Here's where I get stuck: when we celebrate fitness . . . fit for what? Often the language of fitness feels like another form of ableism, a corollary to "be healthy!" without consideration as to what we're defining as "unhealthy" and what that reveals about our beliefs about disability and bodies. If there are people who are fit there are surely people who are "unfit"? And whew, is that a loaded term.
Well said. I really struggle with words like healthy and unhealthy - they really get my hackles up - the words can be a slippery slope to some dark eugenics-inspired ideology.
The best way I have balanced some of this in my mind is inspired by Aubrey Gordon when she talks about Body Sovereignty as the concept that each person has the right to full control of their body (which leaves no room for someone else to have the say). This is the only bridge in my mind helps me continue weight lifting and also work to confront fat phobia and ableism.
Wow, I loved this interview so much. In the last five years, I had two back-to-back emergency c-sections, hip muscle and ligament damage from my pregnancies, and mobility issues for the first time in my life. I did yoga and ran daily prior to that. It was intensely humbling, to suddenly not be able to move your body as your mind believes— knows, even— that you should. For me, there was a profound grief at the loss of what my body was capable of. A huge psychological component because I felt an internalized sense of responsibility (blame) for the state of my “un” fitness, thanks to fitness culture. And it is still constant work to untangle my desire for health— to be able to move without pain, to lift things (my kids, heavy pots and pans), to model play-based movement of all kinds for my daughters— from 30+ years of weight loss-oriented diet culture.
I’m now in a “bodily renaissance” where i’m prioritizing how exercise makes me feel, mentally more even than physically. It’s helped my ADHD and my anxiety so much. One thing that’s only touched on in the interview, re: the $100 yoga pants, is the gear. After two babies, I need a specialty DD+ high-impact sports bra. It’s excruciating to run or do burpees without support, and I’ve spent hundreds of dollars just trying to find one that works. I heard an interview recently with runner Lauren Fleshman about fighting for equity in sports, and making fitness more accessible, and she mentioned her partnership with Oiselle (women’s running brand). I looked at their D-DD+ sports bras, and the price for a single high-impact bra? $75. And that’s the going rate for technical bras. I guess all I’m saying (as a fan of Oiselle!) is that this seems born out of the same issues discussed above. People critique exclusivity and boutique classes and Lululemon (an easy target due to the fatphobia and racism of the owners), but….fitness still isn’t any more accessible at the end of the day. $80+ sports bras? $2000 bicycles? I went to sign up for the Y to enroll my kids in swim lessons and even a Y family membership is $120 a month. Not including the classes themselves!
There’s something particularly pernicious about a society where “fitness”/health products are a luxury good AND healthcare is a for-profit industry. What is the incentive to keep people moving (or happy, or “healthy”) when you’re making money off them once they’re sick?
Anyway, thanks for this one! Excited to read the other responses.
So illuminating for this member of the IBTC at a robust A+ cup. As a 20-something I very briefly considered breast augmentation. So so glad I didn’t for so many reasons. I can’t even imagine how difficult this is for my brick house sisters.
I wear a 36h and it’s just not tenable for me (and my adhd) to order, try on, and return multiple $80+ dollar bras! I end up buying the two packs that fit my band size at Costco and hoping for the best. The only workout gear I splurge on are Hokas (shoes), the rest is suburban bargain shopping.
About inclusivity and fitness - thinking of my partner who is disabled and can't really use most fitness facilities. He did get several weeks of physical therapy following an illness, and was in as good shape as he's been in a long time. But when the insurance no longer pays, the PT is done. Persons like him would greatly benefit for permanent "Fitness therapies". Just like my insurance through work and now Medicare supplements pay for gym memberships in an effort to keep me healthy, coverage should include fitness programs targeted to specific health conditions.
We have become disconnected in the modern world from the functional fitness needed to lift a child, avoid a hip breaking fall, or chop down a tree. It’s about selfie driven self aggrandizement. I dreaded traditional PE classes. I was made to feel stupid because I couldn’t run, throw, or play team games well. I was bullied on the playground. Dodgeball anyone? I still feel the bruises on my back and legs. I grew up hating “exercise.” I was in my 30s before I discovered weight training, then indoor cycling, and finally yoga. Yoga was so encouraging and accepting. It’s a ‘practice’ after all. One yogi said to us ‘you are only as young as your spine is flexible.’ She looked like a frumpy 60s flower child but she was the strongest and most flexible person I’ve ever known. This mantra keeps my whole self healthy while resisting the pressure of the skewed body ‘ideal.’ But I admit resisting is still difficult.
One of the best things that ever happened for both my brain and my health was when I was finally able to separate exercise from weight loss/appearance stuff and to start thinking of it as deposits I'm making in my "old age" account. I'm very interested in having strong bones and being flexible enough to get off the floor if I fall.
Yes, this! I have a close friend in her 40s who jokes that she is training for her old lady body which really resonates with me. She is one of the most consistent exercisers I know, but her relationship with fitness seems really healthy. She’s my inspiration!
Uncoupling fitness from weight loss continues to be a challenge for me. I grew up in a household where I got a lot of praise for being “fit” when I was thinner even if I was engaging in some unhealthy behaviors to achieve it. Sometimes I struggle with motivation even though I know all the reasons that fitness will serve me that have nothing to do with weight. Focusing on keeping functional as I age seems like a good antidote to this.
Yes! I watched my mother age rapidly when she retired after a lifetime of hard physical work. When I urged her to take a walk or dance or SOMETHING, she’d snap “I’ve earned the right to sit.” She became so frail she had to move into an assisted living facility. I vow this will not be my fate.
My grandmother fell in the shower and was trapped for over six hours because she didn't have enough strength to get herself out of the tub. That has always stuck with me and made me very intent on wanting to have functional strength for as long as I can.
Same with my mom. She fell out of bed overnight. My sister found her the next morning, thank goodness she randomly stopped by. My mom was taken to the hospital (minor stroke) and she never lived in her home again.
“The functional fitness needed to lift a child” resonates. The time when my son was an infant was also one of the times, I’d been most ‘fit’ as I was lifting and moving weights (his body) more so than at any other time in my life. I also remember celebrating how it’s perfect that his body grew apace with my capacity to lift him.
This was so interesting! It made me think about how little movement I did during grad school, largely because grad school (for me) was perfectly designed to make me feel guilty for doing anything that felt like "fun" or "leisure". I was also parenting young children at the time so my default settings were "reading and parenting" or "feeling guilty for not reading and parenting". In hindsight, I needed the stress relief of exercise more during that time than any other time of my life but nobody in my grad program ever suggested that we actually do things to take care of our physical or mental health. I would have been a better student and writer if I had been moving more, I am certain of that.
I'm not sure if I remember seeing the word health in the interview. Not a criticism, just a thought.
I am watching people outside my window running and cycling. I hope they are truly enjoying themselves, being in their bodies and in their environment. I say that because I think health, not fitness, is a very different sight line that truly gets lost. What is the place of physical "fitness" in a person's overall health? How are we defining health? How do we connect movement in the physical arena to the spiritual and/or emotional/mental? I was once told, probably by a psychic or spiritual reader, that it is important for people to exchange air from the lungs daily. He didn't say exercise or movement though it was implied. I liked this way of connecting to physical activity as it linked my whole system to the process of being alive.
I imagine my ancestors moved because it was part of their lives, not something they went somewhere to do.
Yes. I have commented elsewhere that when exercise became part of my life, rather than something 'extra', it cemented itself into my being and I am better off for that. I do 'go to classes' (martial arts) but it began as part of my caring responsibilities for my daughter as we'd go together. I love the notion of 'exchanging air'!
I actually had a really different experience in grad school: most people I knew were really into fitness, and most of my peers viewed working out as one of the few acceptable reasons to take a break from your academic work. A lot of my social life involved meeting up with friends to go for a run or do a step aerobics class. (This was the late '90s. Step aerobics was a thing.) I think part of it was that we were all broke, and we had free access to the university gym. I think that fitness culture also played into ideas about self-discipline that resonated with the academic culture we were steeped in.
The thing I felt really guilty about in grad school was reading for pleasure. If I was going to hide anything, it would have been that I checked middlebrow books out from the public library, not that I went to the gym.
Not that this is important or anything, I just thought you might be interested. Step Classes are VERY MUCH a thing right now. Just not the same! Google it. It is AMAZING!
Well... I used to teach step, for years- I still teach group fitness- and I signed up for a zoom membership over the tail end of COVID in Atlanta ( I live in MA). And I could NOT believe how amazing it was, but I could not do it over zoom!
Fitness is definitely conspicuous consumption, I had never put that together. I think for me, there's also a defiance in setting aside the time for me. I'm in an industry (law) that praises work and overwork, and "fitness," for me is a way to prove--visually, through my FitBit or conversationally, by mentioning a long bike ride--that despite being a childless woman I am not completely owned by this job. I do things. I do things other than this job. And it's important for that to be true but also for that to be legible to people around me. Your article has made me think, though, why choose fitness for that message? Why not some other hobby? That I will have to think about.
When I was in academic settings starting in the 70s, I never felt there was any stigma about exercise. I wonder whether this is a regional issue.
In fact, being at a university made it easiest to be active, with gym and court privileges automatic.
The time I found it difficult to give any attention to such activities was once I started having children (I have three) and was working as well. Then there was neither time nor money.
Boutique fitness would never have been financially accessible to me. It does bother me when a yoga studio makes a big deal of standing for inclusiveness at the same time that taking a class costs a fortune.
For those who are happy working out alone and have the time and space at home but not the money for memberships or exercise equipment, videos can be a real blessing.
What a wonderful, meaning insightful, informative, and deeply touching, piece.
I got out of high school PE by being an AV boy in the last period, the time most of the coaches wanted to concentrate on the varsity & JV athletes. (AV boys, for the young among us, operated film and slide projectors for classroom teachers.)
Several other points stick out. PE is something you do (did?) at school. It was only rarely concerned with lifetime fitness. Second, the focus on this concept has indeed been a big change in human (modern western) life. Last, I think most people can make a reasonable accommodation with this part of life. In other words, you can go to the Y rather than SoulCycle or take up running without buying zillion dollar sneakers.
I think not for the first time, this (my favorite Substack newsletter) and Maintenance Phase (my favorite podcast) are converging on topics! MP featured the Angela Lansbury videos a while back and it was a revelation. This entire topic is really hitting home for me as someone who never liked moving until finding trail running and now is an aggressive outdoor person who cannot run normally but loves charging up and down hills. It’s weird what works and doesn’t work for people, I’ll be the first to admit!
Just to add that I’ve always hated gyms and the conspicuous consumption of being fit, so I still wear some exercise pants I got as a hand me down from my aunt more than 10 years ago, and most of my workout clothes are 3 or more years old. Defiantly, I always dress so as not to look color coordinated or fashion literate on trail because I dislike the phenomenon of women perfectly coiffed on trail with perfect make up on. But of course, I have to still reckon with my own body image and vanity issues...
Such a thought-provoking piece. Thank you. 'What would it look like if people of all backgrounds and identities had access to safe and fun recreational exercise experiences and the time, space, and health to enjoy them?' I dabbled with all kinds of different exercise but didn't find the one I've stuck at (taekwondo, for 12 years now) until exercise was able to fit into my life and around my responsibilities. I train with my daughter (we've both done it since she was 5) and I am stronger, healthier, more *awake* (I used to fall asleep on the couch after dinner) and happier for it. I wonder how much better off our society would be if we could all have that? I don't think that's evangelising fitness—accessibility is a public good.
Just here to reminisce about wearing leg warmers over MY JEANS in high school as a fashion trend circa 1982. I borrowed them from my mother, who loved her step aerobics, and I even attended a class or two at her extremely fancy heath club (East Bank in Chicago, IYKYK) "grapevine!", doing the Jane Fonda workout on VCR in college with friends in our apartments, "feeling the burn", etc.
I was never an exercise person, despite years of tennis and ice skating lessons in my youth, and despised gymnastics (Lincoln Turners, again IYKYK). I no longer belong to a health club, but have a decades old elliptical in the basement and the occasional Middle Aged Woman walk date with a friend outdoors when the weather is good, inside our town's dome or indoor walking track when its not. I do think it would be good to find a shared exercise activity with my husband as a 'couples thing'. Some friends bike ride with their spouse, I assume we will pick up pickleball within the next few years, lol.
I was able to get my partner to do yoga once a month with me by finding a local studio that hosts monthly puppy yoga sessions. So much fun and the puppies... <3 Some yoga even gets done as the furry littles romp and frolic and race about the studio.
My husband took up pickleball earlier this year, and LOVES it. He used to play pick-up basketball before the pandemic, but the guys he played with kind of scattered during the past couple years. The best thing about our local municipal pickleball court is that you can just show up anytime and there will always be folks to play with. Give it a try!
Oh I did that too! Scrunched down over the tops of ankle boots with skinny jeans. I’m sure Madonna started it😱. And watching my sister doing Jane Fonda in the living room, though I went along to aerobics at school too. My pajama taekwondo outfits are almost certainly why I wouldn’t touch martial arts with a barge pole at school, despite growing up in Asia. I love them now. The loose pants and wraparound top with my kick-ass black belt look fine to me👊🤣
SO MANY THOUGHTS...about my own academic and (what do we call it if not “fitness”) physical pursuits and process. As a recovering addict and philosophy major and former gym rat, I know that working ALL of my muscles makes me my happiest version of myself, which allows me to love and serve others with gratitude and even some grace.
Wow, what an article. I will be thinking about this for a long time.
Seniors also are targeted in all this. Senior retirement communities that highlight golf, tennis, swimming, golf cart riding white seniors with big smiles living in very racially segregated gated communities. Many of us can feel that we are not living “our best years” if we cannot retire to a warm, sunny place with all these facilities.
Thank God for the Y’s where we gather in tee shirts and sweats to strengthen and stretch our aging bodies without caring much how we look, we just want to feel better.
My sisters and I and our friends used to workout in our family room to this Sports Illustrated workout series featuring Cheryl Tiegs, Elle McPhereson, and Rachel Hunter. We were like 10! I have no clue where it came from since my mom wasn’t too into fitness. I also loved Denise Austin in graduate school and would workout to her VHS tapes in my tiny apartment.
Here's where I get stuck: when we celebrate fitness . . . fit for what? Often the language of fitness feels like another form of ableism, a corollary to "be healthy!" without consideration as to what we're defining as "unhealthy" and what that reveals about our beliefs about disability and bodies. If there are people who are fit there are surely people who are "unfit"? And whew, is that a loaded term.
Well said. I really struggle with words like healthy and unhealthy - they really get my hackles up - the words can be a slippery slope to some dark eugenics-inspired ideology.
The best way I have balanced some of this in my mind is inspired by Aubrey Gordon when she talks about Body Sovereignty as the concept that each person has the right to full control of their body (which leaves no room for someone else to have the say). This is the only bridge in my mind helps me continue weight lifting and also work to confront fat phobia and ableism.
Such a thoughtful contribution, thank you Cate.
Wow, I loved this interview so much. In the last five years, I had two back-to-back emergency c-sections, hip muscle and ligament damage from my pregnancies, and mobility issues for the first time in my life. I did yoga and ran daily prior to that. It was intensely humbling, to suddenly not be able to move your body as your mind believes— knows, even— that you should. For me, there was a profound grief at the loss of what my body was capable of. A huge psychological component because I felt an internalized sense of responsibility (blame) for the state of my “un” fitness, thanks to fitness culture. And it is still constant work to untangle my desire for health— to be able to move without pain, to lift things (my kids, heavy pots and pans), to model play-based movement of all kinds for my daughters— from 30+ years of weight loss-oriented diet culture.
I’m now in a “bodily renaissance” where i’m prioritizing how exercise makes me feel, mentally more even than physically. It’s helped my ADHD and my anxiety so much. One thing that’s only touched on in the interview, re: the $100 yoga pants, is the gear. After two babies, I need a specialty DD+ high-impact sports bra. It’s excruciating to run or do burpees without support, and I’ve spent hundreds of dollars just trying to find one that works. I heard an interview recently with runner Lauren Fleshman about fighting for equity in sports, and making fitness more accessible, and she mentioned her partnership with Oiselle (women’s running brand). I looked at their D-DD+ sports bras, and the price for a single high-impact bra? $75. And that’s the going rate for technical bras. I guess all I’m saying (as a fan of Oiselle!) is that this seems born out of the same issues discussed above. People critique exclusivity and boutique classes and Lululemon (an easy target due to the fatphobia and racism of the owners), but….fitness still isn’t any more accessible at the end of the day. $80+ sports bras? $2000 bicycles? I went to sign up for the Y to enroll my kids in swim lessons and even a Y family membership is $120 a month. Not including the classes themselves!
There’s something particularly pernicious about a society where “fitness”/health products are a luxury good AND healthcare is a for-profit industry. What is the incentive to keep people moving (or happy, or “healthy”) when you’re making money off them once they’re sick?
Anyway, thanks for this one! Excited to read the other responses.
So illuminating for this member of the IBTC at a robust A+ cup. As a 20-something I very briefly considered breast augmentation. So so glad I didn’t for so many reasons. I can’t even imagine how difficult this is for my brick house sisters.
I wear a 36h and it’s just not tenable for me (and my adhd) to order, try on, and return multiple $80+ dollar bras! I end up buying the two packs that fit my band size at Costco and hoping for the best. The only workout gear I splurge on are Hokas (shoes), the rest is suburban bargain shopping.
I agree so hard. Especially about the relationship of “fitness” to the US “healthcare” system.
About inclusivity and fitness - thinking of my partner who is disabled and can't really use most fitness facilities. He did get several weeks of physical therapy following an illness, and was in as good shape as he's been in a long time. But when the insurance no longer pays, the PT is done. Persons like him would greatly benefit for permanent "Fitness therapies". Just like my insurance through work and now Medicare supplements pay for gym memberships in an effort to keep me healthy, coverage should include fitness programs targeted to specific health conditions.
We have become disconnected in the modern world from the functional fitness needed to lift a child, avoid a hip breaking fall, or chop down a tree. It’s about selfie driven self aggrandizement. I dreaded traditional PE classes. I was made to feel stupid because I couldn’t run, throw, or play team games well. I was bullied on the playground. Dodgeball anyone? I still feel the bruises on my back and legs. I grew up hating “exercise.” I was in my 30s before I discovered weight training, then indoor cycling, and finally yoga. Yoga was so encouraging and accepting. It’s a ‘practice’ after all. One yogi said to us ‘you are only as young as your spine is flexible.’ She looked like a frumpy 60s flower child but she was the strongest and most flexible person I’ve ever known. This mantra keeps my whole self healthy while resisting the pressure of the skewed body ‘ideal.’ But I admit resisting is still difficult.
One of the best things that ever happened for both my brain and my health was when I was finally able to separate exercise from weight loss/appearance stuff and to start thinking of it as deposits I'm making in my "old age" account. I'm very interested in having strong bones and being flexible enough to get off the floor if I fall.
Yes, this! I have a close friend in her 40s who jokes that she is training for her old lady body which really resonates with me. She is one of the most consistent exercisers I know, but her relationship with fitness seems really healthy. She’s my inspiration!
Uncoupling fitness from weight loss continues to be a challenge for me. I grew up in a household where I got a lot of praise for being “fit” when I was thinner even if I was engaging in some unhealthy behaviors to achieve it. Sometimes I struggle with motivation even though I know all the reasons that fitness will serve me that have nothing to do with weight. Focusing on keeping functional as I age seems like a good antidote to this.
Yes! I watched my mother age rapidly when she retired after a lifetime of hard physical work. When I urged her to take a walk or dance or SOMETHING, she’d snap “I’ve earned the right to sit.” She became so frail she had to move into an assisted living facility. I vow this will not be my fate.
My grandmother fell in the shower and was trapped for over six hours because she didn't have enough strength to get herself out of the tub. That has always stuck with me and made me very intent on wanting to have functional strength for as long as I can.
Same with my mom. She fell out of bed overnight. My sister found her the next morning, thank goodness she randomly stopped by. My mom was taken to the hospital (minor stroke) and she never lived in her home again.
Sad how this is a cautionary tale :(
“The functional fitness needed to lift a child” resonates. The time when my son was an infant was also one of the times, I’d been most ‘fit’ as I was lifting and moving weights (his body) more so than at any other time in my life. I also remember celebrating how it’s perfect that his body grew apace with my capacity to lift him.
Dodgeball!! 😢😢😢
This was so interesting! It made me think about how little movement I did during grad school, largely because grad school (for me) was perfectly designed to make me feel guilty for doing anything that felt like "fun" or "leisure". I was also parenting young children at the time so my default settings were "reading and parenting" or "feeling guilty for not reading and parenting". In hindsight, I needed the stress relief of exercise more during that time than any other time of my life but nobody in my grad program ever suggested that we actually do things to take care of our physical or mental health. I would have been a better student and writer if I had been moving more, I am certain of that.
I'm not sure if I remember seeing the word health in the interview. Not a criticism, just a thought.
I am watching people outside my window running and cycling. I hope they are truly enjoying themselves, being in their bodies and in their environment. I say that because I think health, not fitness, is a very different sight line that truly gets lost. What is the place of physical "fitness" in a person's overall health? How are we defining health? How do we connect movement in the physical arena to the spiritual and/or emotional/mental? I was once told, probably by a psychic or spiritual reader, that it is important for people to exchange air from the lungs daily. He didn't say exercise or movement though it was implied. I liked this way of connecting to physical activity as it linked my whole system to the process of being alive.
I imagine my ancestors moved because it was part of their lives, not something they went somewhere to do.
Yes. I have commented elsewhere that when exercise became part of my life, rather than something 'extra', it cemented itself into my being and I am better off for that. I do 'go to classes' (martial arts) but it began as part of my caring responsibilities for my daughter as we'd go together. I love the notion of 'exchanging air'!
I actually had a really different experience in grad school: most people I knew were really into fitness, and most of my peers viewed working out as one of the few acceptable reasons to take a break from your academic work. A lot of my social life involved meeting up with friends to go for a run or do a step aerobics class. (This was the late '90s. Step aerobics was a thing.) I think part of it was that we were all broke, and we had free access to the university gym. I think that fitness culture also played into ideas about self-discipline that resonated with the academic culture we were steeped in.
The thing I felt really guilty about in grad school was reading for pleasure. If I was going to hide anything, it would have been that I checked middlebrow books out from the public library, not that I went to the gym.
Not that this is important or anything, I just thought you might be interested. Step Classes are VERY MUCH a thing right now. Just not the same! Google it. It is AMAZING!
That's exciting! I kind of loved step, and I've been hoping it would come back!
Well... I used to teach step, for years- I still teach group fitness- and I signed up for a zoom membership over the tail end of COVID in Atlanta ( I live in MA). And I could NOT believe how amazing it was, but I could not do it over zoom!
Fitness is definitely conspicuous consumption, I had never put that together. I think for me, there's also a defiance in setting aside the time for me. I'm in an industry (law) that praises work and overwork, and "fitness," for me is a way to prove--visually, through my FitBit or conversationally, by mentioning a long bike ride--that despite being a childless woman I am not completely owned by this job. I do things. I do things other than this job. And it's important for that to be true but also for that to be legible to people around me. Your article has made me think, though, why choose fitness for that message? Why not some other hobby? That I will have to think about.
When I was in academic settings starting in the 70s, I never felt there was any stigma about exercise. I wonder whether this is a regional issue.
In fact, being at a university made it easiest to be active, with gym and court privileges automatic.
The time I found it difficult to give any attention to such activities was once I started having children (I have three) and was working as well. Then there was neither time nor money.
Boutique fitness would never have been financially accessible to me. It does bother me when a yoga studio makes a big deal of standing for inclusiveness at the same time that taking a class costs a fortune.
For those who are happy working out alone and have the time and space at home but not the money for memberships or exercise equipment, videos can be a real blessing.
What a wonderful, meaning insightful, informative, and deeply touching, piece.
I got out of high school PE by being an AV boy in the last period, the time most of the coaches wanted to concentrate on the varsity & JV athletes. (AV boys, for the young among us, operated film and slide projectors for classroom teachers.)
Several other points stick out. PE is something you do (did?) at school. It was only rarely concerned with lifetime fitness. Second, the focus on this concept has indeed been a big change in human (modern western) life. Last, I think most people can make a reasonable accommodation with this part of life. In other words, you can go to the Y rather than SoulCycle or take up running without buying zillion dollar sneakers.
Lol. AV vs JV. That’s great.
I think not for the first time, this (my favorite Substack newsletter) and Maintenance Phase (my favorite podcast) are converging on topics! MP featured the Angela Lansbury videos a while back and it was a revelation. This entire topic is really hitting home for me as someone who never liked moving until finding trail running and now is an aggressive outdoor person who cannot run normally but loves charging up and down hills. It’s weird what works and doesn’t work for people, I’ll be the first to admit!
Just to add that I’ve always hated gyms and the conspicuous consumption of being fit, so I still wear some exercise pants I got as a hand me down from my aunt more than 10 years ago, and most of my workout clothes are 3 or more years old. Defiantly, I always dress so as not to look color coordinated or fashion literate on trail because I dislike the phenomenon of women perfectly coiffed on trail with perfect make up on. But of course, I have to still reckon with my own body image and vanity issues...
Such a thought-provoking piece. Thank you. 'What would it look like if people of all backgrounds and identities had access to safe and fun recreational exercise experiences and the time, space, and health to enjoy them?' I dabbled with all kinds of different exercise but didn't find the one I've stuck at (taekwondo, for 12 years now) until exercise was able to fit into my life and around my responsibilities. I train with my daughter (we've both done it since she was 5) and I am stronger, healthier, more *awake* (I used to fall asleep on the couch after dinner) and happier for it. I wonder how much better off our society would be if we could all have that? I don't think that's evangelising fitness—accessibility is a public good.
Just here to reminisce about wearing leg warmers over MY JEANS in high school as a fashion trend circa 1982. I borrowed them from my mother, who loved her step aerobics, and I even attended a class or two at her extremely fancy heath club (East Bank in Chicago, IYKYK) "grapevine!", doing the Jane Fonda workout on VCR in college with friends in our apartments, "feeling the burn", etc.
I was never an exercise person, despite years of tennis and ice skating lessons in my youth, and despised gymnastics (Lincoln Turners, again IYKYK). I no longer belong to a health club, but have a decades old elliptical in the basement and the occasional Middle Aged Woman walk date with a friend outdoors when the weather is good, inside our town's dome or indoor walking track when its not. I do think it would be good to find a shared exercise activity with my husband as a 'couples thing'. Some friends bike ride with their spouse, I assume we will pick up pickleball within the next few years, lol.
I was able to get my partner to do yoga once a month with me by finding a local studio that hosts monthly puppy yoga sessions. So much fun and the puppies... <3 Some yoga even gets done as the furry littles romp and frolic and race about the studio.
My husband took up pickleball earlier this year, and LOVES it. He used to play pick-up basketball before the pandemic, but the guys he played with kind of scattered during the past couple years. The best thing about our local municipal pickleball court is that you can just show up anytime and there will always be folks to play with. Give it a try!
Oh I did that too! Scrunched down over the tops of ankle boots with skinny jeans. I’m sure Madonna started it😱. And watching my sister doing Jane Fonda in the living room, though I went along to aerobics at school too. My pajama taekwondo outfits are almost certainly why I wouldn’t touch martial arts with a barge pole at school, despite growing up in Asia. I love them now. The loose pants and wraparound top with my kick-ass black belt look fine to me👊🤣
SO MANY THOUGHTS...about my own academic and (what do we call it if not “fitness”) physical pursuits and process. As a recovering addict and philosophy major and former gym rat, I know that working ALL of my muscles makes me my happiest version of myself, which allows me to love and serve others with gratitude and even some grace.
Wow, what an article. I will be thinking about this for a long time.
Seniors also are targeted in all this. Senior retirement communities that highlight golf, tennis, swimming, golf cart riding white seniors with big smiles living in very racially segregated gated communities. Many of us can feel that we are not living “our best years” if we cannot retire to a warm, sunny place with all these facilities.
Thank God for the Y’s where we gather in tee shirts and sweats to strengthen and stretch our aging bodies without caring much how we look, we just want to feel better.
My sisters and I and our friends used to workout in our family room to this Sports Illustrated workout series featuring Cheryl Tiegs, Elle McPhereson, and Rachel Hunter. We were like 10! I have no clue where it came from since my mom wasn’t too into fitness. I also loved Denise Austin in graduate school and would workout to her VHS tapes in my tiny apartment.
https://youtu.be/9f_ZQquCKrE