TikToker added that even though the man in the gym did 'nothing damaging' to her, she still felt threatened in that situation so 'reacted by trying to cope with it in probably the worst way possible'.
Fernandez also thanked Swoll for the 'wakeup call' and said that she would 'do better' going forward.
She concluded: "My past isn’t an excuse or a justification for what I did but it is something I want to personally and professionally address with a therapist in the future.
"Because I don't want to, and will never, hurt anyone ever again in this way."
Callum Jones