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Greif situates fitness culture at the nexus of several contemporary threads: the relentless quantification of everything, the drive to optimize the self, the decline of public space—and, of course, “wellness,” as the concept has come to be known. We all want to be “well,” or should want to, at least. But why?
Matter
alexi gunner added
But there’s a darker, more menacing side to the preoccupation with fitness, and this is the widespread suspicion that if you can’t control your own body, you’re not fit, in any sense, to control anyone else, and in their work lives that is a large part of what typical gym-goers do.
Barbara Ehrenreich • Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer
Fitness is a particularly compelling form of self-improvement because it demonstrates classic American values like productivity, individualism, and a commitment to meeting normative beauty standards.
Amanda Montell • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Thomas added
The millennial-driven fitness industry often positions exercise as a kind of second job, in which we should “optimize” our workouts and forever strive to go faster and harder while meticulously tracking the results.
Danielle Friedman • Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World
get it. I still buy into society’s standards of feminine beauty. I confess to being overly concerned with my body mass index. I can (and do) look at women who are much heavier than I am with appreciation of their beauty. I find their soft curves sexy. But I strive for a jutting clavicle, an angular pelvis, a concave belly in myself.
Mirabai Starr • Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics
The fitness industry’s maximalist ethos that throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a program—that working harder and faster, never quitting, and intensely believing in yourself—will give you flat abs and inner peace is uncannily reminiscent of the prosperity gospel.