PerthNow revealed on Thursday<\/a> that the studio had come under fire after the owner described paying members as \u201coverweight\u201d amid a row over a collaboration with an influencer.<\/p>\nAfter screenshots revealing the controversial messages were shared, hundreds of people across Perth\u2019s health and fitness community expressed shock and disgust over the owner\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
In a statement following PerthNow\u2019s coverage on the incident, Freemove\u2019s business director \u2014 who is also the husband of the owner behind the comments \u2014 addressed the mounting community backlash and acknowledged the poor wording of the messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cA heated exchange of words with an influencer occurred, where the owner was defending the business and explaining why Freemove does not build its studios around influencer content,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The owner) acknowledges that her language was crude and poorly expressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe should have communicated more carefully \u2014 the wording was not eloquent, polished or appropriate for a public exchange.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe regret any distress this caused members.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business went on to specifically call out the controversial weight comments, saying they were indeed crude but were not said with ill-intentions towards the plus-sized members of their community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fair to recognise that \u2018fat asses\u2019 was unnecessarily crude (but) there was no negative implication spoken or implied,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAcknowledging body size is not body shaming \u2014 (the owner) did not in any way say or imply that larger bodies were inferior or shameful.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrude wording is not fat shaming. We reject that this reflects contempt for larger bodies or a body shaming culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The northern suburbs business closed its lengthy apology by inviting members to consider that the owner had \u201cpositive\u201d intentions while sending the messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was defending Freemove,\u201d the company said. \u201cFreemove and its owner are authentic, genuine, unscripted and extremely passionate \u2014 we don\u2019t apologise for this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not claim to be perfect, and sometimes despite our best efforts, we can be misrepresented.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriticism of wording is legitimate \u2014 fake reviews, abusive messages, threats against the business and an online smear campaign are not.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of us are perfect \u2014 yet some are acting like they\u2019ve never made a mistake themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business page has turned comments off on both the apology post and the rest of their social media posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Perth pilates studio has issued a public statement after recent comments from its owner sparked backlash across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[925,3958,2969,227,335,464],"class_list":["post-87681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-perth","tag-entertainment","tag-health-fitness","tag-influencers","tag-lifestyle","tag-perth","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}